Shonumi

Here's an article from coremaze about dumping the firmware from the ME2 handheld. It's a fairly obscure gaming device from 2008 with some interesting internet connectivity.

The author does an amazing job walking through the whole reverse-engineering process. So cool seeing stuff like this preserved!

https://github.com/coremaze/ME2-Writeup/blob/master/README.md

@jellycrystals @endrift Yes, they were in fact. The Jaguar JN-100 (featured in Endrift's picture) has 6 different colors: light blue, light green, pink, purple, orange, and clear. These were released in Japan and Europe. The US version (Singer IZEK-1500) was an exact copy of the JN-100 but unfortunately only sold in a darker blue. A 3rd upgraded model called the Jaguar JN-2000 came out later. It had a red color scheme and was exclusive to Japan as well.

@endrift No, I'm good. Thanks for asking though! If I did buy that, it'd be my 4th Game Boy sewing machine. I don't think I have the space for anymore lol

There's a lot going on today.

A new Mario movie comes out in theaters...

The US is finally launching another mission to the moon...

Everyone is pulling horrible pranks on each other...

But ain't none of that stuff important because GBE+ just hit 1.10!

https://github.com/shonumi/gbe-plus/releases/tag/1.10

#emulation #emudev #gameboy

So GBE+ 1.10 releases in about 48 hours, give or take. Been trying to audit all the peripherals and add-ons it emulates before then. Make sure everything actually works.

Like, taking a step back, it's actually kinda insane all the stuff GBE+ emulates now. Toy robots, sonar devices, sewing machines, *multiple* audio/video playing cartridges, a camera phone...

And to think it all started when I added support for the GB Printer. Folks, this is what addiction looks like for an emudev.

@bbbbbr@mastodon.gamedev.place It was probably just licensing. Some videos aren't protected (e.g. the Detective Conan ones). Some media companies probably didn't want to risk potential piracy with video capture on a TV, even at 240x160. I haven't dug too deeply into the binary formats of the video files themselves, but I suspect there's a single byte or bit somewhere that flags the GB Player protection for the adapter's firmware. Change that, and you'd be good to run it on a GB Player just fine.

Another fun fact is that the Advance Movie Adapter automatically reads files from a FAT-12 (and supposedly FAT-16) filesystem. While files can become fragmented, the adapter automatically handles all of this, so the GBA can just read a continuous block of memory from the device. Last week I finally implemented a proper way of reading FAT entries from SmartMedia disc images in GBE+, so file fragmentation is no longer an issue for emulation.

The Advance Movie Adapter is a special GBA cartridge that allowed users to play videos from SmartMedia cards. It's kind of like the GBA Video Cartridges by Majesco, except it arguably has better compression and quality.

Been messing around with improving emulation for it in GBE+ recently. Fun fact, some of the videos are protected from playing on the GB Player for the GameCube (mostly Pokemon videos as far as I know). They have this custom error screen if it detects the GB Player.

Not exactly a fan of RGB, but I'm not complaining with the state of PC hardware as it is.

Pulled the trigger on this. Bad time to buy during the RAMpocalypse (even for DDR4), but 32GB under $100 USD was too tempting. Thank goodness I had a bunch of gift cards sitting around.

Didn't want to risk my old pair of 8GB sticks going bad with current prices increasing. Hopefully it'll give my 2019 rig some more life until all this AI madness passes.

I don't have any workloads that break 16GB (even gaming), but I figured why not double my current capacity.

Heh, I totally misspelled "Bayer Didget" as "Bayer Digit" all over the codebase in GBE+ 😂 I'll fix it tomorrow lmao

Starting off 2026 hot by emulating more exotic DS hardware.

This time it's the Bayer Didget Glucose Meter, essentially a copy+paste job of the earlier Glucoboy on the GBA.

Didn't take much to get it up and running in GBE+. You can now generate in-game points that normally would require a small blood sacrifice (via the glucose meter).

#emulation #emudev #nintendods

Forgot to post this earlier, but I've got another article up. This time it's the end of year discussion on the State of Emulation, specially how far along we are to emulating every piece of hardware for the Nintendo DS.

A solid 50% of the peripherals listed are supported already in existing emulators. We also have a solid foundation for emulating the remaining items. 2026 will surely bring us closer to preserving everything the DS had to offer.

https://shonumi.github.io/articles/art40.html

#emulation #emudev

@sethmlarson Glad to hear that. Hope you enjoy the other articles!

With the GBKISS LINK, you can finally emulate every single piece of hardware for the Game Boy platform (DMG, GBC, GBA)! This applies to officially licensed hardware only, but still it's a milestone that I've been working towards for 8 years now. Basically everything thing the Game Boy ever offered is playable in some form today.

New article about the GBKISS LINK is live:

https://shonumi.github.io/articles/art38.html

This one examines an infrared modem released by Hudson in 1998. This enabled GB-to-PC connections and opened up the internet to the Game Boy.

Here, I detail the process of emulating its infrared capabilities and resurrecting the ancient DLC recovered from Hudson's old website.

#emulation #emudev #gameboy

@endrift Can't wait to see the scripting engine when it's fully up and running! I was just thinking about it the other day. It'd be an easy way to support the Joy Carry Cartridge in mGBA. I'd love to see that working with Dolphin's GBA-GCN Cable emulation someday soon.

@simonbp Pretty sure at least one exotic video game out there needs a blood sacrifice to work. My advice is to hold onto that blood for now.

@tabor62gb Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it!

@foone That would be a neat idea! For GBE+, the Glucoboy's reward points are controlled via .ini files. Wouldn't be too hard to make a small intermediary app or script that reads data via Bluetooth, then updates the .ini

New year, new Edge of Emulation article! This one is about the Glucoboy, a GBA cartridge that doubles as a blood glucose meter.

https://shonumi.github.io/articles/art33.html

For years, this cartridge was one the rarest pieces of Game Boy hardware out there. It was only last year that the Video Game History Foundation managed to dump the ROM.

Now you can emulate the Glucoboy without any actual blood!

#emulation #emudev #GBA