Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to IronBoy, a highly accurate GameBoy emulator written in Rust, runs WASM
Hey HN! Been working on this emulator on and off for the last couple years, and thought now would be a good time to try and show it off here. As far as unique features... I think this is the only online GameBoy emulator with support for save files? So there's your reason to exist, I guess. The WASM port was something I had in the back of my mind but I just kept putting it off because it seemed like it would've been a pain in the ass to implement, but all in all I think it took less than a week so that was a nice surprise!
IronBoy is a GameBoy emulator written in Rust that runs in web browsers via WebAssembly. It allows users to play classic GameBoy games online while preserving and loading save files, a feature the creator claims is… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. IronBoy, a highly accurate GameBoy emulator written in Rust, runs WASM launched in 2023; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 1
RomM is a self-hosted app that allows you to manage your retro game files (ROMs) and play them in the browser. Think of it as Plex or Jellyfin for your ROM library: it automatically fetches metadata, artwork, and game information from online metadata sources to transform your folders into a browsable collection. You can play games directly in the browser for consoles like the N64, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and PlayStation 1, using the integrated web emulator (https://emulatorjs.org/). Members of the community have released integrations for Playnite (Windows), muOS…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2
Contribute to sacert/Gameboy development by creating an account on GitHub.
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 3
Still very much a work in progress, but really wanted to share this even in it's early state. Had heaps of fun building it to learn more about WebRTC.
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4
Run KolibriOS, Linux or Windows 98 in your browser
2013 · copy.sh · its alternatives →
- 5
NES emulator written in Rust. Contribute to pcwalton/sprocketnes development by creating an account on GitHub.
2013 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6
:tv: An (almost) fully featured Game Boy emulator. - Dooskington/GameLad
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7
I've been exploring new ways of testing Ghidra processor modules. In this repo, I was able to emulate NES ROMs in Ghidra to test its 6502 specification, which resulted in finding and fixing some bugs. Context: Ghidra is used for reverse engineering binary executables, complementing the usual disassembly view with function decompilation. Each supported architecture has a SLEIGH specification, which provides semantics for parsing and emulating instructions, not unlike the dispatch handlers you would find in interpreters written for console emulators. Emulator devs have long had extensive test…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 8
A gameboy emulator in several different languages. Contribute to shish/rosettaboy development by creating an account on GitHub.
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9
Finally got my hobby OS up and running on real hardware. I love the old IBM thinkpads, so thought it was the perfect machine to get it working on. Been working on it for quite some time now, but this has been a big milestone!
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10
Play classic 8-bit retro games online with friends! Free multiplayer emulator in your browser. No downloads required.
2018 · nes.party · its alternatives →
- 11
The goal is to have a pixel, mod-friendly perfect recreation of Wolfenstein 3D in Rust.
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12
Hello everyone! I've created a gameboy emulator to unlock my Wayland session and wanted to share this project to everyone here! I've been a Linux enthusiast since I was a kid. What always captivated me was the freedom to customize my system exactly the way I wanted. With Wayland, we've reached an incredible level of performance. It's like turning your operating system into a video game! I've always been fascinated by the blend of fun and the serious, technical nature of an OS. That’s what inspired me to create this project. I started by studying Wayland, its protocol and how to build a…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13GB
Hey HN, Over the past ~1.5 years, I built an open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld that can play Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges. To my knowledge, there isn't an existing open-source FPGA emulator that can play physical cartridges like this. One of my main goals was to do all of the pieces myself, and be able to understand every component of it, so I designed my own PCB, wrote the firmware, wrote a Game Boy and Game Boy Advance emulator for the FPGA (using the Chisel HDL), and designed a 3D-printed case. I detailed the design and development process in the…
2025 · eli.lipsitz.net · its alternatives →
- 14
Earlier this year, we released our open-source game engine [0] built with Rust, WebAssembly, and WebGPU. Today, we’re happy to announce the Ambient platform, which brings web deployment, server hosting, and more to the runtime. With Ambient, you can make a game, deploy it to the browser in one command, share your URL and instantly play with others, no downloads or installs needed. Our WASM use is innovative; it is being used as both a sandboxed runtime for user code, and as a way to run the entire Ambient runtime in the browser. This, paired with our ECS data model, enables a highly modular…
2023 · ambient.run · its alternatives →
- 15
- 16
A gameboy emulator written in pure Lua. Work in progress. - zeta0134/LuaGB
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17OG
Hello HN users, I made a web app that allows you to upload any SNES or GameBoy ROM file and play right within the web browser. It’s called Afterplay.io. It got a lot of upvotes on Reddit, and I noticed users signing up and coming back to play games every day, which feels great and has motivated me to keep on developing this thing :). Demo Video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3K9iYbJ-1lQ Site : https://afterplay.io Problem: I couldn't play emulated games across my devices easily with saves. The Apple App Store does not allow emulator apps. Solution: Use…
2021 · its alternatives →
- 18
To try it out, simply build the project yourself from source, or use attached bootable ISO image of the system (in Releases on Github) and run it in QEMU. https://blog.vxn.dev/rou2exos-rusted-edition
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 19
Browser-based Gameboy emulator in Typescript and WebGL - nauful/gb-ts
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20IW
2019 · enigma.lh.mk · its alternatives →
- 21
Want to play Dr Mario or Pokémon on your server terminal?
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22
Z80-based CP/M emulator, in golang. Happily runs Zork, Microsoft BASIC, Turbo Pascal, Wordstar, etc. - skx/cpmulator
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23
A while back I wrote a CHIP-8 emulator (which is considered the Hello, World! of emulators and is more accurately a virtual machine since historically CHIP-8 was an interpreted language running on top of the COSMAC VIP to make game programming easier). But a few months ago I got really interested in embedded software, so decided it would be neat to port my emulator to a STM32 MCU and design a console around it as a learning experience, since CHIP-8 never existed as a physical system. I didn't know much about embedded software when I began, and even less about electronics, but I managed to…
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24GJ
2012 · jpfau.github.com · its alternatives →
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Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →