The Game Boy, a hardware autopsy

The Ultimate Game Boy Talk

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Pan Docs

The single, most comprehensive technical reference to Game Boy available to the public. Corrected, updated and maintained by the community.

The Cycle-Accurate Game Boy Docs

A precise documentation by AntonioND to make a cycle-accurate Game Boy emulator.

Complete Technical Reference

by Gekkio.

Game Boy Architecture: A Practical Analysis

by Rodrigo Copetti.

Game Boy Project Report

Report of an hardware emulator (on a Terasic DE1-SoC Board) developed as final project for the CSEE4840 Embedded Systems Design course at Columbia University.

gb-opcodes

Opcodes table

RGBDS opcodes reference

A reference of all instructions, including short descriptions, cycle and byte counts, and explanations of flag modifications.

Bootstrap ROM

Unused Palettes

Colorization palettes in the BIOS

Boot ROM Disassembly

GBC Hicolour notes

A technical note regarding Hicolour mode trick for Game Boy Color and its realization in the GBC game “Crystalis”.

DMG Schematics

Hardware schematics.

The Game Boy Project

Provides a study on the hardware and detailed constructional information for the implementation of three 8-bit bidirectional parallel ports.

Related custom hardware

by Gekkio.

ESP8266 GB Dev Board

Dev board for Game Boy accessories development, powered by ESP8266.

ESP8266 GB Printer

A device that emulates the GB Printer and lets you retrieve images using WiFi.

fruttenboel

Page with loads of information on the hardware, custom boards to interface with the console and other related projects.

Game Boy hardware database

Data and photos of various types of Game Boy consoles.

dmg-schematics

Schematics and annotated overlay for the DMG-CPU B chip, extracted from die photos, made with KiCad. Also contains Electric VLSI library with layouts for some of the cells and memories.

Dan Docs

Obscure Game Boy hardware documentation.

Edge of Emulation

, a series of articles about emulating and investigating Game Boy accessories. Also available as technical documents in the GBE- emulator documentation.

Mobile Adapter GB

Internet connectivity and DLC on the Game Boy Color.

The Game Boy Printer

Pocket Sonar

A blue cart with built-in sonar hardware.

Zok Zok Heroes

Zok Zok Heroes' Full Changer, a motion-activated accessory.

Infrared Madness

Infrared communication on the Game Boy Color.

Game Boy 4-Player Adapter

DMG-07.

Barcode Boy

The first Game Boy card-scanner.

Barcode Taisen Bardigun

A late 90s DMG-GBC barcode reader.

DMG-07 Technical Documentation

Game Boy Camera RE

Documentation about GB Camera and tools used to reverse engineer it by using Arduino.

Creating photo realistic images with neural networks and a Gameboy Camera

Ben Heck Reverse Engineers Game Boy Printer

(Errata: the used thermal paper is expired, 4 colors are actually printable).

Arduino Game Boy Printer Emulator

Emulating a Game Boy Printer via the Game Boy Link cable with an Arduino.

Mobile Game Boy Adapter

GB KISS LINK MODEM

GB Flash Cartridges for Sale

A List of available, ready-made Game Boy Flash Cartridges.

The Cycle-Accurate Game Boy Docs

A precise documentation by AntonioND to make a cycle-accurate Game Boy emulator.

Gekkio's Game Boy cartridge types

An overview on existing cartridge types.

DMG-BEAN-02

;

MBC1

;

no MBC

.

MBC1

MBC2

MMM01

Game Boy Cartridges Schematics

Schematics for MBC2 and MBC3 types.

Cartridges PCB photos

MBC1+RAM+Battery cartridge Schematic

First schematics by Jeff Frohwein.

MBC1 and MBC2 cartridges circuits

and explanation on how these MBC bank switch and control RAM.

Game Boy cartridge PCB photos

Emulating a GameBoy Cartridge

Emulating the functionality of a Game Boy cartridge with the development board STM32F4.

Wolf

Game Boy cartridge with co-processor.

Homebrew-Gameboy-Cartridge

Eagle library, schematic, and board files for a cartridge PCB using an Atmel AT49F040 as ROM.

Homebrew Gameboy Color Cartridge

Board layout for an EEPROM powered cartridge.

