Hobbyist game developers and tinkerers who love the original Game Boy have a cool new book to pore over. Game Boy Coding Adventure is the latest release from No Starch Press, a publisher specializing in how-to books about computing and gaming. This massive, 456-page book teaches you how to make Game Boy games, but not with popular modern tools like GB Studio; this is a walkthrough for coding games and hardware functions in assembly, just like developers in the early ’90s.
Game Boy Coding Adventure is available for $50 in paperback and $35 on Kindle.
$50
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.
No Starch Press has published books on a wide variety of programming languages and game development tools. Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python is one of the publisher’s most popular game development books. There’s also Mission Python, which teaches teenagers how to create a space adventure game. No Starch Press is no stranger to niche game development tools, either. There are guides on making interactive, text-based adventures with Twine and puzzle-platformers with PuzzleScript. The publisher has an entire series of books on Scratch, the popular block-based programming language created by MIT Media Lab.
Other Game Boy books that are worth adding to your collection include The Game Boy Encyclopedia and The History of the Game Boy. The Game Boy Encyclopedia by Chris Scullion covers every game released in North America and Europe for GB and GBC; the hardcover edition is discounted to $24 (was $43) at Amazon. The History of the Game Boy is an (unofficial) behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the Game Boy and its lifecycle from 1989-1998. Written by Florent Gorges, this well-researched book is based on interviews with developers who worked on the Game Boy. It was published in English for the first time alongside The History of the Famicom/NES last September.
Speaking of NES, a book dedicated to learning the 8-bit home console’s 6502 Assembler language released last year. Classic Game Programming on the NES is available for $40.47 (was $50) at Amazon. You may also want to check out the Code the Classics series, which teaches you how to make retro games using Python and Pygame Zero. Code the Classics Volume 1 teaches you how to make games inspired by classics from the ’70s and early ’80s, and Volume 2 focuses solely on the ’80s. The Second Editions of both volumes were published by Raspberry Pi Press last summer. Code the Classics teaches you how to Python and Pygame Zero game development.
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Author: 360 Technology Group
