CrankBoy is a Game Boy emulator for Playdate based on based on the Peanut-GB emulator by deltabeard. It was recently released as a stable v1.0, and has since received a couple of updates. Its current features and limitations are as follows:

Features

• Stable, full-speed Game Boy emulation (on both Rev A and Rev B devices)
• You can download cover art for your library from within CrankBoy.
• Cartridge data saves automatically.
• 44.1 kHz audio
• Multiple save state slots per game.
• Settings to fine-tune performance, visual appearance, and crank controls
• Support for softpatching .bps, .ips & .ups patch files. Instead of making a bunch of copies of a ROM for all the different ROM hacks you'd like to apply to it, you can use a single clean ROM and several patch files, each of which you can toggle from the settings. Instructions below.
• Conveniently browse and download ROM hacks directly from within CrankBoy.
• ROMs can access Playdate features via IO registers and are also scriptable with Lua or with C -- you can add native crank controls to a game if you have the technical know-how.
• Can be installed in "bundle" mode, containing just a single ROM. This lets you have your ROM(s) visible directly from the Playdate menu, instead of having to open the emulator. You can also release your own Game Boy ROM as a Playdate game this way. See "Bundle Mode," below.

Limitations

• Currently, Game Boy Color games are not supported in general. However, many Game Boy Color games are able to run on the DMG (original Game Boy) -- CrankBoy should be able to play those games fine.
• Some DMG games don't work correctly. Please report any broken games.
• Audio is not accurate to sub-frame precision, so audio clips (like in Pokémon Yellow or The Chessmaster) will be unrecognizable or silent.
• Link Cable is not supported.
• The Playdate's screen cannot fully refresh at a consistent 60 frames per second. CrankBoy has a variety of options to work around this. By default, the display will only update at 30 Hz (though the game will still run at full speed). It's quite hard to notice the difference on the Playdate screen. Games which don't have scrolling backgrounds should be able to run at 60 fps just fine, though you'll need to enable that in the options. 60 fps interlaced is also possible.
• Although CrankBoy will notify you if an update is available, updates are not currently downloaded automatically. CrankBoy checks if one is available at most once per day, and this behaviour can be disabled by revoking network privileges from the Playdate's native settings menu.
• CrankBoy is not 100% stable. It's recommended that you make back-ups of your save files now and then.

On Bluesky, @deeb.bsky.social has shared a video of the emulator in action. You can find more about CrankBoy via its official GitHub repo linked below.

CrankBoy GitHub repo

 

[Jayro]

Of the bajillion devices I own that can play emulated Game Boy, this has got to be one of the most awful. The screen crunch and 2-bit display are just... no. I only do the real things now, or FPGA-based Game Boys.

(Speaking of which, the "Game Bub" looks hella promising!)

 

[Robert Newbie]

Of the bajillion devices I own that can play emulated Game Boy, this has bot to be one of the most awful. The screen crunch and 2-bit display are just... no. I only do the real things now, or FPGA-based Game Boys.

(Speaking of which, the "Game Bub" looks hella promising!)

I just looked up the Game Bub, and it does seem promising. It has a similar pricepoint to the PlayDate. GB to GBA compatibility, MicroSD card slot, and a rechargeable battery are all pluses. Being able to output with a dock (sold separately) is a nice touch.

 

[Jayro]

I just looked up the Game Bub, and it does seem promising. It has a similar pricepoint to the PlayDate. GB to GBA compatibility, MicroSD card slot, and a rechargeable battery are all pluses. Being able to output with a dock (sold separately) is a nice touch.

And the fact that the dev(s) behind it listened to our plea for a horizontal layout speaks volumes.

 

[Sono]

It is if the hardware you're doing it on is limited (on purpose).

It's not limited, it's a microcontroller beast. It's just that the software stack is junk, and they don't give us async APIs, so it is WASTED, not limited.

There are two other GB emulators and they suck. This is the first one that achieved full speed.

I achieved full speed in 2023, so this is the first one to *release*

 

[Robert Newbie]

And the fact that the dev(s) behind it listened to our plea for a horizontal layout speaks volumes.

