The Game Boy has a screen resolution of 160 × 144 pixels. That may seem tiny today, but it was enough to bring many memorable characters to life.
A sprite is a bitmap image used to represent a character or other object in a 2D game. Mario's character graphics are a familiar example.
How can we use GBDK to display a sprite on the Game Boy screen?
GBDK is open source, with release builds available on GitHub. I was using macOS when I wrote this tutorial, so I will start with setting up GBDK on macOS and compiling a Hello World program. The general process is similar on Linux and Windows, although the installation details differ. Feel free to leave a comment if you run into trouble.
Assembly language is a common choice for GB/GBC development. However, starting with it requires learning the hardware and instruction set together, which can be a substantial barrier for a beginner.
For this series, we will use a higher-level language: C. GBDK provides the tools and libraries needed to write C programs for the Game Boy and Game Boy Color.
Before we begin
Nintendo's Game Boy was popular around the world, but I never had one as a child. When I learned about it later, I became fascinated by it and wanted to make games that could run on the hardware.
