Both are similar feature wise bgb seems to have been implemented based on no$gmb, so both interfaces look alike and also shortcuts in the debugger are mostly the same. The emulators I found to be the best matches are no$gmb 363 300 and bgb 364 301. Who writes a working game with closed eyes, loads it onto a gameboy cartidge and it works? Well, at least not me.

Next thing I needed for development was an emulator with an embeded deugger. You can find the compiled binaries ( rgbds.tar 361 298) and the Makefile I used in my github repository 362 299. With minor modifications I was able to compile the tools for Mac OS X Lion. Unfortunately, there is no binary available for Mac OS.

It contains four command-line tool for which two are the assembler and the linker. RGBDS 360 297 seems to be a popular set of developer tools for the original Gameboy. And as it was more then just click-click-finish at some stages, I hope this will also be helpful to others. The main purpose of this post is to describe the steps I have taken. The first step required to dive into the world of Gameboy development is to set up the development tools, emulator and some more useful tools like tile-editors on your Mac. Maybe I will even enter the next Ludum Dare 359 296 with a Gameboy game. I was surprised what can be achieved on a 14 hour flight. With a four-color 160×144 pixel display, you are so restricted on itself, that doing the graphics yourself is quiet easy even for someone that is not a great artist. Building only a simple game for PC or any of the latest Mobile-platforms (iOS, Android) can take month when you also have some sense for art and style. With a quiet old and restricted platform like the Gameboy, this is a nice thing to do in with limited time and good results. As one of the most popular tool-chains ( Rednex Gameboy Development System 358 295) is open-source and a comparably small project, this is hopefully not a month-long endeavor.Īnd I like doing game-development for fun anyway.

Dev-Tools: Understanding how compiler and linker for this platform work and tinkering with it.

Except for the CHIP-8 language, there are not many other processor that are this popular and have an as small instruction set. Compared to others, the instruction of the Z80 is “quiet” small.

Emulators: Write a simple emulator for the Gameboy’s Z80 processor.

As it happens, I still have my old Gameboy lying around… somewhere…

Electrical Engineering: Building own game cartridges/ROMs, ROM-readers/writers and play around with other interfacing possibilities.

Well, I found the old Gameboy to match that category: micro-processors/electrical-engineering, emulators, dev-tools. 357 294As I have gone more and more low-level over the past month, I was searching for a platform that is well understood/documented, not too fancy and thus allows me to use it for learning on different topics at once in a fun way.

Gameboy color emulator mac