New Virtual Boy emulator "Red Viper" for 3DS released with full 3D support
The Nintendo 3DS is already past its prime, both in life-cycle and its homebrew scene, and while its homebrew scene still continues to be strong to this day, many people have moved away from it and are instead focusing on the Nintendo Switch.
While the 3DS did get its fair share of emulators from previous Nintendo consoles, even up to a Nintendo 64 emulator with DaedalusX64-3DS, one specific console from Nintendo's history of failures is the Virtual Boy, and given the 3DS feature of playing games in actual 3D, it was a lost opportunity for Nintendo not to capitalize on the success of the 3DS' 3D technology to revive the Virtual Boy in its full 3D glory, without the headaches of the actual red-lenses visor that the original Virtual Boy was known for.
Despite the Virtual Boy's failure, some people are still interested in it, and 10 years ago, a user by the name of mrdanielps worked on an initial Virtual Boy for the 3DS, titled r3Ddragon. The project itself was more of a WIP, and it never got developed further, until today.
@Floogle continued the work that mrdanielps originally made for r3Ddragon, now titled "Red Viper", and has managed to make the entire 22 games library of the Virtual Boy at full speed, and not only that, but Floogle also added the feature to play the games in proper 3D, utilizing the 3DS' 3D upper screen for this achievement, effectively making the Virtual Boy revival that many wanted since the inception of the 3DS and its homebrew scene.
The full features of the Red Viper emulator for 3DS include the following:
- All officially licensed games are playable at full speed, even on the original 3DS
- 3D support
- Game saves are supported
- Map either the A/B buttons or the right D-Pad to the face buttons, with the other being on the touch screen
- New 3DS C-Stick is also supported
- Configurable face button mapping
- Configurable color filter
- Support for PCM samples
- Savestates
- Homebrew support
- Circle Pad Pro support
- Button controls for menu
- More versatile color filter
- A forwarder to allow loading a specific game from the home menu
Red Viper Release Thread on GBATemp
Red Viper GitHub Repository