We've always loved the Playdate and its quirky handle. It's an intriguing little handheld and one that modders have been tinkering with ever since its arrival back in 2022. As you can imagine, knowing how forward-thinking the modding scene is, people have been trying to discover the best way to get classic Game Boy games onto the little tyke for a long while now with varying degrees of success.
Don't get me wrong; the Playdate game seasons are brilliant, but if there's a choice of also having Kirby's Dream Land and Zelda: Links Awakening on there, I'm gonna take it!
The Playdate has a 1-bit screen, which means that getting Game Boy games running on it hasn't been easy. Still, CrankBoy has managed to figure out how to utilise the handheld's simple screen and bring 60 fps gaming to the miniature marvel.
Here’s a video of Zelda Link’s Awakening intro running at full speed with sound!
— deeb • ૮₍ ˃ ⤙ ˂ ₎ა (@deeb.bsky.social) 8 August 2025 at 20:25
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A lot of the issues boil down to power - if you pick up a device like the AYANEO Pocket Micro, then it can handle any Game Boy game that you throw at it with ease. The Playdate's CPU is an ARM Cortex-M7F at 168 MHz, whereas the Pocket Micro is packing a Mediatek Helio G99 that can cope with GameCube games.
In an interview with devs Sodium and stonerl conducted by Read Only Memo, it's explained that the performance bottleneck of the Panic's Playdate relates to the size of the cache, and after making the code compact into 2KB files and storing it in Tightly-Coupled Memory, they managed to get Game Boy Games running at 60 fps with cool extra features like moving the crank up and down to select or start games.
While CrankBoy is an amalgamation of previous emulation efforts like PlayGB, it seems to have ticked all the boxes so far as being the final programme you'll ever need for GB Emulation on Panic's crank-turning masterpiece. You can find out more about the efforts of Sodium and stonerl by checking out this post about CrankBoy over on the Playdate forums.
