[Artificial-Age] has built a rather unique way to play old Game Boy games. It’s an emulator, but it doesn’t work in quite the way you might think!

Since the Game Boy is a relatively simple 8-bit machine that runs at a leisurely 4 MHz or so, it is well within the capabilities of an ESP32 microcontroller to emulate. [Artificial-Age] got an ESP32-S3 and programmed it to do just that. However, there’s a twist—there is no screen hooked up to the microcontroller, nor any buttons. Instead, the board is accessed over a WiFi access point that it hosts itself.

One then opens a web browser, which streams the emulated video and audio from the console, while accepting button inputs from your keyboard or touchscreen, depending on the platform you’re viewing the web interface on. ROMs are stored on the ESP32’s flash storage, and can be uploaded via the web interface.

It’s an interesting setup, and one that perhaps doesn’t make obvious sense at first. After all, any modern smartphone can easily emulate a Game Boy, too. However, this setup makes it easy to share the emulator with other people, who can simply check out the WiFi AP and web interface without having to download or or install anything on their own device. We’ve featured some other fun emulation projects lately, too.

Many pieces of consumer electronics are build down to a price, and the corners cut show up in their performance. The Gameboy Advance from Nintendo is no exception: its audio is a PWM stream that sounds awful through the included amplifier. [Cajun Panda] has a fix though, in the form of a replacement audio chain.

It takes the form of a PCB that hooks into the pads of the removed GBA audio chip, and provides a much cleaner audio path with filtering and EQ and a class D audio amplifier. In addition there’s an audio codec and an ESP32 for Bluetooth connectivity, enabled by a long press of a GBA button and configured via a web interface on the ESP. Best of all there is no case modification, this is designed to remain as stock as possible.

Everything can be found in a GitHub repository should you wish to make your own, so if you want to bring your GBA audio up to scratch you know where to go. If you want to make it even better don’t forget, you can always upgrade the screen.