Nintendo - GameBoy Emulators

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Popular Emulators

Name Description
BGB BGB is a GameBoy emulator/debugger which runs on Windows and Wine. It does this with many features that give a good gameplay experience, such as gamepad support, high quality sound and graphics, smooth Vsync animation, and low latency. In addition, it contains a debugger that lets you analyze/look into the emulation, create cheat codes, and assist in creating and modifying roms. Because of BGB's high emulation accuracy, if your rom works in BGB, it will most likely work on hardware too.
Gambatte Gambatte is a work-in-progress, portable, open-source, Game Boy Color emulator, and reverse engineering project, written with a wish to preserve something. The development of numerous tests, and their verification on hardware, is as much an emphasis as the development of an efficient software implementation.
Gearboy Gearboy is a cross-platform Game Boy / GameBoy Color emulator written in C++ that runs on Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, Raspberry Pi and RetroArch.

This is an open source project with ongoing development.


Other Emulators

Name Description
BadBoy A new GameBoy emulator that has full CPU,graphics, and sound support. The sound is a bit buggy so far,though. So far it doesn't play GameBoy Color games. It requiresDirectX to run.
BasicBoy BasicBoy is a Gameboy emulator written in Visual Basic. Given the language used to make it, compatibility is pretty good. Be sure to install the appropriate runtimes if needed.

Last update: 2004-07-06
Boycott Boycott is an emulator which is being coded in C and has been ported to a number of platforms. It is quite fast,and runs 90% of games, although there is currently no soundsupport. You will probably want to wait for the next release, whichwill have soun d support.Windows VersionWindows Version Translated to Norwegian
CBEBoy This is a Gameboy emulator for DOS written in C++. It has many features which make this emulator an excellentemulator. It has features such as: cartridge header readingcapabilities, CPU-z80 emulation, integrated disassmbler anddebugger, support of ROM ONLY, MBC1, MBC2, MBC3, GB CAMERA andHudson Hu-C1, LCD emulation, interrupts of VBlank, LCD and Timer.It also has a virtual joypad, palette effects and save batterysupport. Be sure to check this out.
CBEBoy2K1 This is the Windows port of CBEBoy.
cingb This is an open source Gameboy emulator for DOSand Linux. It runs some games.
confusionGBx A GB/GBC emulator with good compatibility andsolid options.
CrystalBoy CrystalBoy is a relatively new Game Boy emulator written in C# for the Windows platform. While it has high compatibility and a graphical debugger, sound support has not yet been implemented. The source code here is for the initial release, not the latest release. The latest source code can be found in a Subversion repository at the official site.
CustomGB A newer Gameboy emulator which has "16-bit(565) mode only support" and "doesn't create *.sav files". Thedocumentation isn't that informative and the site is inJapanese.
DBOY This seems like just another hack of VGB-DOS,except that it has Color GameBoy support. It's coded by a Japanese author, but being a hack, everything but the documentation is English. Run with -cgb to enable CGB emulation.
DreamGBC This is a Gameboy Color emulator which is available in both English and Chinese ports.
Fondle While at first glance, it seems to be advanced,this emulator is nothing more than a hack of an old version ofVGB-DOS. It has sound and such, but isn't really worth thedownload. This out-of-date emulator is just here fornostalgia.
GameBBR This is a new GameBoy emulator based on HASH.It is in Portugese, and tried to correct some of the bugs inHash.
Gameboy98 This is a new GameBoy emulator, and currentlyruns at full speed on Pentium class computers. It has sound, andeven has CGB (Color GameBoy) emulation! It runs a lot of gamescurrently. You'll want to download this if you want CGB emulationand don't want to spend money.
GameKnight Nintendo GameBoy and Color GameBoy emulation library using C#.
The goal of the GameKnight project is to create a group of platform-independent CLI libraries(GameKnight.GameBoy), all based around the same design(GameKnight.Core) for various 8-bit and 16-bit video game systems.
This should allow anyone to write an interface/port without having to sort through the actual emulation code.
GameLad This is a Gameboy emulator for Win9x/00. Itsfeatures include: Game Boy and Game Boy Color emulation, CPU,graphics with priorities, Ten sprites per scanline limitation,stereo sound, V-Blank, LCDC, and Timer interrupts. Its also gotbattery RAM, a debugger, and a disassembler. You can customize yourkeys in this emulator, run simultaneous emulation of multiple GameBoys, drag and drop files onto the console to open them, and itsalso got DDE support for you lazy people. The property window inExplorer also shows the ROM header. This emulator is pretty goodconsidering its a new release. It requires Direct X 8 or better torun.
GB '97 This is a GameBoy emulator by Paul Robsonwritten in assembler, and is one of the fastest out there. Itsupports game genie, background selections, pretty good sound andmore! It also sports built in fixes for games that didn't work, andmultiple resoluti ons.
GBE+ GB Enhanced+ is a DMG/GBC/GBA emulator and experimental NDS emulator. It is the successor to the original GB Enhanced project with a focus on enhancements and emulating as much of the Game Boy as possible.
gbemu This emulator is quite good, especially for aWindows GB emulator. It does Color GameBoy as well as sound, andruns things very good. It is now in english by default instead ofjapanese. Note: It seems to only display a game if you're runningin 16-bi t color.
GBFAN This emulator is part of a series of japanese*fan98 emulators. It's for Windows, and is pretty fast (it shouldbe able to acheive full speed on a P133). It has sound support, andI *think* the ability to log MIDIs is included. However, it'sshareware, has directional controls disabled, and costs 2000 yen toregister. I know nothing else about this emulator, so if anyone isable to translate the documentation, please e-mail me. It has anice interface and supports Gameboy Color.
gbpablog gbpablog is a recent Game Boy emulator written in C++, using WxWidgets and SDL. It doesn't seem to support GBC emulator, but does have sound and savestate support, and can play commercial games. Source code is only available via a Mercurial repository at the official site.

