Developer creates Gameboy emulator for Apple Watch

A developer got a Gameboy emulator working on a second-generation Apple Watch. Due to the many buttons of the old Nintendo handheld and the fact that the Apple Watch does not support OpenGL or Metal, that turned out to be quite difficult.

The Canadian developer names the emulator Giovanni after the villain from Pokémon Yellow for the Gameboy and has published a post about the development of the software. The main hurdle to overcome was getting the graphics to work without OpenGL and Metal. Like a previous developer who ran Doom on the Apple Watch, the Canadian used CoreGraphics to get the right images on the screen. That is a lot of work and he therefore hopes that Apple will support OpenGL or Metal in watchOS 4.

As the basis for the emulator, he used Gambatte, an existing Nintendo emulator for iOS. Navigating through menus is done through the digital crown on the right side of the Apple Watch. The control of the d-pad is on the left side of the screen, the A button also uses the touchscreen but then the right side. Start, Select and B are on the screen.

If you want to install the emulator right away and start playing, you will be disappointed. Apple would never allow this software, so you’ll have to sideload it. In addition, the frame rates are still disappointing on the latest Apple Watch and the developer has not tried it on the first-generation Apple Watch. And oh yes, the watch may be a bit small for long gaming periods of course. For those who don’t mind or are just curious, you can view the source code on GitHub and view the gameplay in a gif.