rzumer / gearboy

Game Boy / Gameboy Color emulator for iOS, Mac, Raspberry Pi, Windows, Linux and RetroArch.

Gearboy

Copyright © 2012 by Ignacio Sanchez

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Gearboy is a Nintendo Game Boy / GameBoy Color emulator written in C++ that runs on iOS, Raspberry Pi, Mac, Windows, Linux and RetroArch.

Follow me on Twitter for updates: http://twitter.com/drhelius

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Downloads

• iOS (Jailbreak): Cydia. You can open rom files from other apps like Safari or Dropbox. They can be placed in /var/mobile/Media/ROMs/GAMEBOY too. Save files are placed in /var/mobile/Library/Gearboy
• iOS: Build Gearboy with Xcode and transfer it to your device. You can open rom files from other apps like Safari or Dropbox, or use iTunes file sharing.
• Mac OS X: brew install gearboy
• Windows: Gearboy-2.7.0-Windows.zip (NOTE: You may need to install the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable)
• Linux: Gearboy-2.7.0-Linux.tar.xz
• RetroArch: Libretro core documentation.
• Raspberry Pi: Build Gearboy from sources. Optimized projects are provided for Raspberry Pi 1, 2 and 3.
• Ubuntu Touch version by Ryan Pattison: here

Features

• Highly accurate CPU emulation, passes cpu_instrs.gb from blargg's tests.
• Accurate instruction and memory timing, passes instr_timing.gb and mem_timing.gb from blargg's tests.
• Memory Bank Controllers (MBC1, MBC2, MBC3 with RTC, MBC5), ROM + RAM and multicart cartridges.
• Accurate LCD controller emulation. Background, window and sprites, with correct timings and priorities including mid-scanline timing.
• Mix frames: Mimics the LCD ghosting effect seen in the original Game Boy.
• Sound emulation using SDL Audio and Gb_Snd_Emu library.
• Game Boy Color support.
• Integrated disassembler. It can dump the full disassembled memory to a text file or access it in real time.
• Saves battery powered RAM cartridges to file.
• Save states.
• Compressed rom support (ZIP deflate).
• Game Genie and GameShark cheat support.
• Multi platform. Runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Raspberry Pi, iOS and as a libretro core (RetroArch).

Build Instructions

iOS

• Install Xcode for Mac OS X. You need iOS SDK 8 or later.
• Build the project platforms/ios/Gearboy.xcodeproj
• Run it on real hardware using your iOS developer certificate. Make sure it builds on Release for better performance.
• For jailbroken devices use the jailbreak branch.

Raspberry Pi 2 & 3 - Raspbian

• Install and configure SDL 2 for development:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install build-essential libfreeimage-dev libopenal-dev libpango1.0-dev libsndfile-dev libudev-dev libasound2-dev libjpeg-dev libtiff5-dev libwebp-dev automake
cd ~
wget https://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL2-2.0.9.tar.gz
tar zxvf SDL2-2.0.9.tar.gz
cd SDL2-2.0.9 && mkdir build && cd build
../configure --disable-pulseaudio --disable-esd --disable-video-mir --disable-video-wayland --disable-video-x11 --disable-video-opengl --host=armv7l-raspberry-linux-gnueabihf
make -j 4
sudo make install

• Install libconfig library dependencies for development: sudo apt-get install libconfig++-dev
• Use make -j 4 in the platforms/raspberrypi3/x64/ folder to build the project.
• Use export SDL_AUDIODRIVER=ALSA before running the emulator for the best performance.
• Gearboy generates a gearboy.cfg configuration file where you can customize keyboard and gamepads. Key codes are from SDL.

Windows

• You need Visual Studio 2017 or later.
• Install the Qt 5 Open Source SDK for Windows.
• Install the QtVisualStudioTools Extension and point it to the Qt SDK.
• Open the Gearboy Visual Studio solution platforms/windows/Gearboy/Gearboy.sln and build.
• You may want to use the platforms/windows/Gearboy/Gearboy.pro project file with Qt Creator instead.

Mac OS X

• You need Qt Creator, included in the Qt 5 SDK.
• Install Xcode and run xcode-select --install in the terminal for the compiler to be available on the command line.
• Install the Qt 5 SDK for Mac OS.
• Download SDL 2 source code. Then run this commands:

./configure
make
sudo make install

• Open the platforms/macosx/Gearboy/Gearboy.pro project file with Qt Creator and build.

Linux

• Ubuntu / Debian:

sudo apt-get install build-essential qt5-default qttools5-dev-tools freeglut3-dev libsdl2-dev libglew-dev
cd platforms/linux/Gearboy
qmake Gearboy.pro && make

• Fedora:

sudo dnf install @development-tools gcc-c++ qt5-devel freeglut-devel SDL2-devel glew-devel
cd platforms/linux/Gearboy
qmake-qt5 Gearboy.pro && make

Accuracy Tests

Compared to other emulators: see here.

Tests from blargg's test roms:

Screenshots

License

Gearboy - Nintendo Game Boy Emulator

Copyright (C) 2012 Ignacio Sanchez

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/