GBEDG

The Gameboy Emulator Development Guide

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Memory Bank Controllers (MBCs)

Memory Bank Controllers (most commonly abbreviated to MBCs) are pieces of hardware that are built into the Game Cartridge, not the Gameboy itself. Because storage was very expensive in the era of the Gameboy games had to be small - yet the 32KB limit that the unmodified Gameboy design intended wasn’t enough for most games. Additionally, a lot of games would need external hardware such as Real Time Clocks, Rumble or Battery-powered external RAM to store save files. All of these limitations were more or less bypassed by MBCs - additional hardware on the cartridge.

Documented MBCs

Table of Contents

How to detect a ROMs MBC

In the world of emulators we’re not dealing with actual hardware - all we have are ROM files. These provide the data stored on the cartridge, but not the functionality of it - that part has to be emulated.

Gameboy ROMs feature a so-called “Cartridge Header” section in memory which contains all sorts of metadata about the game stored on the cartridge. For the detection of the MBC type the only relevant byte in the ROM file is located at $0147. This byte is an identifier for the individual MBC type as well as the additional hardware on the cartridge, such as external RAM, Real Time Clocks or Rumble.

Code MBC Type Additional Hardware
0x00 None None, plain ROM
0x01 MBC1 None
0x02 MBC1 RAM
0x03 MBC1 Battery-Buffered RAM
0x05 MBC2 None
0x06 MBC2 Battery-Buffered RAM
0x08 None RAM
0x09 None Battery-Buffered RAM
0x0B MMM01 None
0x0C MMM01 RAM
0x0D MMM01 Battery-Buffered RAM
0x0F MBC3 Real Time Clock
0x10 MBC3 Real Time Clock + Battery-Buffered RAM
0x11 MBC3 None
0x12 MBC3 RAM
0x13 MBC3 Battery-Buffered RAM
0x19 MBC5 None
0x1A MBC5 RAM
0x1B MBC5 Battery-Buffered RAM
0x1C MBC5 Rumble
0x1D MBC5 Rumble + RAM
0x1E MBC5 Rumble + Battery-Buffered RAM
0x20 MBC6 None
0x22 MBC7 Accelerometer + Rumble + Battery-Buffered RAM
0xFC POCKET CAMERA ?
0xFD BANDAI TAMA5 ?
0xFE HuC3 Real Time Clock + Buzzer (?)
0xFF HuC1 Battery-Buffered RAM

Additional Hardware

The list above contains a lot of terms that may seem confusing or very broadly defined - so here’s a short summary of what each term means:

None / Plain ROM

In the case of code 0x00 this means that the ROM file is just that - Read Only Memory. No tricks involved. Other cartridges which do have an assigned MBC type have only the given MBC chip on them and nothing more.

(Battery-Buffered) RAM

This means that the cartridge has an additional RAM chip inside the cartridge in order to, well, have more RAM. As RAM is inherently volatile (meaning the data is lost when the power cuts out) it may be constantly supplied with power by an additional in-cartridge battery. This is called Battery-Buffering and allows for things such as savegames to exist, as the data in Battery-Buffered RAM is preserved even when turning off the Gameboy (or Emulator in this case). Most emulators implement this by using a save file which the RAM data is written to just before the emulator is closed.

Real Time Clock (RTC)

A Real Time Clock (often abbreviated to RTC) is dedicated hardware for counting real-time seconds, minutes, hours and days. The RTC that comes with the MBC3 is inherently Battery-Buffered and keeps count of the time even when the Gameboy / Emulator is turned off. Games like Pokemon Silver and Pokemon Gold use these to keep track of the real time to display in game.

Rumble

A small amount of Gameboy games were built with an additional Rumble Pak attached, which would be able to vibrate through specific functions in the games code. (TODO: Search for Documentation)

Accelerometer

The accelerometer is an MBC7 specific hardware addition which comes packaged with a Rumble Pak (explained above). It allows games to detect the angle at which the physical Gameboy console is being held - a sort of primitive motion control system.

Storage Sizes

Now we know how to detect the MBC type of a ROM and its hardware, but we still don’t know the storage size of the ROM or external RAM if there is any. However, this is just as easy as determining the MBC type.

ROM Size

An identifier representing the ROM size is stored in the ROM file at address $0148:

Code ROM Size ROM Banks
0x00 32KB (32,768 Bytes) None (technically all one Bank)
0x01 64KB (65,536 Bytes) 4 Banks
0x02 128KB (131,072 Bytes) 8 Banks
0x03 256KB (262,144 Bytes) 16 Banks
0x04 512KB (524,288 Bytes) 32 Banks
0x05 1MB (1,048,576 Bytes) 64 Banks
0x06 2MB (2,097,152 Bytes) 128 Banks
0x07 4MB (4,194,304 Bytes) 256 Banks
0x08 8MB (8,388,608 Bytes) 512 Banks
0x52 1.1MB (1,179,648 Bytes) 72 Banks
0x53 1.2MB (1,310,720 Bytes) 80 Banks
0x54 1.5MB (1,572,864 Bytes) 96 Banks

Wait, what are ROM banks?

ROM banks are effectively 16KB “batches” of memory which can be mapped to a certain addressing space individually. With MBC1 for example the memory region $4000 to $7FFF can be mapped to (almost) any 16KB block of the ROM.

RAM Size

The header also contains an identifier representing the size of however much external RAM there is at address $0149:

Code RAM Size
0x00 None
0x01 2KB (2,048 Bytes)
0x02 8KB (8,192 Bytes)
0x03 32KB (32,768 Bytes split up into 4 RAM banks)
0x04 128KB (131,072 Bytes split up into 16 RAM banks)
0x05 64KB (65,536 Bytes split up into 8 RAM banks)

How to handle incorrect header data

1) Except for some specific edge cases, you can’t

2) You don’t really need to

Any Nintendo-licensed game contains proper header data, and even a lot of bootleg games do. Even if the data is wrong - that’s a corrupt ROM file, not an issue with the emulator.