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Oh yeah? Were you there when they were working on it?

I still share my music as XM and MOD. VLC can play them and anyone who matters has VLC on their computer.

They're plenty reliable if you leave them turned off, but the absolutely horrible capacitors and the vulnerable, exposed pins lead to a large percentage of them dying out before their time.

The problem is that the Virtual Boy dev scene isn't nearly as advanced as the Game Boy one.  Also, while there are a few options for easy-to-use flash cartridges, you'd need to write some software to get started.

The "easy" way would be to write a basic playback routine and a separate PC tracker program.

The harder way would be to write a program like LSDJ that utilizes the limited I/O of the Virtual Boy and allows you to write music directly on the device.  This would be a bit hard to work with since the Virtual Boy uses almost exclusively 6-bit x 32 sample PCM.

However, it would be an interesting project for someone insane enough to put in all the work.

I think people use the Game Boy because it's common, durable and has a lot of great software on it.  It's also portable, which is a huge advantage when it comes to amateur musicians because a good portion of amateur musicians can't dedicate large chunks of time to composing, so a device that can travel with them allows them to use any chunk of free time to work on music.

The C64 sounds great, but it has serious design flaws that cause reliability issues.  It also isn't a self-contained solution and requires a TV or add-on LCD screen to use it as a full-featured sequencer.

The Amiga is amazing and I can't fault it in any way, the software is readily available and easy to learn and the system is mega powerful.  I'm not sure why more people don't use it, maybe the hardware is less readily available or more expensive in certain places?

[Insert obscure 8-bit micro or video game console] is under-documented and lacks any software that is accessible to musicians.  You basically have to learn assembly to get any music out of this device.  It certainly has many advantages and quirks that define it, but it doesn't have mass appeal.

That being said, I use many of the systems that seem less 'in vogue' today (Atari ST, Amiga, PC speaker, OL3, Soundblaster, C64, microcontrollers) and I enjoy working with them.  However, I understand why they aren't as popular.  If a platform requires that you be both a musician AND a programmer (or very technical minded, at the very least), then it makes sense that the user-base will be smaller.

So back in the day people didn't like making, performing and sharing chipmusic with the world?

I don't really care one way or another.  Even beyond chipmusic, I think most non-DJs who call themselves DJs are doing so to evoke an image, not because they don't know what a DJ is.