The zip file provided here contains the installer from the official site. Extract the contents then run the .exe file inside to install gbpablog.
GBSIM Another rather useless emulator, all GBSIM cando is CPU emulation and it has a debugger. In fact, all it reallyis, is a debugger! It's here because the author of VPCE, a Tg16emulator for DOS, made this emulator years ago, so here it is, fornostalgia p urposes.
GBUK This is a new Game Boy emulator that seems tohave popped out from nowhere and not much is known about it. I suggest you give it a try, though. It seems to be a quite normalemulator.
GBX This is a Gameboy emulator by one of the twoauthors of Sim-S.N.EX (an SNES emulator), and just like Sim-S.N.EXthis emulator sadly stopped its development at the debugger stage,so all in all this emulator should rather be called a Z80debugger.
GemuBoyGemuBoy (English) Not much is known about this emulator sinceeverything's in Japanese. It does, however, appear to play gameswell, although I didn't hear any sound while playing. It supportsDirectX and compressed files. The compressed file functionalitydidn't work for me either, but that may be because the archive hadmore than one file.The now official translation into English fromSoulfang!
GEST This is an open source emulator by TM that has shown much progress since it has come out. It's often updated and has zip support, Super GameBoy support, and much more. Many translations are available at the website. It was originally coded in C++ but is now being rewritten to ASM. Check it out!
GEX This is a Gameboy/Color Gameboy emulator by Andreas Bär that has had much progress over the last couple of years. Give it a try!
GGBoy This Gameboy/Game Gear emulator is made byMaechiko of the *Fan fame. It has got GB/GBC emulation and ispretty fast, worth to try out.A translated version of the program for thebenefit of we the English speaking folk. And yes, he did change theicon for the program accidentally, but oh well... :D
GiiBii A GB/GBC/SGB emulator that uses cross-plataform libraries.

