The 8-bit Game Boy was sold between 1989 and 2003, but its architecture more closely resembles machines from the early 1980s, like the Commodore 64 or the NES. This talk attempts to communicate “everything about the Game Boy” to the listener, including its internals and quirks, as well as the tricks that have been used by games and modern demos, reviving once more the spirit of times when programmers counted clock cycles and hardware limitations were seen as a challenge.

The Nintendo Game Boy was an 8-bit handheld gaming console that competed with the SEGA Game Gear and the Atari Lynx. Compared to its competition, it had very little RAM (8 KB) and no color support (4 shades of gray at 160×144). It was succeeded by the Game Boy Color, which fixed this main shortcoming, but shared the same architecture. During the 14 year life span of the 8 bit Game Boy platform, game programmers kept understanding the hardware better and better, and continued finding new tricks for better graphics effects, such as sprite multiplexing, parallax and palette effects. This talk explains all the hardware details of the Game Boy: The programming model of the 8080/Z80-like LR35902 CPU, the system’s sound, timer and I/O functionality, and programming details as well as common tricks involving the graphics processor (“PPU”), which was specifically designed for LCD output. The listener will get a good understanding of 8 bit programming and creative programming on extremely limited hardware, as well as common tricks that can be generalized to other systems.

Speaker: Michael Steil
EventID: 8029
Event: 33th Chaos Communication Congress [33c3] of the Chaos Computer Club [CCC]
Location: Congress Centrum Hamburg (CCH); Am Dammtor; Marseiller Straße; 20355 Hamburg; Germany
Language: english
Begin: Fri, 12/30/2016 16:00:00 +01:00
License: CC-by

NetSurf is a multi-platform web browser for RISC OS, UNIX-like platforms (including Linux), Mac OS X, and more. Whether you want to check your webmail, read the news or post to discussion forums, NetSurf is your lightweight gateway to the world wide web. Actively developed, NetSurf is continually evolving and improving.

Ported to Pandora by ptitSeb.

https://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=netsurf_ptitseb

Claws Mail is an email client (and news reader), based on GTK+. Ported to Pandora by Canseco.

Changes:

– Compiled with latest Codeblocks PND beta.
– Updated libs. It should fix fancy plugin crashing.

http://repo.openpandora.org/?page=detail&app=claws-mail

Dominant Amber is a simple game by Wickeycolumbus that is based off of the “Dominant Amber” game in the AtGames Sega console. The screen shows a random arrangement of two different colored objects, and you simply select which you think is the ‘dominant’ one. If you get it correct points are awarded. Incorrect responses subtract points. There are two minutes for each game. In the first minute, the dominant color is a bit more obvious.

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/260540-dominant-amber-2600-hackaday-1kb-challenge/

Retroguru along with Nop90 are very proud to release the possibly first Nintendo 3DS homebrew release of 2017! Xump now works flawless on Nintendo’s latest handheld and gives you headache in 48 levels (plus 32 hidden ones if you can find ‘em).

Your main task is to clean all dissolving tiles on several single-screen levels by simply stepping on them, one by one. Few fields are secured with mines and need a double tap. Mines can be blown up when passing by or disarmed when staying on this specific field for a short moment. Certainly the mission sounds easier than it will be.

Features:

* 9 chippy tracks for your audio pleasure
* 48 Levels
* Highscore-List
* Retro styled password system
* Hidden easter egg – find two more themes
* Hidden easter egg – find 32 classic levels

http://retroguru.com/xump/

Mega Q*bert by Jaklub is a fan adaptation of the popular arcade title for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis. The title has 2 modes – Mega mode with 80 new different levels to beat and an Arcade mode, which is based on NES Q*bert (which in turn is based on the original game). Both modes allow simultaneous cooperative play.

Release notes:

Version 1.2 is up. Most important changes are a bunch of fixes related to reported noise issues (should be fine during the gameplay on real machines now) and increased difficulty of Arcade mode (was too easy to play infinitely even with the second loop).

http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?31375-Mega-Q*bert-(full-game)/page2

Virtua Worm by ComradeOj is a cross between Snake and Pac-Man. You have to navigate through a maze while eating food pellets. Each piece of food adds a body segment. The goal is to eat every piece of food in the stage without running in to yourself. There are 15 stages in total.

http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?31123-Virtua-Worm-for-SEGA-Genesis

Solaris by Nendo copies the mechanism of Tetris and offers an endless mode or a challenge to clear 40 lines as fast as possible.

https://nendo16.jimdo.com/

Nendo‘s Ixion for the Sega Genesis invites you to dodge bullets. What looks like a good start is a not yet fully developed bullet hell shooter. Although it’s looking promising, we don’t know if this could turn into a full homebrew game.

https://nendo16.jimdo.com/

Cave Lizard by syrupneko is a simple one screen game inspired by the classic game POOYAN. Shoot the balloons to knock your enemies down from the sky before they can land on the ground to steal your gold and ultimately invade your cave. Press Z to shoot, and use up/down keys to move up and down.

http://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=28303