GB Enhanced is a Game Boy video console emulator that allows the editing of video game sprites.

Game Boy was the first handheld console released by the Japanese company Nintendo. It had great sales success, and this was due to the immense catalog of video games that were developed for the console. We can remember past experiences and play GB video games thanks to the emulation systems.

GB Enhanced (GBE) is a new Game Boy emulator. It released the first emulator version in the second quarter of 2014 (1.0). Even though some aspects can be improved, the emulation of the console is almost complete, and the compatibility with video games is very high so that we can enjoy almost all the Game Boy titles. Graphics and sound emulation are correct, and we overlook eye-catching defects.

The current version (1.0) has no user interface, so the program runs from the command line. To load a video game ROM, we must type in the Windows terminal “gbe Game_Name.gba”. Keep in mind that the ROM file must be uncompressed to play it.

Emulator configuration is made by editing the “gbe.ini” file located in the emulator root directory. In this file, we can configure emulator keys, full-screen and more options.

The default keys to play are the following:

• Start = Enter
• Select = Space Bar
• Gamepad = Arrow Keys
• A Button = z
• B Button = x

One of the main features of this emulator is the ability to load custom “sprites” (graphics) and, therefore, to modify the game's visual appearance. Thanks to this, Game Boy will be able to display color or even textures.

We can download video game “sprites” from specialized forums or create them ourselves. The process to create new “sprites” is the following:

1. Run the emulator and save the video game “sprites” in a folder. To achieve this, we need to run the emulator as follows: gbe "Legend of Zelda, The - Link s Awakening.gb" --dump_sprites
2. Edit saved graphics in the “Dump” folder with an image editor (Photoshop, GIMP, etc.).
3. We load the new graphics into the game with the following command: gbe "Legend of Zelda, The - Link s Awakening.gb" --load_sprites

The location of the “Dump” folder is by default in emulator root directory; however, we can change this by editing “gbe.ini” file.

This software is open source and is free of charge. Its development is active, and in future versions, the author has thought to add a graphical user interface, create an advanced debugging system, and support Game Boy Color's emulation.