The Game Boy, Nintendo’s first real handheld console, will be turning 20 this year in Japan and America. As we approach the 20th anniversary of the Game Boy, indie developer Christ Maltby had put out an easy development tool that allows people to create their own Game Boy experience.

GB Studio is a free game-making tool currently aimed at making top-down exploration games, sort of like a Game Boy Zelda or Pokemon without the fighting. It aims to be a simple game creating experience that even people who haven’t made games before can get into; with its easy to understand visual interface and documentation. While GB Studio is currently only aimed at creating adventure game experiences, with it being an open-source project, that could open the way for people to build upon it to add more features or make games of different genres.

Games produced in GB Studio can be played in two ways. Games can be exported in an HTML form with a web-based emulator to be playable in browsers; games can even be played on mobile devices, which will put the game in a little Game Boy interface to create a virtual Game Boy playing experience. Additionally, games can also be exported as a ROM file that you can play on an emulator or actual Game Boy hardware via flash cart.

GB Studio was originally a bunch of disconnected tools and scripts that revolved around Maltby’s Untitled GB Game, a game made for Bored Pixels Jam 3. The game is a meta-narrative about a game developer struggling to make a Game Boy game for a game jam. It was well-received in the game jam, earning first place in multiple categories and placed fourth overall.

Maltby, however, decided to work on the tools he made for the game a bit more, as he realized that they can be glued together to create an application that other people can use. The Game Boy was an iconic part of gaming history, putting small fun experiences in the hands of people, and now hobbyists can do the same.

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