Epilogue GB Operator Review: Play Your Game Boy Games on a Laptop

Wide compatibility with immoderate Game Boy, Game Boy Color, oregon Game Boy Advance cartridges. Supports accessories similar Game Boy Camera. Save information backup and transportation tool. Exhaustive database of filters, tweaks, cheats, and emulation tools to experimentation with. Bargain price.

Not arsenic portable oregon convenient arsenic an existent Game Boy. Doesn’t retrieve immoderate preferences universally. No prevention states (yet).

The Game Boy household of handheld consoles was groundbreaking, making gaming much accessible to millions worldwide. Nintendo’s portables bushed disconnected technologically superior contention from the likes of Sega’s Game Gear and Atari’s Lynx. They became location to foundational moments for the medium, from what is inactive arguably the definitive mentation of Tetris to the commencement of Pokémon. Yet with the iconic grey monolith launching successful 1989, it’s present pushing 40—and playing those important classics gets tougher each year.

If you person a postulation of original, carnal Game Boy cartridges successful 2026, you fundamentally person 2 options. One is to anticipation your archetypal console inactive works—a Game Boy Advance is champion here, being a comparatively fresh-faced 25 years aged with backward compatibility for archetypal Game Boy and Game Boy Color cartridges. The different is to prime up a third-party field-programmable gross array (FPGA) console, similar the Analogue Pocket, which besides offers wide compatibility with each archetypal carts. However, the erstwhile is unfortunate to the ravages of time, with less functioning units disposable arsenic the years march on, portion the second is simply a pricier concern tailored to hardcore collectors.

Enter enactment three: Epilogue’s GB Operator, a mode to play archetypal Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance cartridges, straight connected your computer, for a penny little than $50.

Emulation Nation

The GB Operator is billed arsenic “a cartridge slot for your computer,” and seldom has a tech merchandise been truthful accurately described. Unpack it, and you’ll find an unassuming translucent cuboid, a circuit committee successful a perspex box, the slot itself the lone denotation that thing absorbing is going connected here. It measures a positively pocketable 1.3 × 1.2 × 3.5 inches and weighs a negligible 1.5 ounces. Setup is simply a breeze: Just plug it into your machine with the included USB-C cable, which besides provides power, instal the Playback software (available for PC, Mac, and Linux), and … that’s it.

Slot a cart successful and Playback should automatically observe it, admit the crippled and portion it’s from, and propulsion up its screen creation and a description. The bundle does an authenticity cheque erstwhile you insert a cartridge, which Epilogue says is 97.8 percent accurate. Anyone astir for the archetypal Game Boy volition retrieve the plague of knockoff carts, truthful for collectors, it’s bully to person that bid of mind. This truly is simply a gadget focused connected celebrating the morganatic carnal media from backmost successful the day.

Games tally done emulation. Epilogue Playback defaults to the fashionable mGBA emulator, though you tin prime from respective different cores—the motor that mimics the archetypal console's hardware—or you tin usage your ain if you prefer. It’s a large interaction for anyone profoundly immersed successful that broadside of the retro gaming scene. Whichever halfway you choose, Playback allows users to get into the nuts and bolts of crippled settings, fine-tuning show down to precise details specified arsenic framework skips and audio offsets. For anyone dipping their toes into emulation, everything is explained successful refreshingly clear, jargon-free language, too.

Game Boy Imax

If you conscionable privation to play your aged games, you don’t request to woody with immoderate of that—just deed ‘Start’ and question backmost successful clip for immoderate vintage gaming bliss.

The visuals are the astir striking quality erstwhile playing done the GB Operator. Whether successful windowed oregon full-screen view, you’re getting a monolithic measurement up from the 160 × 144-pixel solution of the Game Boy and Game Boy Color screens, and adjacent the Advance’s luxurious 240 × 160-pixel solution pales compared to modern monitors. Here, you spot each past pixel programmed into the originals, blown up to colossal size. Seeing what were erstwhile tiny games astatine specified a standard tin instrumentality immoderate getting utilized to, but it's a delight to admit each the item and artistry packed in.

While Game Boy Advance games tally fundamentally as-is, showcasing the richness of that afloat colour 32-bit era, the emulator provides a treasure trove of ocular filters to play astir with for archetypal Game Boy games. By default, Game Boy cartridges load successful a much modern grayscale, but determination are options to play them successful the classical green-and-black look, replicate the monochrome screens of the Game Boy Pocket, oregon mimic the brightness of the Japan-only Game Boy Light. The assorted colour highlights that the Game Boy Color would use to archetypal Game Boy games are determination too, arsenic are the filters from the Super Game Boy (the adapter that ran Game Boy carts connected the Super Nintendo). Optionally, you tin show the framework complaint too—I got a reliable 60 frames per 2nd connected each cart I tested.

Running the carts done an emulator allows for immoderate modern tweaks. Epilogue integrates enactment for Retro Achievements (note that a abstracted relationship login is required), allowing you to way accomplishments successful these older games, and Playback tin automatically propulsion up a database of cheats for each cart. Go ahead: 30-odd years on, infinite lives aren’t hurting anyone.

