[Tool]Gameboy Emulator

I just made a thing that converts gameboy ROMs into Pokitto BINs:
https://felipemanga.github.io/PokittoZBoy/

To use it, pick a border, pick a color scheme, then simply drag-and-drop some gameboy roms (.gb or .zip with a .gb inside) into it.
You’ll get a zip with a bin and a blank save file.
Extract both of them to your SD card.
When you want to save, press and hold A then C.
To load, press and hold B then C.
Careful not to mix them up, there’s only one save “slot” per game.

If you make a good-looking palette, export and share it here!

This is a work in progress based on the zboy emulator. Due to the space constraints, it doesn’t support all the games.

Check out the list @jonne made and report your results! Games with a yellow date in the Tested? column were not tested in the latest release, so check them out even if they’re reported as not working. Before marking a game as slow, be sure to run it side-by-side with VisualBoyAdvance on the PC. Sometimes games were slow even on the real hardware. :stuck_out_tongue:

12 Likes

@FManga Can I tweet this?

1 Like

Sure :smiley:  

What is your twitter handle?

I gave up on twitter when I saw that “FManga” was taken. :laughing:

1 Like

is the hardware good enough for emulation?
i think using esp32 as an add-on is still the best way to go on this sort of stuff

Lol! OK then!

@fmanga has done miracles on the screen update speed. We’ve been hitting 100+ fps lately.

Incredibly, the answer is yes.

3 Likes

Well, it would certainly be easier on an esp32. No fun in that, though. :stuck_out_tongue:
There’s still a lot of optimization to do here.

3 Likes

I am sorry, but I am out of town so I can’t help test, but I am asuming sounds is not being emulated, right?
Also, great job!

2 Likes

Correct, zBoy doesn’t emulate sound at all.

Thanks :smiley:

1 Like

…could always make recordings of the theme tunes and stream them from the SD card if it can be done without draining too many resources! :musical_note:

2 Likes

Very cool I will try it out today. I also saw on Twitter you’re working on a Bitsy converter thing too? You’re killing it!

2 Likes

@uXe: I have the feeling that either emulating / streaming would be too much. We’ll see, eventually. I’ll keep the idea in mind.

For perfect emulation, offloading processing to an ESP32 would probably be ideal, if the communication overhead isn’t an issue. Some things simply aren’t possible without extra hardware (can’t fit Pokemon in flash/RAM). Maybe sound is one of those things. For me, this is about making the most of what’s built-in.

@trelemar: Awesome! I’m looking forward to seeing what works or doesn’t for others, so please post your findings. The bitsy converter is on hold for now, but there’s a whole lot of games available (not sure how many are broken, though). I’m working on too much stuff at once, for a change. :laughing:

Or faster SD streaming.

If SD streaming were faster, it would be possible to create a virtual memory system so the whole game doesn’t have to be in memory at once.

I was thinking of doing that when I started, but the MMU needs to be so fast that you notice if memory access is inlined or not. Swapping ROM would be unplayable. Swapping RAM would be even worse.

Anyway, I just got MBC1 to work! :smiley:

Still have to update the converter.
EDIT: Converter updated. See first post.

6 Likes

…if you’re talking extra hardware, then it would be the perfect excuse for a SID hat, or one of the Yamaha chips?! :smile:

2 Likes

Exellent :slight_smile:

I’ve make some test depending on rom (and keeping you recommandation dunno if it come from the convertor or the rom him self but sometime the bin generated crash (won’t boot after flash).

After your doing an AMAZING job

If we could load with a simple menu rom this will be perfect for test :wink:

And pokitto that doing GB emulation what a great thing :slight_smile:

2 Likes

We need a new badge for @FManga, because none of the ones I have made so far are fancy/grand/extreme enough…

4 Likes

Ok, so I made a Google Sheet about all the ROMs that could potentially run on the Pokitto (MBC0 and MBC1 without added RAM)

… and …

there are 3315 known such ROMs. So @FManga has just added (potentially) 3000+ games for Pokitto. :astonished:

This is an editable list, anyone can view and make test results

2 Likes