Emulator
In one sentence
An emulator is a program that pretends to be the Game Boy. The chip it imitates is a Sharp LR35902, running at about 4.19 MHz. Your ROM is the software that chip would have run.
The detail
The browser player on a Retroable game page is an emulator. So is a desktop program such as SameBoy or mGBA. They differ in sound and timing. They do not differ in which file they open.
If a game crackles on the web page and sounds clean in a desktop emulator, the ROM is fine and the player is the thing to look at. Where a ROM runs lists the three places the same file goes: the browser, a desktop emulator, and a real handheld.
An emulator is not a port. A port would be the game rewritten for a phone or a PC. Here the program is still Game Boy code.
Worth keeping
- The original CPU is a Sharp LR35902 at about 4.19 MHz
- The browser player and a desktop emulator open the same .gb file
- A bad sound on the website does not mean the ROM is broken
Questions
Does the browser play the real ROM?
Yes. The page loads the .gb file into an emulator.
Why might the desktop version sound different?
Emulators handle audio buffering differently. The program in the file is the same.
Is an emulator the same as a remake?
No. A remake is new code. An emulator runs the original code.
Related
Game Boy is a trademark of Nintendo. Retroable is independent and is not affiliated with Nintendo.