GameBoy emulator

PicoCalc
1

Hi :waving_hand:,

I’ve ported my first Game Boy emulator to the PicoCalc, currently running on a Raspberry Pi Pico W. The emulator is based on a fork of the PocketPico project. It’s functional, but not yet optimized.

Here’s what currently works:

  • Audio
  • Screen
  • Keyboard

What still needs to be optimized:

  • Display

I suspect there’s an issue with either the display refresh rate, as the performance isn’t very smooth. So I’m reaching out to fellow developers for help with this.

There’s a function called lcd_draw_line_bis that allows scaling the display, but it slows things down even more. There’s still a lot of work to do to optimize and clean up the code…

The project is available here: GitHub - TheKiwil/PocketPico: Game Boy emulation on the Raspberry Pi RP2350 for PicoCalc

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Scale version:

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Will

10 Likes
2

Update : Now it’s works well on “full” screen

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17 Likes
3

This looks great! Excited to try it whenever mine arrives. there are lots of fun homebrew gameboy games / apps.

4

I can’t wait to try this!

5

This is nice. Did you observe improvements in using DMA/PIO for talking to the LCD?

6

The implementation of PicoCalc is largely inspired by the one proposed by ClockworkPi for the NES emulator (PicoCalc/Code/NES at master · clockworkpi/PicoCalc · GitHub). So I can’t really say whether it adds any real value.