Gearboy

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

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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-2.3-Windows.zip (NOTE: You may need to install the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable)
Linux: Gearboy-2.3-Linux.tar.gz
Libretro / RetroArch: docs
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/SDL2-2.0.8.tar.gz
tar zxvf SDL2-2.0.8.tar.gz
cd SDL2-2.0.8 && 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 2015 or later.
Install the Qt 5 Open Source SDK for Windows.
Install the QtPackage 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

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/

mddrill/Gearboy