New Game Boy emulator "WideGB" allows you to play games in widescreen
Continuing on the trend of emulators improving how you experience classic games, like last week's "HD" Mode 7, we now have a new emulator that allows you to play old Game Boy games like never before. Developer Kemenaran has taken the base of SameBoy, an existing GB emulator, and modified it to run games in a "widescreen" format called WideGB. This takes the normally boxy aspect ratio of the Game Boy, and extends what the screen is capable of showing, letting you see much more than usual without stretching the image. Titles like Super Mario Land, Pokemon Red and Gold, and The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening have all been tested on WideGB, with all of the games displaying correctly in widescreen. Currently, it's only usuable on MacOS, but a Windows version is coming soon. Additionally, the source code for WideGB is publicly available, meaning that it's technically possible to add this widescreen drawing capability to other emulators with retro games that only display in 4:3. A download link is available at the source below.
WideGB is very similar to WideNES. It basically records the screen as it moves, and keeps the parts of the screen previously drawn in place.
When starting a game for the first time, or when reaching a new area of the game, WideGB doesn’t know yet about any parts of the screen. But as soon as you move, it starts recording the area graphics, and you can see the places you’ve been to appearing gradually.
When the player moves to a new location (such as entering inside a house), WideGB detects that the picture changed suddenly: it saves the previous scene, and starts a new one. It even looks for previously encountered locations, so that if a scene was already visited, it can be restored automatically.
Additionally, WideGB attempts to draw the HUD of the game (with timers, lifes count, etc.) with a translucency effect, so that the part of the game under the HUD are still visible.
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