Playback besides allows show and settings to beryllium tailored connected a per-game basis, including wholly remapping controls oregon accelerating crippled speed. The lone downside is that it seems to deficiency immoderate adjuvant cosmopolitan settings. For instance, I couldn’t find a mode to acceptable my Xbox controller arsenic the default input—Playback randomly switched backmost to keyboard controls aft I changed carts.

Physical Ephemera

When Epilogue says the GB Operator is universally compatible, it means that. I’ve thrown implicit a twelve carts astatine the device, investigating retired US, European, and Australian releases from each 3 main Game Boy console generations, and it’s recognized and played each azygous one.

Some took a small longer to launch, arsenic Playback loads it into its emulator. Sonic Advance 3 took the longest, astir a minute—ironic, fixed its speedy protagonist—but I was capable to load and play each rubric I tried. Any prevention information inactive connected the carts was work smoothly too, allowing maine to leap close backmost into an endgame brag conflict successful Treasure’s brilliant-but-tough Astro Boy: Omega Factor. Sadly, my representation of the controls years aft I past played wasn’t astir arsenic good preserved.

The Operator adjacent handles immoderate of the curiosities that graced the assorted Game Boys implicit the decades. Case successful point: my transcript of Boktai 2: Solar Boy Django, an experimental rubric from Death Stranding auteur Hideo Kojima that utilized a star sensor baked into the crippled cartridge to powerfulness up the protagonist’s weapons. Released for the GBA successful 2005, it dared gamers to bash the unthinkable: permission the location and get immoderate sun. In 2026, you tin plug it into the GB Operator and archer the Playback bundle to enactment arsenic though it’s a agleam day. Sure, it defeats the point, but it’s chill that adjacent these niche titles are catered to. Epilogue says it adjacent supports accessories similar the Game Boy Camera, allowing you to usage it arsenic a webcam, though I don’t person 1 to test.

The lone downside to relying connected the archetypal cartridges is the carts themselves. If they’re not well-maintained, they tin beryllium prone to work errors. I picked up a second-hand Game Boy Color transcript of Disney’s Tarzan—it loaded but kept cutting out, which I fishy was down to the cartridge's carnal contacts eroding implicit time, meaning the GB Operator couldn’t reliably work the data. A fewer others besides weren’t instantly recognized successful the Playback software, but the time-honored ritual of blowing into them sorted the issue.

Preservation Society

While the GB Operator comfortably allows you to play your existing carnal room done your computer, it’s besides utile for preservation and caller crippled instauration purposes. The Playback bundle lets you backmost up a game’s prevention information to your computer, which has immoderate existent utility. Carts that stored advancement locally (as opposed to older password systems) typically relied connected a artillery to bash so, and erstwhile that runs out, truthful bash your prevention files.

I recovered this retired first-hand erstwhile loading up my transcript of Pokémon Gold—whether I’d caught ‘em each backmost successful 2001, I’ll ne'er beryllium capable to confirm, arsenic the artillery died astatine immoderate constituent successful the past quarter-century(!). Booting it up done the GB Operator was similar switching it connected for the archetypal time. However, if it had inactive contained my surely-completed Pokédex, I’d person been capable to transcript that information to my laptop’s hard drive, regenerate the artillery successful the cartridge (a fiddly process, but doable), and past load the prevention backmost onto it—magic.

However, it’s worthy noting that astatine present, everything relies connected the cartridge's existent prevention processes. While virtual “snapshot” saves—capturing a crippled astatine immoderate fixed moment—are connected Epilogue’s roadmap, the diagnostic is not yet available. It volition archetypal beryllium tested done the experimental “Nightly Builds” mentation of Playback (found astatine the bottommost of the downloads page) earlier being afloat implemented.

You tin besides usage the GB Operator to dump the full main crippled information from a cart you personally own, allowing you to marque a legal copy for your ain archival purposes (don’t share; that’s erstwhile it becomes piracy). The process itself is quick, depending connected the game’s size, but adjacent the Game Boy Advance’s biggest games were 32 MB astatine most. Even if you bash backmost up a crippled successful this manner, GB Operator inactive requires the archetypal cart to tally anything, though—you can’t conscionable load the dumped ROM done the Playback software.

Finally, if you’re an aspiring developer oregon into retro-style indie games, it allows you to transportation homebrew games created done the likes of GB Studio onto a flash cart and play them connected an existent Game Boy. It’s different niche feature, but 1 that’s large to have, allowing present-day creators to physique connected the bequest of the beloved handhelds.

It’s honestly hard to find overmuch responsibility with the GB Operator. Even highlighting that it lacks existent portability—sure, it’s tiny, but needing to beryllium hooked up to a machine robs it of the pick-up-and-play entreaty of the pocket-sized consoles it homages—feels similar splitting hairs. It yet does everything it promises, each for little than $50.

This is simply a marvelous spot of kit, and the wide show and inferior bode highly good for Epilogue’s upcoming SN Operator, which aims to bash the aforesaid for the Super Nintendo arsenic this does for the Game Boy household (and a mysterious “?? Operator” to follow). If you’re looking for an easy, low-budget mode to revisit oregon revive your Game Boy collection, this is your champion option.