Game Bub is an open-source FPGA retro emulation handheld, with support for Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games.

Check out the announcement blog post for an in-depth look at the development process!

Features

• Play physical Game Boy / Color / Advance cartridges
• Load and play ROM files from a microSD card (with built-in support for rumble, clock, accelerometer, gyroscope)
• Multiplayer link cable functionality
• Custom, from-scratch Game Boy and Game Boy Advance FPGA cores with great game compatibility
• 15+ hour battery life
• Video output to TV or monitor via custom dock
• Extensible hardware, designed for future improvements

Building

Building a Game Bub handheld requires manufacturing PCBs, 3D printing the shell and buttons, and assembling components from a variety of sources. For information on manufacturing and assembling your own, see docs/building.md.

Are you instead interested in purchasing a complete Game Bub kit? There are no immediate plans to offer kits, but if you're interested, fill out this form.

For other inquiries, contact me directly at [email protected].

Architecture

For an in-depth description of the project architecture, see docs/architecture.md.

The Game Bub handheld consists of a Xilinx XC7A100T FPGA to do the main emulation and I/O, and an ESP32-S3 microcontroller to do auxiliary tasks (configuring the FPGA, rendering the UI, loading ROM files from a microSD card and sending it to the FPGA).

Directory Structure

• pcb: PCB design files for Handheld, Dock, and others
• 3d: STLs for 3D printed shell and buttons
• fpga: FPGA source code (HDL), written in Chisel
• firmware/handheld: Microcontroller firmware

License

Unless otherwise specified:

• FPGA source code (in fpga/) and firmware (in firmware/) is licensed under GPLv3 (GPL-3.0-only).
• 3D STL files (in 3d/) is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution / Share-Alike 4.0 (CC-BY-SA-4.0)
• PCB schematic and layout files (in pcb/) are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution / Share-Alike 4.0 (CC-BY-SA-4.0)

At a high level, this means that you can copy, share, and modify the source code, as long as you provide proper attribution and share your source code / design files with the same license. However, this does not mean that you can use the "Game Bub" name and logo for your product without permission.