Nekocart

Open-source flash cartridge using an Xilinx CPLD as MBC5 (Post).

Reiner Ziegler's Game Boy page

Commercial and homemade programmable cartridges and programming systems. Tutorials, wiring and schematics provided.

Gameboy-MBC5-MBC1-Hybrid

CPLD implementation of a MBC5/MBC1 Hybrid cartridge.

Introduction to Game Boy Hacking

Workshop introducing basic assembly, debugging and reverse engineering.

GBSOUND.txt

A document detailing the Game Boy sound engine.

gbdev FAQs

Must read by Jeff Frohwein.

Game Boy Bootrom

Commented dump of the DMG bootrom.

Differences between the Z80 and the gameboy's processor

Gameboy 2BPP Graphics Format

Information on how the Game Boy interprets VRAM tile data to color pixels.

Reverse Engineering fine details of Game Boy hardware

43 minutes talk by Gekkio given at Disobey 2018 (errata).

Emulation of Nintendo Game Boy

Overview of the Game Boy hardware with the perspective of building an emulator.

DMG-01

An educational Gameboy Emulator in Rust and a companion book explaining its development. *Oh Boy! Creating a Game Boy Emulator in Rust- is a talk given at Rust Fest 18 about this.

Building a Game Boy emulator in JavaScript

Step by step tutorial.

Writing a Game Boy emulator, Cinoop

0dmg

Learning Rust by building a partial Game Boy emulator.

RealBoy Emulator

A series of posts about the design and implementation of the RealBoy Emulator.

Codeslinger

Another series of posts documenting the building of an emulator.

Why did I spend 1.5 months creating a Gameboy emulator?

Blog post.

binjgb rewind

Implementing a *rewind- feature.

binjgb on the web

Porting of the binjgb emulator to Web Assembly. (Part 2)

binjgb debugging hangs

Investigations on emulations quirks.

Decoding Gameboy Z80 opcodes

How to algorithmically decode Game Boy instructions (as opposed to writing one huge switch-case statement).

Porting a GO Game Boy emulator to WebAssembly

About swotGB

Notes about the development of a Game Boy emulator in JavaScript.

Game Boy Doctor

A command line tool for comparing logs from your emulator to those from a known-correct one. Useful for line-by-line debugging of Blargg's test ROMs.

Blargg's test roms

Gekkio's test roms

SameSuite

Mealybug Tearoom Tests

GB Accuracy Tests

144p Test Suite

Port of Artemio Urbina's 240p Test Suite to the Game Boy.

MBC3 RTC test ROM

dmg-acid2

and cgb-acid2 - Basic PPU rendering tests.

RGBDS

Assembler and linker package. Documentation.

ASMotor

Assembler engine and development system targeting Game Boy, among other CPUs. Written by the original RGBDS author. Documentation.

wla-dx

Yet Another GB-Z80/Z80/... Multi Platform Cross Assembler Package. Documentation.

GBDK

Maintained and modernized GBDK (Game Boy Development Kit) powered by an updated version of the SDCC toolchain. Provides a C compiler, assembler, linker and a set of libraries.

API docs: Getting Started

Examples

Documentation, links and tools

Turbo Rascal Syntax Error

Complete suite (IDE, compiler, programming language, resource editor) intended for developing games/demos for 8 / 16-bit line of computers, including the Game Boy and Game Boy Color.

RGBDS-Live

In-browser coding environment to try out RGBDS.

Wiz

A high-level assembly language for writing homebrew on retro console platforms (Game Boy, NES, Atari 2600, and more).

gbforth

A Forth-based Game Boy development kit.

gbasm-rs

An opinionated Rust based compiler for Game Boy z80 assembly code.

gbasm

A JavaScript based compiler for Game Boy z80 assembly code.

tniASM

Macro Assembler.

Assembler

Assembler written in Swift.

llvm-gbz80

/ clang-gbz80 - Clang/LLVM port to the GBZ80 CPU (similar to the deprecated euclio/llvm-gbz80).

gbdk-go

A compiler translates Go programs to C code. The output C code is built into GB ROM by GBDK.

Rust-GB

A compiler and library that enable the development of GB ROMs using Rust.

BGB

Powerful emulator and debugger. Provides an accurate hardware emulation.

SameBoy

Accurate emulator with a wide range of powerful debugging features.

