TGB Dual

TGB Dual

Developer(s)	GIGO and Hii (Windows) shinichiro.h (SDL)
Latest version	8.3.1 / "L" 1.2
Active	No
Platform(s)	Windows Linux (SDL)
Emulates	Game Boy/Color
Website	GIGO's shinichiro.h's
Source code	8.3 Source Code (GPL) SDL Source Code

TGB Dual is a Japanese Game Boy/Game Boy Color emulator. It was the first to support link cable emulation (through TCP/IP), later followed by VBA Link and then modern emulators. It is also available as a libretro core in RetroArch, based on unofficial Linux SDL port. The most common version which was translated to English by the author is ver. 7, but later an unofficial translation of v8.3.1 surfaced.

Download

	TGB Dual "L" 1.2 Official site, Github
	TGB Dual Kai 1.1.4.1 Official site, Github
	TGB Dual Vol. 8.3.1

Ports and forks

The emulator is very old and obsolete nowadays. Still, there were recent tries to update the codebase and support new features. First, there was shinichiro.h's SDL port, which added no new features. After that came a few forks:

TGB Dual Kai

This fork was made by gameboym on his blog and mainly adds settings and a debugger. After about a year of development, the fork went dead in 2013.

TGB Dual "L"

At first, a try at a pseudo-official continuation with ver. 9 release, the author named libertyernie soon found out about the Kai fork and added his enhancements to the newer codebase as TGB Dual "L". New features are a full translation from Japanese, Goomba Color files compatibility and mirror mode.

Plugins

TGB Dual supports plugins for additional devices. On the official site, there is a download for them. They are for the Barcode Reade, Pocket Printer and IR linking. As all documentation is in Japanese. The Barcode Boy implementation just generates random data until a valid barcode is accepted, as discovered by Shonumi in his reverse engineering work for GBE+.

Netplay

You will need a VPN to netplay with this emulator. Download hamachi or Comodo VPN. Unless you can figure out what ports does this emulator use, there is no other way to play this over the internet besides VPNs.

How to

Unpack the emulator wherever you want Configure your emulator: map buttons (physical controller preferred!), change resolutions, apply filters (if you want them) Go to Options, click Folders Set a path for your save files and ROMs folders, click OK Go to File, click Netplay. A window will appear. In the ROM section, set the ROM you'll be using in the "Player" box, and the ROM your opponent will be using in the "Rival" box (unless you're both using the same ROM). If you're hosting: Click Server Type in a number between 1024 and 65535 in the Timeout field (1024 usually works just fine) Click connect and wait If you're connecting: Click Client Type in your opponent's VPN IP Click Connect and wait The status section will change to some other illegible gibberish and a status bar will appear (AFAIK, haven't used it in a very long time so I don't remember) Once the connection has been established, the game will start for both people and a small rudimentary chat box will appear. Enjoy! Worth noting: the game will be choppy/laggy, and will still be somewhat playable at 150 ms. Anything beyond will respond too slowly to be playable. Be warned.