What emulator should I use?

IIMarckus · 2011-02-01 07:55:21

Here are some things to consider when choosing a Game Boy emulator.

Accuracy

No emulator behaves exactly like a Game Boy does, but some are closer than others. Using an inaccurate emulator to test can lead to bugs when your hack is played on a flashcart.

At the moment, these are the “accurate” emulators:

BGB
Gambatte
KiGB

Note that KiGB is known to use game‐specific hacks for accuracy. This is probably a bad thing.

These are some popular emulators that are inaccurate:

VisualBoyAdvance
No$gmb

Debugging features

These emulators have a full‐featured debugger built in:

BGB
No$gmb

Note that No$gmb has a memory leak that will crash the program if you trace too much.

VisualBoyAdvance has some other debugging features, like a memory viewer, VRAM viewer, and cheat searcher, but no debugger.

Cross‐platform compatibility

These emulators are open‐source and have been ported to multiple platforms:

Gambatte
VisualBoyAdvance

These emulators are closed‐source and for Windows, but may be runnable on Linux or Mac OS X via binaries or Wine:

BGB
KiGB
No$gmb

Where to get emulators

I recommend BGB (accurate, debugger) and Gambatte (accurate, cross‐platform). VisualBoyAdvance is very popular but also somewhat buggy, and it has many forks, making current versions hard to find. No$gmb was good for its day, but is now outdated.

IIMarckus · 2011-02-01 07:59:32

Emulators for other systems

I don’t know much about other systems. Here are some emulators that I’ve used:

NES: FCEUX (debugger, cross‐platform)
SNES: bsnes (accurate, cross‐platform, slow)

Tauwasser · 2011-02-01 09:41:48

IIMarckus wrote:

SNES: bsnes (accurate, cross‐platform, slow)

bsnes is getting a debugger right now. Also, it's running full speed on my three year old laptop, so you might think about getting something made after 2008 ;)

cYa,

Tauwasser

Cloud · 2011-02-03 15:43:26

Is there any gameboy emulator for Java mobile phone? fast and support good sound qualities? I hate MeBoy. I hate my computer. It's not portable. I wish i have a Laptop.

Last edited by Cloud (2011-03-04 07:01:20)

Mateo · 2011-02-03 18:36:34

meboy is the only one I am familiar with, and I know what you mean about not being a fan. It's rather slow, even when running a Gameboy Game like red, let alone a colour game. (It may run better for some of you, all I can comment on is how it runs on my blackberry curve 9300).

Cloud · 2011-02-04 00:08:54

Meboy running at normal speed on my phone. What I hate is when playing color games, sometimes it will stop for about 1-3 minutes and I can not even play the Christmas hack with that.

Last edited by Cloud (2011-03-04 07:00:03)

Mateo · 2011-02-04 00:48:27

Hmm, I've never encountered meboy stopping for a few minutes randomly. What kind of phone are you running it on?

Also in all fairness, part of my perception of it running slowly might be that I am so used to an emulator with a little more speed, even a real GBC would feel like it was lagging by comparison.

Cloud · 2011-04-07 15:17:51

Umm, Mateo, what version of Meboy do you use? Also, can a java phone run a gameboy game like BGB? I've seen my friends run it on symbian phone with VBoy, it even support linking a game with Bluetooth.

Q: Can you make a version that emulates the "Link cable" by using Bluetooth?
A: Unfortunately, that's impossible due to the differences between how the Link cable and Bluetooth works.
Specifically, Bluetooth is made for sending relatively large chunks of data, but the Link cable sends only a single byte at a time. As a result, only about 10-15 bytes per second can be transmitted, compared to 1,000 bytes for real Gameboys, or up to 65,000 bytes for Gameboy Colors.
As an example, when starting a 2-player game, Tetris sends 350 bytes in less than 1 second on real Gameboys, but it would take about half a minute for MeBoy using Bluetooth. The game itself would of course also run much much slower than on a real Gameboy.

I'm starting to wonder if that's true or not...

Mateo · 2011-04-07 18:44:12

I'm honestly not entirely sure what version of meboy it is, its one a mate was using on his and just copied it over to mine. I don't have a version at all on my new blackberry that I got after the merge with AT&T. I'll let you know once I get around to getting another copy and trying it out on this one.

dooshboi · 2011-04-08 00:10:07

A.D.X Gameboy is a great emulator for the iPod touch and nearly identical to the traditional GB/GBC.

IIMarckus · 2011-07-22 00:55:58

Here’s an article talking a bit about N64 emulators.

Miksy91 · 2011-10-19 18:28:10

Pingouin7 wrote:

For those on Android, GBCoid is pretty good at emulating GB/C games.

Already figured it out ;)
Been testing my hack on phone a couple of times and works just fine.

Skeetendo

#1 2011-02-01 07:55:21