The original GameBoy has quite a few years on its back, having turned 30 years old just yesterday, however it's by no means forgotten by gamers and amateur programmers alike. We've seen all kinds of interesting releases published after the console's end of life, ranging all the way from homebrew games to music production programs, yet a very peculiar piece of software has managed to take the community behind Nintendo's elderly handheld by storm: we're talking about GB Studio!

GB Studio is an open source retro adventure game creation software which lets you make your own homebrew games for the Game Boy with ease. It combines a premade engine with a visual game builder that requires no previous programming experience, which means anyone can get started and make their own games with little effort! Once done, said games can be exported either as standalone ROMs or web apps (thanks to a web-based emulator) with the click of a button.

Here are its key features, as highlighted by its official website:

• Visual game builder with no programming knowledge required.
• Design your graphics in any editor that can output PNG files e.g. Photoshop, Tiled, Aseprite.
• Example project included to get started right away.
• Make top down 2D JRPG style adventure games.
• Build real GB Rom files which can be played in an emulator or on device using USB Carts.
• Build a HTML5 playable game that also works on mobile and can deployed to any webserver or uploaded to Itch.io.
• Built for macOS, Windows and Linux.
• Supports both macOS light and dark mode.
• Includes the full tools that were used to build Untitled GB Game, free to play on Itch.io.

The application is cross-platform and offers prebuilt binaries for both Windows (32 and 64 bits, including a Squirrel package), macOS and Linux (DEB and RPM packages) and has been developed by Chris Maltby.
You can find a link to its website as well as its GitHub repo in the sources below.

Source
GitHub repo

 

[CrazyMaxx]

Thats so cool! Now I can make with this my Girlfriend (Gameboy Girl) his own Game for next Month Birthday

 

[osaka35]

Oh neat, sounds like I could flash to legit cartridge if I got my ducks in a row. That'd be a fun way to propose or do something terribly romantic.

 

[pLaYeR^^]

Wow nice! I am gonna give it a try

 

[Rabbid4240]

Can it be Game Boy Color games, too?

 

[AdenTheThird]

Interesting. Sounds like a great intro for kids who want to become programmers or designers.

 

[x65943]

Wow, completely out of left field

I wonder if we'll see any full fledged games come out of this

Undertale was made in gamemaker after all

 

[gnmmarechal]

Huh, I didn't see this coming. Pretty damn cool, though!

 

[MaxiBash]

It's very limited and broken in some cases, but I guess... Take your time, sit back and design what comes to mind!

 

[DuoForce]

The future is truly here, this is one of the greatest homebrew applications ever released PERIOD! Amazing to think that we have gotten this far

 

[qaz015393]

This is so awesome! Can someone or a team please create a Akira game. I know that there was footage of the unreleased game that was never finished. I believe that with this we can finally have a working Gameboy game. I know that the SNES one was text heavy. We need a good Akira game and hope we can get one now with this app.

 

[RattletraPM]

Wow, completely out of left field

I wonder if we'll see any full fledged games come out of this

Undertale was made in gamemaker after all

It's definitely a "little bit" more limited than Game Maker (and there's only so much you can ask from a Game Boy afterall) but hey, there's been very enjoyable and creative stuff made with much, much more rudimentary tools!
One thing's for sure, seeing what the community will be able to make with this is going do be very interesting

Spoiler

PLOT TWIST: Deltarune Episode II is going to be made using GB Studio

 

[arceus]

View attachment 164549​

The original GameBoy has quite a few years on its back, having turned 30 years old just yesterday, however it's by no means forgotten by gamers and amateur programmers alike. We've seen all kinds of interesting releases published after the console's end of life, ranging all the way from homebrew games to music production programs, yet a very peculiar piece of software has managed to take the community behind Nintendo's elderly handheld by storm: we're talking about GB Studio!

GB Studio is an open source retro adventure game creation software which lets you make your own homebrew games for the Game Boy with ease. It combines a premade engine with a visual game builder that requires no previous programming experience, which means anyone can get started and make their own games with little effort! Once done, said games can be exported either as standalone ROMs or web apps (thanks to a web-based emulator) with the click of a button.

Here are its key features, as highlighted by its official website:


The application is cross-platform and offers prebuilt binaries for both Windows (32 and 64 bits, including a Squirrel package), macOS and Linux (DEB and RPM packages) and has been developed by Chris Maltby.
You can find a link to its website as well as its GitHub repo in the sources below.

Source
GitHub repo

any way to import music?

 

[Clydefrosch]

so its a small scale rpg maker?

 

[chrisrlink]

neat better grab it before nintendo c&D's it (greedy bastards)

 

[x65943]

neat better grab it before nintendo c&D's it (greedy bastards)

I don't think they can

Don't appear to be any official assets used

 

[Eddypikachu]

Wow this is really cool!

 

[Deleted User]

Apparently it doesn't support the serial port or GBC.

 

[Jayro]

Very cool! I'm excited, and hope they add side-scrolling game support eventually. I'd love to make something like Super Mario Land 1.

 

[WAUthethird]

Apparently it doesn't support the serial port or GBC.

Due to the open source nature of the project, I'd bet money that GBC support will be added in the near future.