A WIP cross-platform research Game Boy emulator made with C++ and SDL3.
Warning
This emulator is very broken and should not be used to accurately play any Game Boy games. See other emulators for that sort of thing. This is a research emulator to experiment with low-level programming and emulation.
GameByte uses Git submodules for downloading the latest source for SDL3. To properly clone the repository, please run:
git clone --recursive https://github.com/ByteOfMelon/GameByte.git
If you've already cloned the repo without the submodules, you can run:
git submodule update --init --recursive
GameByte uses a standard CMake file to do its builds. Currently, builds are officially supported for Windows and macOS, with Linux testing possibly coming at a later point.
You can build with a regular CMake build command, or utilize the VS Code launch tasks to quickly build and run the project in debug mode.
You will need to provide your own Game Boy ROM file from a legal source. GameByte will open a file selection dialog and ask you to provide a .gb ROM file. Note that slowdowns and inaccuracies are to be expected.
GameByte is a research emulator that is not intended to be fully accurate or usable with a lot of Game Boy games. However, a compatibility list showing tested games are listed below. Note that the emulator does not (yet) support sound of any kind or any MBC emulation.
- Playable - Games that can be completed with playable performance and no game breaking glitches
- Ingame - Games that can get in-game but cannot be finished, have serious glitches or insufficient performance
- Menus - Games that initially run but cannot go ingame
- Nothing - Games that do not initialize properly and/or do not load
| Game Title | Publisher | Year | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tetris | Nintendo | 1989 | Playable |
| Dr. Mario | Nintendo | 1990 | Playable |
| Space Invaders (Japan) | Taito | 1990 | Playable |
| Asteroids | Accolade | 1992 | Playable |
| Minesweeper: Soukaitei (Japan) | Pack-in-Video | 1991 | Playable |
| (Pretty much) Every other game | Anyone | Any time | Nothing/possibly menus |