Game Boy Emulation

Abstract

This thesis studies the subject of system emulation through the development of a set of software microcontrollers and the assembling of them into a complex system. The specific system aimed to be emulated is the original Game Boy released in 1989. This requires the developers to reproduce specific hardware behaviour through software and therefore requires certain knowledge of the system which is to be emulated. While the Game Boy is a proprietary product owned by Nintendo, the produced system uses no copyrighted material. Through the use of documentation provided by the reverse engineering of the original hardware done by members of the community, this thesis shows that an emulator can be created by combining a set of software microcontrollers. Moreover, it is concluded that while the academic interest in the emulation of simple systems might be limited, it could also could be used to generate interest in low-level programming.