Mooneye GB

Research project and emulator in Rust.

mGBA

Modern cross platform GBA emulator which also runs GB/GBC games.

Binjgb

5Kloc emulator that passes most of the tests. *Rewind- feature. Runs in the browser using WebAssembly.

Gambatte

Cross-platform and accurate emulator.

MetroBoy

A playable, circuit-level simulation of an entire Game Boy.

gbe-plus

A recently rewritten emulator that has a large effort in preserving the functions of obscure accessories (such as IR link, Mobile Network GB, Barcode Boy, GB Printer, local and online GB Serial Link Cable, ... )

Emulicious

Provides accurate emulation and includes powerful tools such as a profiler and source-level debugging for ASM and C via a VS Code debug adapter.

ZGB

A little engine for creating games for the original Game Boy (expands gbdk, more info here).

Retr0 GB

An engine for creating games (expands GBDK).

GBExtended

C library extending gbdk.

gbdk-lib-extension

A small set of sources and tools for the Game Boy Development Kit by Michael Hope.

mgbdis

Game Boy ROM disassembler with RGBDS compatible output.

ROM Header Utility

An online tool to inspect and modify a ROM's header data, including the logo.

romusage

Command line tool for estimating usage (free space) of Game Boy ROMs from a .map, .noi or ihx file. Works with GBDK-2020 and RGBDS.

awake

Game Boy decompiler.

Game Boy Text Tools

Set of tools for text manipulation and translation of Game Boy ROMs written in Node.js.

evscript

A scripting language for the Game Boy, useful for enemy AI, dialogue, animations, and coroutines.

evunit

A unit testing program for assembly code.

opcode_count

Generates statistics on which CPU instructions are run the most often using Python and Emulicious

Game Boy Tile Data Generator

HTML5 / JS web application that will convert bitmap images to hexadecimal data appropriate for use in tile based graphical applications, specifically GB.

Harry Mulder's GB Development

Some sources and home of Game Boy Tile Designer (GBTD) and Game Boy Map Builder (GBMB) tools.

GBTiles

Converts .GBR files created with Harry Mulder's Tile Designer (GBTD) and .GBM files created with Harry Mulder's Map Builder (GBMB) to different formats for use with the Game Boy and GBDK.

bmp2cgb

Graphics converter for Game Boy Color development providing real time palette adjustments.

png2gb

CLI tool to convert image file to game boy .c array.

GB-convert

Game Boy tile conversion and map editor tool (converts to assembly).

brewtool

A collection of primitive editor/converter tools for making assets used with homebrew ROM development.

vtGBte

A minimalistic ncurses tile editor.

tpp1

Definition and specification of a custom GB/GBC memory/hardware mapper, as a functional superset of MBC.

libstdgb

A C library of useful Game Boy operations (SDCC).

Tilemap GB

GIMP image editor plug-in for importing & exporting GBMB and GBTD tilemaps and tilesets (as bitmap images or .GBM/.GBR files).

Tilemap Helper

GIMP image editor plug-in for optimizing tile maps and tile sets.

Tilemap Studio

A tilemap editor for Game Boy, Color, Advance, and SNES projects. Written in C++ with FLTK.

Superfamiconv

Flexible and composable tile graphics converter supporting Super Nintendo, Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, Mega Drive and PC Engine formats.

cart-dumper

Game Boy Cartridge Dumper ROM.

gbcamextract

Extracts photos from Game Boy Camera saves.

Game Boy LCD sniffing

Sniff your Game Boy's LCD using a logic analyzer.

swapdump

Diagnostic utility for Game Boy flashcarts.

Gameboy-LinkUp

Game Boy LinkUp serial cable networking project.

DevSoundX

Sound driver embeddable in homebrews which supports pulse width manipulation, arpeggios, and multiple waveforms.

Carillon Player

Music Engine.

GBT PLAYER

A music player library and converter kit.

mmlgb

A MML parser and GBDK sound driver for the Nintendo Game Boy.

XPMCK

An MML based music compiler with support for Game Boy & Game Boy Color.

GBSoundSystem

A modernized audio driver for GameBoy Tracker (aka the Paragon 5 music player).

hUGETracker

A music tracker based on OpenMPT, focused on ease of use, compact output, and embeddability in homebrew games.

