carts:nintendo:gameboy

This is an old revision of the document!


Game Boy / Game Boy Color

Check the dumping hardware overview for a list of known preservation hardware.

If you need help, please come chat with us on the VGPC or No-Intro discord servers.


Important Notes

  • Unopened games should have their ROM and save data dumped before attempting to play them. This avoids inadvertent modification of the data and helps preserve the game in its unused/“factory” state. Note in your submission whether the physical media was sealed and include a photo of the cart/packaging in its sealed state, if possible.
  • You should clean the physical media's electrical contacts before trying to dump it, and dump it twice, checking if both dumps match using a file comparison tool or calculating the SHA256 of each file and comparing those values.

Luckily there are numerous tools available for dumping Game Boy / Game Boy Color games, so you should be able to find a great dumper that suits your need.

Note on the Submodule GB01: This is not currently recommended, as there is no known way to manually change the dumping settings and the automatic setting detection does not work on some carts.

insideGadgets GBxCart RW v1.4 BennVenn Joey Jr V2++ Sanni Cart Reader Epilogue GB Operator J.Rodrigo Cart Flasher insideGadgets GBxCart RW v1.3
tested with FW: R36+L7, SW: FlashGBX v3.14 tested with FW: V2_02_29 Beta Firmware 64K untested / source code analysis untested / according to official website tested (no FW update capability) tested with FW: L1, SW: FlashGBX v3.14
Media Type ROM Save ROM Save ROM Save ROM Save ROM Save ROM Save
No Mapper
MBC1 ≤ 512 KB
MBC1 > 512 KB
MBC1M ???
MBC2
MBC3
MBC30
MBC5
MBC6
MBC7 ✓ (partially)
MMM01 ???
M161
HuC-1
HuC-3
TAMA5
NP GB Memory
GB Camera
E201264 Dev Cart ??? ??? ??? ???
Sachen
Wisdom Tree ???
Action Replay
Xploder GB
256M Multi Repro

Supports: GB/GBC/GBA, Game Boy Camera, and Nintendo Power Carts and Bootleg flashing

Please see the the page for Lesserkuma's open-source software for the GBxCart RW, FlashGBX.

Supports: GB/GBC/GBA, Game Boy Camera, and Nintendo Power Carts and Bootleg flashing

For latest official instruction on how to use the Joey Jr, please see the official user guide.

The Sanni Cart Reader comes with Game Boy / Game Boy Color dumping capabilities by default. Follow the Sanni Cart Reader wiki for proper settings, and dumping instructions.

SSS-(T)GGR-V
S = System (DMG = Game Boy, CGB = Game Boy Color)
T = Type (N = Normal)
G = Game code (e.g. KY = Kirby's Dream Land)
R = Region (A = World, J = Japan, E = USA, P = Europe)
V = Version (starts at 0)

  • carts/nintendo/gameboy.1655728733.txt.gz
  • Last modified: 2022/06/20 12:38
  • by hiccup