Reconstructing Game Footage from a Game Boy's Memory Bus

Explore the innovative process of capturing video from a 1989 Game Boy without modifying the original hardware in this hour-long conference talk. Discover how an adapter cartridge can spy on the memory bus to reconstruct the Game Boy's memory state, emulate its graphics unit, and encode the image into an MJPEG stream in real-time using an rp2040 microcontroller. Learn about the open-source "GB Interceptor" project, initially designed for Tetris tournaments, and its evolution into a universal adapter for capturing gameplay footage from various games. Delve into the technical challenges, including handling interrupts, data registers, link cable operations, and synchronization issues between CPU and PPU. Gain insights into the intricacies of 8-bit computing and the iconic handheld's architecture as the speaker navigates through solved and potentially unsolvable edge cases in this fascinating exploration of retro gaming technology.

37C3 - Reconstructing game footage from a Game Boy's memory bus