CBT-FX

A GBDK-2020 sound effect driver compatible with FX-Hammer sound effects.

gb asm tutorial

Step by step tutorial, building several ROMs to accompany its explanations.

hardware.inc

Standard include file containing Game Boy hardware definitions for use in RGBDS projects.

Assembly tutorial by David Pello

Good document to learn to produce working asm code for gb. Brief explanations of many important topics. Many examples with commented source code.

assemblydigest

Exploring Game Boy programming techniques:

Making an Empty Game Boy ROM (in Wiz)

Making Art for the Game Boy

Beginner's Guide to Reverse Engineering GB

Some starting tips on disassembling and reverse engineering.

FlappyBoy: Making a simple Game Boy Game

Super Game Boy development

Step by step tutorial to implement Super Game Boy features (frame and palettes).

GameBoy programming tutorial: Hello World!

Step by step tutorial.

DMGreport

Game programming tutorials in assembly.

OAM DMA tutorial

Example of how to use OAM DMA in assembly.

Game Boy Assembly Programming for the Modern Game Developer

An e-book about making Game Boy games in Assembly.

dev'rs ASM section

A lot of working demos and sources.

EmmaEwert's experiments

A collection of prototype programs, mostly just toying around. Among others, a daylight effect, transparency and a weather effect.

DeadCScroll

A detailed tutorial on how to make the screen wobble, among other "raster effects"

Nitty Gritty Gameboy Cycle Timing

Mode3 Sprite Timing

GameBoy Color DMA-Transfers v0.0.1

STAT interrupt timings

Video Timing

rgbds-template

Basic hello-world example for Game Boy using RGBDS.

Game Boy Assembly Language Primer

Simple template code with memory defines, copy routines and IBM font tilemap.

bootstrap.gb

An example Game Boy project.

Gameboy Boilerplate

Boilerplate project to move quicker into the actual assembly code for your game.

GingerBread

A software library for making your own Game Boy games. It is made to be used alongside the book Game Boy Assembly Programming for the Modern Game Developer which also doubles as documentation.

gb-vwf

Library to print variable-width text, comes with a demo.

gb-boilerplate

A template for starting Game Boy projects, providing a Makefile for infrastructure.

gb-starter-kit

An expansion on the above, including base library code as well to get started faster.

gb-template

A template with basic functions such as joypad input, DMA transfers, and map/tile data loading.

gbz80-highlight

Notepad+- and gedit syntax highlighting files for RGBDS assembly.

Vim syntax file for the Game Boy assembler RGBASM

Vim syntax highlighting for RGBDS assembly.

Vim syntax file for RGBDS

Another Vim syntax highlighting file for RGBDS assembly.

sublime-rgbds

A Sublime Text 3 package for RGBDS, including syntax highlighting and some completion snippets.

Z80 Assembly support for Visual Studio Code

rgbds-vscode

Visual Studio Code language extension for RGBDS GBZ80 Assembly.

rgbds-mode

Emacs major mode for RGBDS assembly.

8-Bit Wonderland

Well-written introductory document about how the Game Boy works and how to start developing working code for it.

Grooves Game Boy Programming

A complete set of lessons about implementing various game mechanics in a Game Boy game.

How to Write a Simple Side Scrolling Game

Old (but still relevant) tutorial.

Just another simple tutorial

GBDK Tutorial

Fairly minimal game demo for getting started with GBDK.

GBDK Sprite

Presents a workflow for getting multiple sprites to display and animate.

GBDK Color

Extends your knowledge of basic spriting on the Game Boy by adding colors to sprites, backgrounds and the window layer.

GBDK Joypad

Details the use of the joypad with GBDK.

Game Boy home of Flavor

Some full games and sources.

GBDK Configuring and Programming Tutorial

Configuring GBDK, Using Tiles, Colliding Sprites, GBTD, GBMB, Memory Management and ROM Banking.

Examples

GBDK Programming Video Tutorials

A series of video tutorials introducing beginners to programming with GBDK.

Larold's Retro Gameyard

A collection of detailed GBDK-2020 based tutorials.

Homebrew Hub

A community-led attempt to collect, archive and preserve every unlicensed and homebrew game released for Game Boy. Entries are playable online.

