Work · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Running Game Boy ROMs on the STM32 ARM Cortex Microcontroller
Got Tetris running on a 26€ STM32F429 Discovery board emulating the Game Boy CPU and graphics on the ARM Cortex M4. Really fun project to hack together, need to try the original Game Boy Pokemon (red/blue) games next.
This project enables Game Boy ROM emulation on an affordable STM32F429 Discovery microcontroller board. The creator successfully implemented a Game Boy CPU and graphics emulator on the ARM Cortex M4 processor… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes. Running Game Boy ROMs on the STM32 ARM Cortex Microcontroller launched in 2024; newer entries below may have overtaken it.
- 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 →
- 2TB
OFRAK Tetris is a project I started at work about two weeks ago. It's a web-based game that works on desktop and mobile. I made it for my company to bring to events like DEF CON, and to promote our binary analysis and patching framework called OFRAK. In the game, 32-bit, little-endian ARM assembly instructions fall, and you can modify the operands before executing them on a CPU emulator. There are two segments mapped – one for instructions, and one for data (though both have read, write, and execute permissions). Your score is a four byte signed integer stored at the virtual address pointed…
2023 · ofrak.com · its alternatives →
- 3
Pokémon Emerald ported to the RP2350 microcontroller. No emulator, 60 fps HDMI output. Recompiled from ARMv4T to Cortex-M33 and the Game Boy Advance's video hardware is reimplemented in software on the second core.
Aug 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4
:tv: An (almost) fully featured Game Boy emulator. - Dooskington/GameLad
2016 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5
Arduboy▲156A mini open-source game system you can program yourself 👾
2016 · arduboy.com · its alternatives →
- 6
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 →
- 7
Adventures in hardware hacking, low-level software, FPGAs, and more!
2019 · craigjb.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Contribute to sacert/Gameboy development by creating an account on GitHub.
2017 · 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
I am proud to present my solo hobby project NAND. This year-long undertaking follows the completed Nand to Tetris course, but ported to the web with its own runtime, user interface, and IDE. Using the "Load example program" selector, you can try out some programs I wrote on NAND's emulated hardware such as 2048, a genetic algorithm, and a manual stack overflow to corrupt the screen. Check out NAND at https://nand.arhan.sh Additionally, I've authored an extensive writeup about the project. Read about it on the GitHub repository's readme.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
Hi everyone, I'm kinda involved in some retrogaming and with some experiments I ran into the following question: "It would be possible to run transformer models bypassing the cpu/ram, connecting the gpu to the nvme?" This is the result of that question itself and some weekend vibecoding (it has the linked library repository in the readme as well), it seems to work, even on consumer gpus, it should work better on professional ones tho
Feb 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 12EZ
I've been playing around with ESP32 MCUs and displays for a while and finally got around to getting a ZX Spectrum emulator working. I then saw that you can now do full color silk screen printing on PCBs and got the thinking - the ESP32 has capacitive touch capabilities - I could make a full ZX Spectrum keyboard on a PCB along with all the electronics for running the emulator. And it actually works! There's a full video here: https://youtu.be/foP81O48WAI And you can sign up here for updates as I move towards getting it ready for a production run:…
2024 · its alternatives →
- 13
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 →
- 14
ESP32 RC Cars▲335This is a projected I started that blends both the fun of playing a split screen multiplayer driving game and controlling real rc cars. The cars can also be controlled via bluetooth gamepads and is meant to be easily hackable.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
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 →
- 16
- 17
Yet another 6502 emulator that one day dreams of being an Atari 2600. - haldean/x6502
2013 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 18
Palmer Luckey's new startup, a modern Game Boy console
2024 · modretro.com · its alternatives →
- 19
80x23 terminal tetris! Contribute to taylorconor/tinytetris development by creating an account on GitHub.
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 20
Brick Game emulator (4-bit Holtek chip), runs in a terminal - ilyakurdyukov/brickgame-4bit
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 21IA
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!
2023 · nicolas-siplis.com · its alternatives →
- 22
I recently dug my Nintendo GameCube out of storage to revisit the first Animal Crossing game. Things were mostly as I remembered, but the game's heavy reliance on a clunky on-screen keyboard quickly wore my patience thin. Unwilling to accept this subpar experience, I did what any rational person would do and ordered a rare, Japan-exclusive, keyboard/controller hybrid on eBay, then used a Raspberry Pi Pico to 1. listen for keypresses and 2. send simulated controller events to the GameCube, automating typing in Animal Crossing at a Tool-Assisted Speedrun level. Of course, this oddball…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23
Tetris brick game is an free, super lightweight puzzle game
2023 · play.google.com · its alternatives →
- 24
📡 Stream Raspberry Pi games to a GBA via Link Cable. - afska/gba-remote-play
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- Game Bub – open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld alternatives
- Tetris, but the blocks are ARM instructions that execute in the browser alternatives
- Pokémon Emerald Ported to Raspberry Pi Pico 2 alternatives
- A Game Boy emulator in C++ alternatives
- Arduboy alternatives
- I built a handheld CHIP-8 game console to teach myself embedded systems alternatives
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 →