¶ Technical data
- Manufacturer: Nintendo
- Year of release: 1989 (April in Japan, July in North America, September 1990 in Europe)
- Units sold: 118.69 millions (Game Boy and Game Boy Color combined)
- Best-selling game: Tetris
- CPU: Sharp LR35902 8-bit @ 4.19 MHz
- RAM: 8 KB of main memory, 8 KB of VRAM
- Screen: 160x144 monochrome LCD, 4 levels displayed in shades of green
- Sound: 4 channels (2 pulse generators, 1 programmable wave channel, 1 noise channel), mono through the speaker, stereo through the headphone jack
- Media: cartridge
- Power: 4 AA batteries
¶ Presentation
The Game Boy is Nintendo's first cartridge-based handheld console, designed by the R&D1 team led by Gunpei Yokoi, who also fathered the Game & Watch. It was released on April 21, 1989 in Japan, later the same year in North America and in 1990 in Europe. Technically modest — a monochrome screen with four levels of grey, an 8-bit processor close to the Z80 — it bet on battery life, sturdiness and price rather than raw performance.
That bet paid off against more advanced competitors such as the Atari Lynx or the Game Gear, whose backlit colour screens drained their batteries in a few hours. Bundling Tetris in the West turned the machine into a social phenomenon and opened it to a far wider audience than the usual gaming crowd. The Link cable, which connects two consoles together, invented head-to-head handheld gaming along the way.
Its huge library ranges from arcade conversions to in-house series — Super Mario Land, The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening, Metroid II, Kirby's Dream Land — up to Pokémon Red and Blue in 1996, which spectacularly revived sales seven years after launch. The console was revised as the Game Boy Pocket (1996) and then the Game Boy Light (1998, Japan only), before handing over to the Game Boy Color.
¶ Emulators
New in Recalbox 10.1: netplay has been reworked (online play, synchronisation mode) and the GameLink mode is enabled, reproducing the Link cable between two Game Boys.
Emulator availability per board:
| Emulator | RPI3/RPI02W | RPI4/400 | RPI5/500 | OGA/OGS/RG351 | PC | RG353 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Libretro Gambatte | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro TGBDual | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro mGBA | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro SameBoy | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro Mesen_S | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Libretro bsnes | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
Mesen_S is missing on the RPi3 and RPi Zero 2, and bsnes is offered on PC only (it is declared for that board alone in the code); the other four cores are available everywhere.
Gambatte is the emulator used by default: it is very accurate, lightweight, and it is the only core in the list that declares CRT display support. TGBDual is the core to pick for two-player sessions, since it emulates two Game Boys connected by the Link cable. Netplay is supported by TGBDual, mGBA and SameBoy. Softpatching (automatic application of .ips, .bps and similar patches) works with Gambatte, TGBDual, mGBA and Mesen_S, but not with SameBoy. RetroAchievements are supported on this system. A controller is required to play, for instance an 8BitDo Pro 3 controller.
¶ BIOS
No BIOS is needed to play Game Boy games: the files below are optional and only serve to display the original boot screen or to enable Super Game Boy emulation.
| File name | Description | MD5 | Emulators |
|---|---|---|---|
gb/gb_bios.bin |
Original Game Boy boot ROM (optional) | 32fbbd84168d3482956eb3c5051637f5 | mGBA, Gambatte, Mesen_S |
gb/dmg_boot.bin |
DMG boot ROM (optional, several revisions accepted) | 57f6a79fb41d6b2c8987fa529c3a90f2, 60f1d849a435e9053b8ac0fd5776804a, 6344d08bbbcbedbbaef9ddbdf7632c74 | SameBoy, Mesen_S |
gb/mgb_boot.bin |
Game Boy Pocket boot ROM (optional) | df79723ee8093b0580496f3df436e4c4 | SameBoy |
sgb_bios.bin |
Super Game Boy BIOS (optional) | d574d4f9c12f305074798f54c091a8b4 | mGBA, Mesen_S |
sgb_boot.bin |
Super Game Boy boot ROM (optional, several revisions accepted) | be77bbd03f8675478f6e3d2176f3cb56, a43cbd0ab271990f434412fc5c500eff | Mesen_S, SameBoy |
sgb2_boot.bin |
Super Game Boy 2 boot ROM (optional, several revisions accepted) | b4331a9e612b4738867a30af9c96df52, 6d507dcf3b61ce45a5717421cdd0ae95 | Mesen_S, SameBoy |
SGB1.sfc |
Super Game Boy cartridge — required for Super Game Boy emulation | b15ddb15721c657d82c5bab6db982ee9 | Mesen_S |
SGB2.sfc |
Super Game Boy 2 cartridge — required for Super Game Boy emulation | 8ecd73eb4edf7ed7e81aef1be80031d5 | Mesen_S |
Place your BIOS files like this:
/recalbox/share/bios/
├── gb/
│ ├── gb_bios.bin
│ ├── dmg_boot.bin
│ └── mgb_boot.bin
└── sgb/
├── sgb_bios.bin
├── sgb_boot.bin
├── sgb2_boot.bin
├── SGB1.sfc
└── SGB2.sfc
Careful: the console's own boot ROMs go into
gb/, while everything related to the Super Game Boy goes intosgb/. Picking the wrong folder is the same as installing nothing at all — the BIOS checker will tell you.
¶ Roms
Put your games in:
/recalbox/share/roms/gb/
Supported extensions per emulator:
| Emulator | Extensions |
|---|---|
| Gambatte | .gb .bin .zip .7z |
| TGBDual | .bin .dmg .gb .sgb .zip .7z |
| mGBA | .bin .gb .sgb .zip .7z |
| SameBoy | .bin .gb .zip .7z |
| Mesen_S | .gb .zip .7z |
No-Intro romsets are recommended: one file per game, cleanly named, which makes scraping much easier. Games can stay compressed as .zip or .7z, with a single game per archive.
Game Boy games also run in the Game Boy Color system, but keeping them in
roms/gb/is preferable to keep both libraries separate.
Also have a look at the Game Boy guide for game preparation, configuration and system-specific tips.