Game Boy Coding Adventure Sounds Like A Cool Book For Hobbyist Retro Devs

Game Boy Coding Adventure was written by industry veteran Maximilien Dagois. It’s pitched as a comprehensive guide to Game Boy development, as demonstrated by the subtitle: Learn Assembly and Master the Original 8-Bit Handheld.

It’s not solely geared toward coding and designing games. You’ll learn what makes the Game Boy tick and how it interacts with cartridges. Though mainly focused on the original Game Boy DMG and Game Boy Pocket, the book has sections on GBC, Super Game Boy, and accessories like the Game Boy Printer.

The Game Boy’s technical limitations required game developers to write in assembly, which isn’t a defined programming language like Java or C++. Assembly is essentially a readable version of binary machine code, so Game Boy developers were communicating directly with the handheld’s processing chip.

Game Boy Coding Adventure teaches you how to write and debug code with RGBDS, the leading open source assembler for GB and GBC software and hardware projects. You’ll learn about frame pacing, programming controls, and creating sound channels. Later chapters cover more in-depth topics such as memory banking and serial communication.

The Game Boy’s 8-bit graphics are built from a series of 8×8 tiles. The book teaches you all about tiles and how they are assembled by VRAM into backgrounds, windows, color palettes, and sprites–and how to animate sprites. All of the projects included in this book work on real Game Boy hardware.

It’s pretty awesome that this book exists and that it was picked up and released by No Starch Press, a publisher with a strong track record with tech and gaming how-to books. No Starch Press previously published a highly rated beginner’s guide to modding Game Boy hardware. If you’re interested in joining the Game Boy modding scene, you can snag the 256-page paperback edition for $25.