Handheld Games — Community App Review
Version: 0.1.3
Handheld Games plays Game Boy games on the Kompakt.
The panel is 480 pixels wide and a Game Boy is 160, so the picture scales by exactly three — no resampling, no soft edges — with room left underneath for the controls.
Games are drawn in four true greys rather than the Game Boy’s green, because a tint this panel cannot show only costs contrast between the four shades that are the whole picture. Frames are blended, which sounds like the last thing a screen that ghosts wants, but it gives the panel a smaller change to draw between frames, so it has less to smear.
It is Lemuroid with nearly everything taken out: one console instead of fifteen, one core, and the Google Play half of the build removed, so Play services cannot be built into it at all. The download is 7 MB.
What plays well is not what you would guess. Puzzle and turn-based games, of course, but Zelda is fine too, because a room holds still while a sprite crosses it and the panel only repaints a small rectangle. Mario scrolls, so everything changes at once, and it is not.
No games are included and none ever will be. If you have none, the Homebrew Hub has a good deal of Game Boy work written in the last few years and given away — the screenshots here are all from it.
What I would most like to know is which of your games hold up on the panel and which do not. The list above is only what I have tried.
Works like a charm! Thanks. One thing, when I load a game, I can’t mute the sound. It seems like the kompakt volume is not affecting the volume of the game. Is there a way to solve this? Thanks again, great app addition.
Review for version 0.1.4
Author’s rating: ★★★★★ · Author of this review
Thanks for the kind words, and for reporting this. You were right: on the Kompakt the volume keys were changing the ringer during a game, not the game itself. The phone didn’t treat the game’s sound as something playing, so the keys fell back to the ringer.
It’s fixed in 0.1.5, which is out now. The volume keys control the game’s sound during play and in the game menu, and you can turn it all the way down to silent. If you installed through Obtainium, the update should show up there.
Works great! It’s everything I hoped for. NGL but Pokemon Yellow isn’t too far off from the original one. It never ran that great on the old Gameboy!
Mudita console can’t add .gba files so I put my sd card into a mp3 player and plugged that into my computer. If anyone else isn’t tech savvy but wanted a minimal phone it’s a good workaround. Or an sd card reader if you use an sd card with the Kompakt.
i use gbc.emu and this new app look way better. i thik the games run better with emu but look better here a lot better. im keeping this one. thanks. you make me very happy.