Latest release: 2010-08-27
gnuboy gnuboy supports DMG, CGB and most MBCs, and has99%+ compatibility. It still has yet to emulate the link cable,Super Gameboy extensions and obscure mappers (HuC1, HuC3, etc).Definitely worth the download.
HASH HASH has 98% of the CPU core emulated, 80% ofthe graphics engine emulated, 40% of the new CGB graphics engine,no sound, and 85% CGB emulation. It's a little buggy right now, andunfortunately, was discontinued due to a hard drive crash. Thesource code to an older version is now available.
HeboWin A Japanese GB emulator for Windows. Wetranslated the documentation and found that it supportsGameboy/Gameboy Color, MBC1, MBC2, MBC3, MBC5 and Rumble HuC-1,both keyboard and joystick inputs, and save states.
heig-boy This is an attempt to create, at least, the cpu part of a GameBoy emulator. It is written in C, but the code has been made to be easy to understand. If you want to know a bit how an emulator could look like, then this is probably a better idea to start looking at Heig-Boy, rather than VisualBoyAdvance for example.

Heig-boy features ColorIt functionality, which allows gamers to colorize their own games, with a script-based system. This system has been refined for the occasion. A new parser has been written and included in Heig-Boy, and VBA CE has been updated with it. Finally, a GUI to colorize your games more easily completes the collection.
helloGB HelloGB is made by the author "pop3". It supports GBC/SGB, has excellent sound, and runs very fast. It also has extra options such as saving and loading states, auto frameskip, and joypad support. This was one of the best Windows Gameboy emulators. It requires DirectX 5.2 or higher. Try it out, you're bound to love it.
hspboy This is a Japanese GameBoy emulator which isbased on gnuboy.
Hyperboy Another hack of Marat Fayzullin's VGB, this emulator is very out of date, has no sound, and is a little slow. It is only here for nostalgia purposes, to see all the GameBoy emulators that came out around 1996.
InfoGB This is a Japanese GB/GBC emulator, but not much is known about it
KGB This is an average GameBoy emulator. Written in a mix of 32 bit assembly and Delphi, this DOS based emulator runs pretty fast, although crashes a lot under Windows95, so you shouldrun it under DOS. It has many new features in the current release. No sound yet, so it's not really worth downloading at the present time.
KiGB The "most accurate" and free portable emulator for Gameboy, Gameboy Color and Super Gameboy for Windows, Linux and MS-DOS.
Let's hspboy! Another GameBoy emulator which is based on thesource code of gnuboy. It has a GUI, save states, sound, and more.
LooseSock This is an average GameBoy emulator. It has not all the cpu's fully emulated, therefore it can only play some games.
no$gmb No$gmb is a emulator for gameboy, pocket gameboy, super gameboy, and color gameboy. Beside for the ability to play games it does also include a debugger with graphics user interface, conditional breakpoints, symbolic debug information, VRAM viewer, optional warning messages, online assembler, and various other useful things, making it a powerful development tool that is used by several professional game developers.

Further features are emulation of two player link (on the same computer), screenshots, real CGB-colors, gamegenie and gameshark cheats, joysticks, snespads, digital sound, a color scheme editor to colorize monochrome games, etc. etc.

