
Gameboy color emulator entirely in Javascript - kmax12
http://gamecenter.grantgalitz.org/index
======
georgemcbay
On the one hand, this is pretty cool. On the other hand, I'm not sure the best
argument for "look how far JavaScript has come" is to use it to do things that
native code was doing 13 years ago. On the third hand, this has been around
for like a year now. I'm fairly shocked that Nintendo hasn't come down on him
yet for hosting commercial ROMs in this thing, they have a history of non-
tolerance of these sorts of things.

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altrego99
On the other hand, emulating a machine of this complexity was beyond
imagination when gameboy came out. On the other hand, Virtualbox can emulate
much more complicate machines. On the other hand, this one lives entirely and
safely inside your browser.

~~~
exDM69
> Virtualbox can emulate much more complicate machines.

Virtualbox does not emulate anything, it uses the CPU's virtualization
extensions and the code runs natively on the CPU.

~~~
mparlane
What did VMWare do prior to "virtualization extensions" ?

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gwillen
Virtualization without extensions is possible, but tricky on x86. VMWare has
historically used binary translation to deal with the tricky bits. (I.e. go
through the binary before you run it, look for instructions that don't
virtualize properly, replace them with sequences that can be virtualized and
either do the same thing, or trap into the virtual machine monitor.)

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Jimmie
Previous HN discussions:

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2427963>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2266701>

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2700020>

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btown
Since it doesn't seem to be linked from the main page, this appears to be the
source code (GPL):

<https://github.com/grantgalitz/GameBoy-Online>

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thomasz
please make the keys assignable. On my keyboard layout, z is right to t :/

~~~
DanWaterworth
Same here, the keys are in awkward places.

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Eduard
Yet another play-in your browser thing that gives zero f's about the y/z key
switch on German keyboard layouts

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MarvinYork
Just use Y & X on a German keyboard.

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zanny
Is there a way to integrate local saving of games? It seems crazy to think
someone could use this to play the old pokemans and "catch em all"

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enneff
Unfortunately, LSDJ is unusable as you can't press A and the arrow keys at the
same time.

~~~
mcpherrinm
This is probably an artifact of your keyboard. Most keyboards have sets of
keys that can't be read in combination. For example, on the classic Model M,
QWAS all pressed at once won't work properly (but asdf does.)

Find out more at
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_%28key%29#n-key_rollov...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollover_%28key%29#n-key_rollover)

~~~
enneff
I can do it in other emulators, so it's not a problem with my physical
keyboard. I imagine it's an issue with Chrome.

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paintAcquaint
on the iphone 4: "Result of Expression 'document.getElementByID("drop
down_progress")'[null] is not an object. File: undefined line: undefined.

~~~
grantg
That error is from the page overloading. Secondly, it won't run on mobile
safari anyhow (Best will be 1 fps tops with no audio and no keyboard input).

Mobile Safari will never run this right.

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anmi
it run extremely slow on my celeron SU2300 @ 1.2GHz, 8gb ram, google chrome @
ubuntu 12.04 not playable

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pooper9000
It's just you: <http://i.imgur.com/XuQL9.png>

I can run multiple instances in parallel fullspeed on a shitty mac. If you
don't have a GPU (or a blacklisted one), expect your browsers to run like
shit.

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tferris
First time I see this thinking JS has come very far.

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rsanchez1
This seems to get posted every few months. I guess people don't notice the
search field at the bottom of the page.

~~~
altrego99
OTOH, few months seems to me a good balance to recur on good posts without
being too frequent.

