GBC Emulators
A Game Boy Color emulator is a program that recreates the hardware of the Game Boy Color, letting you play Game Boy Color games on computers, smartphones and other devices. Accurate emulators run game ROMs just as they would on the original handheld.
Most GBC emulators also add features the original console lacked, such as save states to save and load at any point, graphics and sound filters, and cheat support. Many also offer customisable controls and screen layouts to suit modern hardware.
Which one to pick
Known forVery high accuracy: it passes all of the blargg and mooneye-gb tests. It has its own open source boot ROMs and a built-in debugger.
Known forA GBA emulator that also plays Game Boy and Game Boy Color games, with link cable support, a debugger, cheats, shaders and rewind.
Known forAccurate emulation and a powerful built-in debugger popular with homebrew developers. It can link two copies over a network.
Known forA multi-system emulator whose accuracy is tested against the gbdev test ROMs, with a debugger, profiler and other tools for homebrew developers and ROM hackers.
Known forThe maintained continuation of Visual Boy Advance. Quick and easy to set up, with save states, cheats, shaders and link cable emulation.
Known forHighly accurate CPU emulation that passes Blargg's CPU and timing tests. Its Game Boy compatibility is very good, its Game Boy Color emulation less so.
Known forCustom graphics: it can dump, edit and reload sprites and backgrounds as a game runs. It has also emulated many obscure accessories for the first time.
Known forAn accurate, portable core with very high game compatibility. It lives on as a RetroArch core and in OpenEmu.
In short
SameBoy is known for very high accuracy and has builds for Windows and macOS. mGBA plays Game Boy and Game Boy Color games as well as GBA games, on desktop systems and homebrew consoles. BGB and Emulicious have strong debuggers for homebrew developers; Emulicious runs anywhere Java does, and BGB runs on Windows or under Wine. Visual Boy Advance (VBA-M) is a quick, easy option that covers all three Game Boy handhelds, and GearBoy has builds for Windows, macOS and Linux. GBE+ lets you edit a game’s graphics as it runs. The standalone Gambatte is no longer developed and is kept here as an archive; its core lives on in RetroArch.