Tuff

2048-gb

Snake

Lazerpong

Geometrix

µCity

Carazu

Snake-gb

GB303

GB303 wavetable-based TB-303 style synthesizer for the Nintendo Game Boy.

Sushi

Flappy-boy-asm

kupman

and some other projects.

Adjustris

exeman

Aevilia

GBSlides

A simple Game Boy Powerpoint-like slides viewer.

Pokered-gbc

Pokémon Red remade with full GBC support.

ToyToy

StefaN

Fourway Breakout clone.

Galaxia

desgb

DES encryption.

superhappyfunbubbletime

minesweepGB

Libbet and the Magic Floor

waveform-gb

Program visualizing the wave form used by the wave channel. The wave form can be edited freely and playback of the wave is updated immediately.

vectroid.gb

Developed with gbasm.

PlantBoy

Death Planet

Quartet

Puzzle game for the Game Boy (Color) and Super Game Boy.

Dangan

FlappyBoy

flappybird-gameboy

fbgb

Novascape

Squishy the Turtle

Quadratino

Doctor How

Super Princess' 2092 Exodus

(ZGB engine).

GBsnake

gb-mines

oranges

red hot princess carnage

loderunner

Hives

Bubble Factory

*Vanilla- SDCC (no gbdk).

GBC Atari Boxing

Atari 2600 Boxing clone for the Game Boy (Color).

GB raycaster, Vision-8

and some other projects.

Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe

An arcade platformer for the Game Boy (Color).

Burly Bear vs. The Mean Foxes

(GBC port)

PostBot

Guns & Riders

Dino's Offline Adventure

A clone of the Google Chrome offline game.

dino-gb

Another clone of the Chrome game.

Evoland.gb

A port of the first level of Evoland.

Petris

A puzzle game of shapely pets for the Game Boy Color (itch.io).

Infinity

RPG developed by Affinix Software primarily between the years 1999 and 2001. The game never found a publisher and was eventually canceled. Got recently released with the full source, development tools and workflows.

Black Castle

Side scrolling platformer for the Game Boy (itch.io).

Genesis

Shmup for the Game Boy (itch.io).

Indestructo Tank!

Super JetPak DX

Powa!

Side scrolling platformer for the Game Boy (Color) (ZGB engine).

Cavern

(ZGB engine).

Mona and the Witch's Hat Deluxe

(ZGB engine).

The Bouncing Ball

DMG Deals Damage

totp-gb

TOTP (RFC 6238) two-factor authenticator with SGB border, GBC palettes and an MBC3 RTC clock.

Soul Void

Interactive horror fiction.

Deadeus

SUPER IMPOSTOR BROS.

Back to Color

beach-gbc

CUTE DEMO

10 PRINT Game Boy

Roboto Demo

matrix-rain-gb

A Matrix digital rain effect in assembler.

GBVideoPlayer

A technical demo demonstrating how the Game Boy LCD controller can be hacked to make a Game Boy Color play a full motion video in color, together with music.

GBVideoPlayer2

The second iteration of the above demo, which increases the resolution, adds stereo- PCM audio, and introduces video compression.

Reverse engineering Kirby's Dreamland 2

pokemontools

a python module that provides various reverse engineering components for various Pokémon games.

Reverse Engineering a Gameboy ROM with radare2

A walkthrough to reverse engineer a Game Boy ROM challenge using radare2.

Disassembling Link's Awakening

A series of blog posts about disassembling Link's Awakening DX.

Reverse Engineering the GameBoy Tetris

DMA hijacking

A simple technique that allows you to run custom code in most GB/SGB/CGB games, provided you have an ACE exploit.

Pokémon Red/Blue

Disassembly of Pokémon Red/Blue.

Pokémon Crystal

Disassembly of Pokémon Crystal.

Pokémon Yellow

Pokémon Gold and Silver

Pokémon Pinball

Pokémon TCG

pokegold-spaceworld

Pokémon Gold and Silver 1997 Space World demo.

Link's Awakening DX

Oracle of Ages

Tetris

Complete Tetris disassembly.

FX Hammer

Harvest Moon 3

Final Fantasy Adventure

The Jungle Book

Arduino Game Boy Printer Emulator

Emulating a Game Boy Printer via the Game Boy Link cable with an Arduino.