That's good news. As much as I appreciate the original NES controller and Game Boy designs, we've made progress since then. I'd take the GBA/PSP/Vita shell designs over the brick-shaped Game Boy.

 

[Jayro]

That's good news. As much as I appreciate the original NES controller and Game Boy designs, we've made progress since then. I'd take the GBA/PSP/Vita shell designs over the brick-shaped Game Boy.

Game Bub will be the first FPGA Game Boy offering in a horizontal format, and I'm happy about that. PSP and GBA absolutely dominated in that orientation.

 

[raxadian]

the Playdate is really crippled

So it is worse that a decade old smartphone because it has powerful enough hardware but the OS is crap in a crapbasket?

Uh, yet another reason to not buy it.

lack of a backlit screen

That is... wow, that's really stupid.

I am so glad I bought a second old 2DS instead. On some homebrew and ports I can turn the backlight on and off with the push of a button on the 3DS. On the 3DS port of MS-DOS Titus The Fox, it looks really cool in some levels. Like you can make the sky look like it went from late afternoon to night.

 

[Sono]

So it is worse that a decade old smartphone because it has powerful enough hardware but the OS is crap in a crapbasket?

It is worse than my Galaxy Y, undoubtedly. It *is* powerful for a microcontroller though, but still nowhere near a dedicated application processor found in any smartphone.

But yeah, I've definitely had lots of issues developing for it, and I did see some issues by users as well.

tbh this will already turn you off: it needs to activate itself on the internet after unboxing it
Not sure if you need to log in as well, afaik you do. So yeah, get ready to set up WiFi hotspot, just to be able to play your overpriced nugget.

Oh, and the display itself *can* be backlit (yes, *back*-lit, not frontlit) to some extent (those with 40% transmissivitiy or higher), but it will be always very dim. These displays excel in reflectivity.

 

[NitroShell]

Shinji, crank that Soulja Game Crank Boy!

 

[aoimatsuri]

They should bind the ingame fps to the crank then you'd have to crank to play.

DigitalFoundry would die reviewing it

 

[orangy57]

hipster gimmick handheld with 20 games that all need to shoehorn in a crank somehow. Toy for game jam devs that only want to make games for viral twitter posts. the 700 dollar light phone of game consoles. at least the arduboy was cheap

 

[lordelan]

I achieved full speed in 2023, so this is the first one to *release*

But you kept it private for yourself and didn't wanna release it?
I won't say that achievement is hard to believe but at least it's hard to prove.

 

[Sono]

But you kept it private for yourself and didn't wanna release it?
I won't say that achievement is hard to believe but at least it's hard to prove.

My health declined, so I didn't get to polish it enough for a public betatesting release...

I have sent it to a few Playdate machine owners to test for me, as I don't have one, and they provided me with profiler screenshots and CPU usage pie chart. On lightweight games, it locks to full speed at 71% CPU usage.
(Full speed meaning, the 30FPS image updates get sent in time to the audio playback rate synchronized to real Game Boy speed of ~59.727FPS)

Although I do not claim that it is anywhere near usable, it is just the first.
I also said 2023, even though I've been working for years on the emulator core. It's just when I've got audio working just enough to use it for sync purposes, and other performance improvements. I've got full speed years before that, but it was unusable, and no audio.

 

[a_username_that_is_cool]

oh that's nice, PlayGB worked good for me

 

[Phearoz]

My brother loaned me his Playdate when I took a trip to Thailand. I had a Playdate on the way, and many once I arrived

 

[lightwo]

I'd love to have a Playdate if it wasn't so expensive-- and sure enough, it looks like many replies talk about just that.

Lack of good Game Boy emulation definitely was a significant blow to its appeal for me, but since it still costs the same (which might be priced fairly as is, I just find it to be too much), I'm just occasionally checking what's new for it.

And I wonder if Link Cable support will ever be implemented, that would be quite amusing to see in action

 

[raxadian]

Apparently the playdate is just not worth it, since they made so hard to code for it on purpose.