Formula V Demo 14 - Get ready to Rrrrumble!

We like to make our games for the Virtual Boy future proof and a cool way to do just that is to add support for yet-to-be-released add ons for it. We have had in our hands a prototype unit of a Virtual Boy Rumble Pak by RetroOnyx, aka Kevin Mellott of HyperFlash32 fame, for a couple of months by now and, for this release, we wanted to fully support it both in the engine, for other soon to be released demos built with it, and in Formula V. It now has vibration effects in menus and, more importantly, during gameplay for obvious events like crashing against walls and other racers, but for normal acceleration, boosting and braking. We know that few people have access to the device right now, but believe us when we say that it elevates the gameplay experience to a whole new level! So much that, once you tried it, Formula V feels "naked" without it (as per Kevin's own words).

Rumble Pak support is not the only addition/update in this build though. Thanks to Fwow13's invaluable and meticulous feedback, we have tweaked, re-tweaked, further balanced and refined much of the gameplay. Among such changes, we have improved the AI's handling of corners, of chicanes and of narrower track sections, and we fixed its behavior in reverse races. All of this with the aim of making it even more challenging and fun to race against. 

But we have touched each racer's physical attributes to further differentiate their handling while at the same time making each a viable option to win racers against the others. And the behavior of the player's racer after collisions against walls has been fully reworked to make such collisions more forgiving to give the player a chance to recover. Bullet time has been improved too, and it is now triggered based on the angle of collision against walls to further aid the player to regain control after heavy head on crashes that would potentially send the racer into the wrong race direction.

The boost mechanic has seen some major rework too. In this build, it plays a more strategic role since it can now only be deployed when its gauge is full. This helps to reduce the spamming of the boost, both by the player and the AI, making the races less chaotic, while at the same time this change forces all racers to be more judicious with its use.

As usual, there have been lots of fixes and improvements, in great part, thanks to feedback that we have received after build 13.

Speaking of user feedback, we now understand how challenging the game can be. So, restricting the difficulty options in the hardware-only ROMs may not be doing the game justice. Because of it, this release allows players to pick any racer, any race class and any AI difficulty in the ROM for 32 MBit flash carts too.

We hope you enjoy it!

Game modes

The current demo has four modes of play:

• Demo (or "Spectator") Mode, where you can watch the AI racing against itself. It is accessed through the title screen by not pressing any button for a couple of seconds.
• Quick Race, which allows you to race against seven AI controlled racers on different classes, at multiple difficulty levels and during four times of the day.
• Time Trials, where you race against the clock and your ghost (this feature works only on emulators or hardware with flash carts that have SRAM support, like FlashBoy Plus or HyperFlash32).
• Versus Mode, which allows you to challenge a friend in link cable powered head to head races.
• Best times, which lets you have a resumed view of your best time per track, direction, race class, etc., and quickly access the Time Trial mode from it.

Controls

• Accelerate: A
• Brake: B 
• Steer: Left/Right (Left D-Pad) 
• Boost: Left Trigger + Right Trigger 
• Quick restart: Select + B

Pro Tip

Try not to release the gas ever! Since all the physics are throttle based and these machines have almost zero friction (they are hovering above the ground after all), the racers are easier to steer around the corners if you apply the brake without getting off the gas button.

ROM versions

As before, this demo consists of two ROMs with different functionalities, one will only work on emulators; and the other only on hardware. This was done due to the proliferation of the reproduction cart market, where the work of the Virtual Bow homebrew community is being sold without authorization.

• The ROM labeled "(Emulators)" will let you fully enjoy the game, but is locked to work exclusively on emulators (we tested it only on Mednafen). It will crash on hardware.
• The ROMs labeled "(Hardware)" will let you enjoy the Quick Race, Time Trial and Versus modes on a real Virtual Boy with all difficulty options unlocked, but language and time of day options are locked to specific values. It will crash on emulators.

If you like the demo, please let us know in the comments below! If you didn't, or if you found any bugs, please let us know as well.

Also, make sure to keep an eye on our Twitter channel for all the latest development insights!