Writing A New Game For The Game Boy Color

If you’re bored with the Game Boy Color’s offerings, it’s understandable: it’s been around for nearly 20 years, and doesn’t get a lot of new releases these days. [Antonio Niño Díaz] spent over a year coding a game for the GBC: µCity, a Sims City style game. He designed the graphics and even wrote his own music.

[Antonio] did all the programming in Assembly Language, creating modules for managing traffic and the power grid, building creation and destruction, as well as disaster simulations. He has extensive notes in his GitHub page detailing each module and describing how it all works together. He’s given it a GPLv3+ license, so hack away.

The ROM works on emulators, but [Antonio] has verified it works on the original hardware; it just reduces the number of saved cities to accommodate the handheld’s lesser stats.

Hackaday loves our GBC: we’ve written up DIY coprocessors for the GBC, adding an audio amp, and even making a solar-powered Game Boy.

12 thoughts on “Writing A New Game For The Game Boy Color

  1. Wow. That’s pretty. Would have fit right in during the commercial GBC releases in their heydey.

    GBC does get easily forgotten though, as it filled an awkward spot between “classic” GB (and tied to that screen size / capabilities), and the GBA with much enhanced everything.

      1. The original SimCity was published by Maxis in 1989, and “On January 10, 2008, the SimCity source code was released under the free software GPL 3 license.”

        I don’t think even EA would go after Antonio for his work here.

  2. I like.
    just downloading your files now.
    looking forward to trying it.
    Great job.
    I Will also give a copy to my boys.
    Thank you so very much for your work It looks like you done a great job..

  3. I have a working GBC. I’ll build a bank-switched ROM cartridge just for this.
    BTW, I made a Geometry Dash clone for the GB some years ago. I spent most of the time making a chiptune cover of the Stereo Madness song…

  4. I still have and regularly play my GBC, I have (multiple) Gameboy advance, but still find myself drawn to the color. I’ve recently bought a BennVenn El Cheapo Cartridge because of the rising cost of “vintage” GBC games. I’ve loved playing new homebrews and have been looking to make my own. This is awesome and I cant wait to try it out.

  5. Hello! I’m the author of the game.

    First, thanks for your comments! I did think about making physical cartridges but, even though I’m quite happy about the technical parts of the game, the graphics and music are not as good as I’d like. If that changed, I would probably consider making a few cartridges to sell.

    If you have any questions about the game, feel free to ask!

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