The program is entirely written in assembler language, which makes it fast enough to run on older computers, for monochrome games a 386 with at least 33Mhz should be suggested, and for color games a 486 with something like 66Mhz.
Pasofami Works reasonably well, no sound support in the free version. The interface is Japanese so it is a bit difficult to configure.
PGB Pgb is a Nintendo Gameboy emulator written in Java. It currently supports the original Gameboy and the GameboyPocket. It is a work in progress and is relatively slow and is notcompatible with many games. Also there is no sound or joysticksupport. The author says 0.8x will probably be the finalversion.
PlayGuy This is a new emulator in early stages. It supports all features of a premium Game Boy Color emulator! Theauthor wants feedback, so download it and give it to him! :P
Prototype-D This gameboy emulator is written by BouKiCHi,author of DBOY, and from what I could see on this AMD K6/2 333, itran very nicely. Maybe not quite as fast as REW, but it's still agood emulator.Emulator Translated to Norwegian
QuantumGB This new emulator is able to emulate some demoscurrently. This release of the emulator has added some support forcertain commercial roms as well.
RAVBA Gives one to ability to earn achievements points for select Gameboy/Color/Advance games.
REWREW-FR This is a Gameboy/Super Gameboy/ColorGameboy/NES/TG-16 emulator for Windows originally thought to befrom the author of DBOY, BouKiCHi. It was later found out that ananonymous author actually coded it. It supports most of what DBOYdoes in addition to NES emulation and early TG-16 emulation.
SMYGB This is one of the newer Gameboy emulators. Itis coded in C++ by Ming-yu Shih. Although a little slow (needs ap166 and above), this emulator runs most GameBoy games, has sound(uses Direct Sound), several window sizes, a full screen mode(Direct Draw) , and can save/load states and sram. It even haspreliminary Super GameBoy support. If you like emulators for theWindows platform, then this is a good emulator to try out.
SynK GB This emulator runs in the console and creates aseparate window for the Gameboy video output currently it emulatesthe MBC1 and MBC2 mappers.
TGB Does a decent job emulating the Gameboy andGameboy Advance. Included on this page are an unofficial English release, an unofficial German release which supports Windows XP features, and an unofficial Italian release.
TGB Dual TGB is the first and only Gameboy Color emulator that supports / simulates / emulates gb link cable that anables you to connect 2 roms on one PC or over the IP network and trede pokemons from one emulator game to another or play gb and gbc multiplayer roms
TKGBC This is a Japanese emulator, which supports 24and 32 BPP display mode and optimized sound.
UGE UGE-Unamed Gameboy Emulator V0.2 for Windows9x/NT/2k. is just another Gameboy-Emulator. Not the best, but mostgb(c) roms are working, even with sound. (source included)
VGB(DOS)VGB(Windows) This is one of the best DOS GameBoy emulatorsavailable at the moment. It can run most GameBoy games flawlessly.With its near-perfect sound, game genie support and even GBCsupport, most other emulators cannot even come close. This is thefinal DOS version o f VGB.The full Windows version of VGB, coded by MaratFayzullin, has additional features that the free DOS version doesnot have. It has the ability to choose between WAVE and MIDI sound(you also are able to log all soundtracks to a .MID file, althoughthere seems to be no speed control on logged MIDIs), and you canenable/disable the different sound channels. Joystick support isalso available, and it even works with some newer joysticks, likeMS's Sidewinders. There is also speed syncing for those of you withfast Pentium II/IIIs, and save/state loading for quick save gameretrieval. Plus, it supports both Gameboy Color and Super Gameboycarts. Last, but not least, it supports many extras such asGameGenie, GameShark, Gameboy camera and the pocket printer. Thecompatibility of VGB for Windows is estimated to be 95%. Theregistration fee is $35 (the demo has no sound or joysticksupport). Head over to the official VGB page to find outmore.
VGBC This emulator has rather choppy sound. Itfeatures CGB emulation with support for hi-color, debugger, frameskip, etc. You probably want a fast computer to run it.*Discontinued*
VisualBoy This is a GB emulator that runs with Win9x andDirectX 7.0+. It supports GBC and GB emulation as well asGameGenie. It also has ZIP Files support and its in differentlanguages.
WinGBC This emulator has now been released in English,however there is very little English documentation.
zBoy zBoy is a pretty new Game Boy emulator created as a project by the author to learn about microprocessor architecture, assembly language, and so on. It's available for Windows, Linux, and (somewhat unusually for 2011) DOS. The source code is also available.

Despite being as new as it is, zBoy seems to be able to play several games quite well, though all the site's screenshots are of classic GB games, so I don't think it does GBC emulation (at least not yet).


Nintendo - GameBoy Emulators on Other Platforms

Linux (12)
BeOS (3)
Macintosh (8)
Amiga (6)
Consoles
-- Gamecube (1)
-- Playstation (1)
-- MSX (1)
-- Playstation 2 (1)
-- Nintendo 64 (1)
-- Game Boy / Advance (3)
-- Nintendo DS (2)
-- Game Park 32 (4)
-- Wonderswan (1)
-- Nintendo Wii (2)
-- GP2X (2)
-- Nintendo 3DS (1)
Java (7)
Palm OS (4)
Pocket PC (5)
Calculators (2)
iOS (iPhone/iPod Touch) (1)
Android (4)
JavaScript (2)