“Larold’s Jubilant Junkyard” has become “Larold’s Retro Gameyard“. I’ve been working on this re-branding and migration for a while. All old tutorials should redirect you to this new site. If you see any errors, please let me know! See here for more information: What happened to Larold’s Jubilant Junkyard?

Larold's Retro Gameyard

Game Boy Tutorials

The Nintendo Gameboy may be over 30 years old, but it’s far from dead. This is the master page for my “How to make a gameboy game” tutorial series. I’m going to break down the gameboy game creation process into multiple high-level steps. Each step will have it’s own tutorial page. Also, each step will be included on this master page for easy access. I hope you find this series helpful and interesting.

In around February of 2021 I started learning how to make a Gameboy game. Major credit goes to GBDK-2020 and  Gaming Monsters on YouTube. GBDK 2020 is “An updated version of GBDK, A C compiler, assembler, linker and set of libraries for the Z80 like Nintendo Gameboy.” It allows developers to create Gameboy games in C, rather than Assembly. I do not personally know Gaming Monsters on YouTube, but he produced a very helpful “Learn how to develop your own gameboy games” playlist. I still reference that playlist to date.

Debugging your GBDK-2020 game

THE BASICS OF GBDK-2020

These 5 basic tutorials are going to teach you the basics of making Game Boy games with GBDK and the C programming language.
Important Note!

If you are not familiar with C, there are some basic tutorials here. Also, you can find C Programming books online. A popular book is “C Programming Language, 2nd Edition” by Brian W. Kernighan.

Firstly we’ll get started with a minimal template, and teach you how to compile your gameboy .gb file. Next, you will learn how to use backgrounds, which take up the whole screen and move as a whole. Thirdly, you will learn how to use sprites. These 8×8 or 8×16 objects can move around freely as individuals. Sprites can even be combined to represent bigger objects. Once you have a sprite on screen, you will learn how to move that sprite around using joypad input. Finally, you’ll learn how to play music and sound effects. Those 5 steps should get you started on the gameboy game development process.

Getting stated with GBDK 2020
Drawing on the Background and Window Layers
Drawing and Moving Sprites in Gameboy Games
How to handle Gameboy Joypad input
How to play a sounds on Gameboy Hardware
using vs code with gbdk-2020
common errors in gbdk-2020 projects
debugging gbdk-2020 games
Debugging your GBDK-2020 game

GBDK-2020 ADVANCED TOPICS

Once you’ve got the basics of the GBDK-2020, here are some more advanced topics.

the following tutorials will be a little more advanced. They’ll also be more generic. These topics will build upon the basic topics. They will also be the building blocks for re-making popular games later.

PNG2Asset graphics creation for gbdk-2020
RPG Style movement in GBDK
Parallax backgrounds with GBDK-2020
How to use ROM Memory Banks
Tilemap Collision Detection in Game Boy Games
Drawing Large Maps in GBDK
Smooth Movement using Sub-Pixel Resolution
Using “Metasprites” in your GBDK Games
Drawing Text in GBDK 2020
Drawing Advanced Text in GBDK 2020
distributing your game boy game
adding music to game boy game with hugedriver
Saving Games with GBDK
Debugging your GBDK-2020 game

How to make ACTUAL Games

All the previous tutorials covered basic concepts. The following tutorials will show you how to make actual popular games.

Everything up until now has been very generic. This is intentional. There is a lot of knowledge that isn’t specific to any one game or genre. However, below will be Sub-Tutorials that build upon this knowledge. These tutorials will focus around specific popular games.

Important Note!

A lot of the basics of GBDK will not be covered in these tutorials. See the basic tutorials above first if you are confused. This prevents the tutorials from becoming bloated, due to trying to explain every single line of code.

How to make Tetris for the Nintendo Gameboy
Brick Breaker Tutorial for Gameboy
How to make Pacman for Gameboy
How to make Flappy Bird for the Nintendo Gameboy
Space Invaders Tutorial for Gameboy

What's next?

Congratulations, you’re a Game Boy Game Developer! Go ahead and start making all the Game Boy games of your dreams! When you’re ready to go even father down the Retro Game Development rabbit hole, graduate to to the advanced course. More advanced Game Boy Games? Sort of, but not really. Your next step is to make games for the Game Boy’s successor: The Game Boy Advance! Step into the world of 32-bit gaming with my tutorials on How to make Game Boy Advance Games.