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Life & fun · alternatives · 2026

24 alternatives to LuaGB – A Gameboy emulator written in pure Lua

A gameboy emulator written in pure Lua. Work in progress. - zeta0134/LuaGB

LuaGB is a Game Boy emulator built entirely in Lua, a lightweight scripting language. It allows users to play classic Game Boy games on their computer by emulating the original hardware. The project is designed for… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. LuaGB – A Gameboy emulator written in pure Lua launched in 2017; newer entries below may have overtaken it.

  1. 1GB

    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 →

  2. 2

    A replayable arcade shooter where you control a snake of heroes. - a327ex/SNKRX

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  3. 3GJ
  4. 4NP

    This is a long-running personal project I've had to write an optimizing compiler from scratch. Everything was done by me, including the lexer/parser, SSA-based IR, high-performance data structures, and code generator. Originally I wasn't targeting the NES. It started as a scripting language, then it morphed into a C++ replacement, and then finally I turned it into what it is today. The large scope of the project and colorful history means it's still a little rough around the edges, but it's now working well enough to post.

    2023 · pubby.games · its alternatives →

  5. 5

    :tv: An (almost) fully featured Game Boy emulator. - Dooskington/GameLad

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

  6. 6

    A minimal text-editor with lua scripting. Contribute to skx/kilua development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2016 · github.com · its alternatives →

  7. 7

    Contribute to sacert/Gameboy development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  8. 8

    Some time ago, I was implementing saves for my LOVE2D game. I wanted to do a full dump of the game state -- which included closures (AI), complex graphs, sets with tables as keys and also fundamentally non-serializable data (coroutines and userdata), that require user-defined serialization/deserialization logic. I went through every Lua serialization library -- none covered all data types/cases. So I wrote my own. It is a polished version, thoroughly annotated, tested and documented. It is made to be as functional and customizable as possible (or at least I did everything I could…

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  9. 9

    Homebrew engine https://github.com/willtobyte/carimbo

    Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  10. 10

    A gameboy emulator in several different languages. Contribute to shish/rosettaboy development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2021 · github.com · its alternatives →

  11. 11

    3D C++ Game Engine - yet another open source game engine - nem0/LumixEngine

    2017 · github.com · its alternatives →

  12. 12

    laboratório de integração Lua com libuv para execução de scripts assíncronos e experimentação de POCs - joaoneto/lua-libuv

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

  13. 13

    Lua Text Adventure Engine. Contribute to shawndumas/adventure.lua development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2012 · github.com · its alternatives →

  14. 14

    I’ve been working on this for about a year through four major rewrites. Godogen is a pipeline that takes a text prompt, designs the architecture, generates 2D/3D assets, writes the GDScript, and tests it visually. The output is a complete, playable Godot 4 project. Getting LLMs to reliably generate functional games required solving three specific engineering bottlenecks: 1. The Training Data Scarcity: LLMs barely know GDScript. It has ~850 classes and a Python-like syntax that will happily let a model hallucinate Python idioms that fail to compile. To fix this, I built a custom…

    Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →

  15. 15

    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 →

  16. 16

    LuaJIT 2.0 and 2.1 bytecode generator, assembler, parser, viewer and test VM. Lua 5.1 parser, IDE and debugger. - rochus-keller/LjTools

    2019 · github.com · its alternatives →

  17. 17MI
  18. 18

    Lua in Python. Contribute to scoder/lupa development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2015 · github.com · its alternatives →

  19. 19AR

    My background project for the last two years has been re-implementing my 2004 C++ shoot'em up game in TypeScript + WebGL, and it's finally done (just in time for the 20th anniversary!) Play the game online: https://nicollet.net/blog/darklaga/darklaga.html Technical article about the remake: https://nicollet.net/blog/darklaga/remake.html I have tested Firefox, Chrome and Edge on desktop and mobile (no access to a device capable of running Safari). It's amazing how much difference 20 years makes: the hardware is so much more powerful, the web…

    2024 · nicollet.net · its alternatives →

  20. 20

    Not sure if I would post this for the last day of #marchintosh OR wait for tomorrow the 1st of April. Both apply equally. Anyway, here's a pet project of mine, I made it as a glued on for another pet project of mine, but it developed a life of it's own now and can soar skyward toward success, fame, and glory.

    2024 · github.com · its alternatives →

  21. 21

    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 →

  22. 22

    LuaJIT FFI binding for libuv. Contribute to pguillory/luajit-libuv development by creating an account on GitHub.

    2014 · github.com · its alternatives →

  23. 23LP

    LuaCAD models solids in Lua rather than the OpenSCAD language, with operator overloading for CSG (`a + b`, `a - b`, `a * b`). It ships with a CLI and a desktop app, including a preview area and a text editor. I've always been a big fan of OpenSCAD, but the SCAD language itself is unfortunately quite cobbled-together and is a very poorly designed programming language. LuaCAD takes all the good parts of OpenSCAD and combines them with one of the best scripting languages. It has now completely replaced OpenSCAD for me, and I think it provides a better experience than OpenSCAD for all use cases.…

    Aug 2026 · luacad.ad-si.com · its alternatives →

  24. 24

    I'm excited to announce the first release of my library, evolved.lua! evolved.lua is a fast and flexible ECS (Entity-Component-System) library for Lua. It is designed to be simple and easy to use, while providing all the features needed to create complex systems with blazing performance. Enjoy!

    2025 · github.com · its alternatives →

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