ESP8266 GB Printer

A device that emulates the GB Printer and lets you retrieve images using WiFi.

WiFi GBP Emulator

A GameBoy printer emulator which provides the received data over a WiFi connection.

Game Boy WiFi Printer - D1 Mini Shield

Game Boy Printer interface shield for D1 mini/mini Pro ESP8266 boards.

Game Boy Printer Sniffer

Sniff packet communications between a Game Boy and the Printer.

Game Boy Camera Canon EF Lens Mount

Game Boy Camera to Canon Lens mount

based on the above.

game-boy-camera-frame-replacer

Manipulate the ROM of a camera to include custom frames

Game Boy Printer Paper Simulation

Generate as-if-printed images of digital printed images.

Game Boy Printer Web

Gallery app for to the Game Boy camera: import pictures from exports or cartridge dumps and choose color palettes.

GB Studio

Drag and drop game creator with simple, no knowledge required, visual scripting.

Resources to get started

Dedicated Discord

Lets Build a Platformer Game!

A course designed to teach anyone how to create a platformer game using GB Studio 4+.

ArduinoBoy

Serial communication (MIDI) from an Arduino to the Game Boy for music applications such as LittleSoundDJ, Nanoloop, and mGB.

papiGB

Game Boy Classic fully functional FPGA implementation from scratch.

fpgaboy

Implementation Nintendo's Game Boy console on an FPGA.

Piglet

A LUA-driven AI that plays classic Game Boy color games using experimentation. In active development.

Ostrich

A Game Boy Sound System player written in Swift.

mGB

A Game Boy cartridge program that enables the Game Boy to act as a full MIDI supported sound module.

GBVisualizer

Demonstrating the use of two undocumented Game Boy Color registers, nicknamed PCM12 (FF76) and PCM34 (FF77), which can be used to read the current PCM amplitude of the 4 APU channels.

ArduinoGameBoy

Arduino based Game Boy cartridge reader and writer.

gameboy-brainfuck

Brainf*ck interpreter.

gbfk

Brainf*ck interpreter, with input.

gb-save-states

Patches to add save state support to Game Boy games when playing on the original hardware.

Video Timing

Digitized Speech in Game Boy Games

Sniffing Game Boy serial traffic with an STM32F4

Virtual Game Boy Printer with an STM32F4

Printing on the Game Boy Printer using an STM32F4

Programming Game Boy Chinese cartridges with an STM32F4

Pokemon Pocket Computer:

What is it and how to use it to make cheat codes.

Booting the Game Boy with a custom logo

Bypassing the Nintendo logo check.

Nintendo's fake logos

Every cartridge has to show the authentic logo to be considered valid and be run, but obviously some companies managed to exploit the check system.

liblsdj

Utility library for interacting with the LSDj save format (.sav), song files (.lsdsng) and more.

lsdpatch

Tool for modifying samples, fonts and palettes on LSDj ROM images.

Game Boy video effects

Some little experiments using the STAT interrupt to do funny video manipulations.

gbos

A basic operating system for the Game Boy.

Work Master OS

Russian multi tasking operating system.

Game Boy Link Cable Breakout Board

GBCartFlasher firmware

VerilogBoy

Game Boy compatible console Verilog RTL implementation.

GBCamcorder

Lo-Fi portable video recorder using a GameBoy Camera cartridge.

GBCartRead

Read ROM, Read RAM or Write RAM from/to a GameBoy Cartridge.

GBxCart-RW

A device for reading game ROMs, save games and restoring saves for GB, GBC and GBA carts from your PC via USB.

Dumping the Super Game Boy Boot ROM

sm83-render

A 3D model of the Game Boy CPU layout in Blender.

visual-sm83

A visual transistor level simulation of the Game Boy CPU core in JavaScript, running in a browser.

Archive of related files

The Game Boy Archive

A library of Game Boy related software, hardware and literature. Aimed to mirror and preserve old and fragmented contributions from the last three decades.

8-Bit Wonderland

Well-written introductory document about how the Game Boy works and how to start developing working code for it.

devrs.com/gb

Old home of the scene: examples, sources, complete documentation, guides, tutorials and various tools.

pdroms.de

Game Boy releases.

Handheld Underground

Unlicensed games, blog posts about Game Boy, home of the hhugboy emulator.