Gameboy

Gameboy 97

This is the home page for Paul Robson's new Gameboy Emulator for MSDOS.

Last updated on 1^st July, Current Build is 2.937

For up to date emulator news bookmark EMUNEWS at http://users.aol.com/emunews

Gameboy 97 is a Nintendo Gameboy Emulator for MS-DOS, written in Borland's Turbo Assembler, running under WDOSX (the freeware DOS extender). It provides high speed emulation of the Gameboy with an accuracy level comparable to Marat Fayzullin ,Marcel DeKogel and Hans DeGoede's VGB-DOS.

It will happily provide full speed emulation on a 486DX2-66 (it was mostly written on one). I have had games running happily with the Turbo button off at about 80-90% of full speed. If you want a real challenge, turn the synchronisation off and run it on a Pentium !

Greetings

Gameboy 97 now has a 180 x 144 Video Mode ! (which isn't guaranteed to work on all monitors). Also, I've got a reply to my email to the author of WDOSX about timing, so the juddering on the screen display when scrolling (which is caused by GB97 being too fast which is why it doesn't show on my DX2/66 !) is now fixable.

I have been rather busy of late, so work on Gameboy 97 has slowed somewhat. However, it is not frozen :)

The Joypad problem has been fixed temporarily by using the BIOS Read Joystick call. It has now been modified to run faster as the joypad access was slowing down some games too much.

There are now fixes built in the emulator for games which are known not to work properly (these are shown on the Cartridges ? page) - these marked game do not require the use of CONFIG to work, as they do the fix automatically. It is recommended that the built in fixes are used rather than CONFIG files where possible, because the number of fixes will go up and down over time.

Cartridges - I am going to maintain on this page a list of cartridges and fixes (if applicable). If you have a cartridge which doesn't work, let me know (don't send it to me) and describe the problem. Cartridges I know don't work are listed further on, so if you have a game that won't go, look there.

What's new recently

180 x 144 Screen Mode added
New opcode timings courtesy of the amazing Jeff Frohwein !
Fix for 'WWF King of the Ring'
Fixes for Jeopardy, Hook, Super Hunchback, Robocop 2 (reported by H.K. Yan)
Fixes for Obelix and Yogi Bear (reported by Volker Oth)
Long file name doesn't corrupt status line any more (reported by Lasse Reinikainen)
Mouse code can be disabled if problems occur (reported by Joshua Jones)
Cool New background provided by RTOONist
Snapshot saves & loads can now be cancelled (suggested by Joe Suarez)
Fixed R-Type 2 Scrolling Bug (reported by Volker Oth)
Speeded up Joystick Handling
Fixed Alleyway bug.
In built fix for Addams Family 1 (reported by Volker Oth)
In built fix for Megaman 5 (reported by Zophar)
Hudson Hawk autofix now works properly (reported by Volker Oth)
Early VBI Switch added
Display Font replaced.
Added the built-in fixes for several games.
Joystick uses BIOS rather than reading the hardware.

Download gameboy.zip (Build 2.937 size 69k bytes)

This file contains the Gameboy executable, a configuration program, a program to translate VGB Colour Schemes to the Gameboy 97 format, a default bitmap (if you want it), an Icon for Windows, a FAQ and a more detailed text file explaining about Gameboy '97. No other files are required. (You will need a copy of PKUNZIP.EXE to decompress this file.)

Carts with problems

Here are the cartridges known not to work with the default settings. I am sure this is not an exhaustive list so let me know. I can't guarantee fixes but I'll do my best and so far I have a pretty good success rate with getting things to run.

If you have managed to get a cartridge working that doesn't work on the default settings and isn't listed here, can you let me know what you did. If a cartridge doesn't work, let me know so I can try to fix it.

Several cartridges have built in fixes to make them work correctly. You can tell these because the word 'FIX' appears in yellow when they start. These fixes should reduce in number as time goes on.

Anyway , here are the cartridges with known problems.

Cartridge	Status	Problem
Astro Rabby	Verified	Game continually resets
Cyber Formula	Reported	Crashes
Darkwing Duck	Looks promising to fix	Works fine to select map but won't go.
Final Fantasy Adventure	Confusing but worth the effort.	Missing Menus - game works ok but the equipment menus are invisible. Completely mystifying.
George Foreman Boxing	Verified	Corrupt text on screen
Kid Niki	Extremely unlikely that this will be fixed - if it is it'll be a side effect of other fixes….	Goes totally mad. What happens is the character and tile memory is filled via interrupts which require precise timing. Shoot the coder !
Momotaro Thunderbolt 2	Verified	Crashes at after curtain opens.
Snow Bros Jr	Know a lot about this cart but can't figure out why they won't turn round.	Baddies walk off the screen. (after they seem to turn round they don't !). The game sync seems to be out. Yet more way out coding.

Suggestions for improvements - new ideas - bug reports - email them to me. If for some reason you don't want to be credited with a suggestion or a bug report , please say so, as 'Credit where it's due' is the policy of this page !

autismuk@aol.com (Paul Robson)