Dart Boy

• Dart based GameBoy (and GameBoy Color) emulator that runs on desktop, mobile and web using the Flutter framework.

• Project was developed using Flutter 1.5.5 and Dart 2.3.0 and tested on Windows and Android).

• Supports MBC1, MBC3, MBC5 and basic cartridges, has basic support for GameBoy Color games. Does not support Super GameBoy specific features.

• Full support for the Sharp LR35902 CPU instruction set.

• The emulator was built as a learning project and as a challenge, there are still a lot that can be done to improve.

  • Store battery backed game memory in .sav file.
  • MBC2 support
  • Audio Support
  • Fix register signed data results.

Run the Emulator

• Get the Dart SDK and Flutter SDK from the internet.
• Load the project using Android Studio or Visual Studio Code with the flutter plugin installed, the project can run directly on mobile or desktop without changes.
  • For the web version you will need to change the GUI imports for the web specific imports.
• The game can be controlled using the keyboard on desktop (← ↑ ↓ → Z X Enter C), on mobile use the onscreen buttons.

flutter run --no-sound-null-safety

Web

• To enable the web version of flutter, you need to install the flutter web tools first by running the following code on your terminal.
• You need to ensure that flutter\.pub-cache\bin is available from the environment path.

flutter pub global activate webdev
flutter pub upgrade

• After installing the development tools some changes are required in the package.yaml file, to allow the web version to run. (Check the migration guide)
• To run the web version locally (by default on localhost:8080) use the following command.

flutter pub global run webdev serve

Desktop

• In Windows install visual studio with C++ support and make sure that the command msbuild works properly and that vcvars64.bat is in the path. (If visual studio is installed but msbuild is not found, add it to your path).
• Flutter desktop support is still experimental and not enabled by default, its only available on the master channel.

flutter channel master
flutter precache --windows
flutter upgrade

• Set the ENABLE_FLUTTER_DESKTOP environment variable true, to enable desktop support.

set ENABLE_FLUTTER_DESKTOP=true
flutter devices

Resources

• GameBoy CPU Manual
• Everything You Always Wanted To Know About GAMEBOY
• GameBoy CPU (LR35902)
• Flutter desktop quick start guide
• Flutter desktop embedding example
• Flutter desktop plugins (file chooser)
• Game boy test roms
• The Ultimate Game Boy Talk (33c3)

License

• This project is distributed under MIT license and can be used for commercial applications.
• License is available on the Github page of the project.