Ten years ago, "emulating a Game Boy on your watch" would have been a punchline. Today it is a small but real category. A handful of developers have squeezed genuine Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance emulation onto a screen the size of a postage stamp, and some of it actually works.
Here are the emulators worth knowing, split by platform, plus our pick for each.
First, the honest part
Emulators are legal. The games are the catch: only load ROMs of titles you actually own, ideally dumped from your own cartridges. Every app below expects you to bring your own files, and none of them hand you copyrighted games.
Set your expectations too. You are playing on a one to two inch screen, with touch controls, on a battery that was never built for a three hour session of Pokemon. These are a delightful party trick and a real way to squeeze in a few minutes of a classic, not a replacement for a handheld.
Apple Watch: ArcEmu
On Apple Watch there is really one name, and happily it is a good one. ArcEmu by Raffaele D'Amato bills itself as the first emulator for Apple Watch, and it covers Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance through the well respected mGBA core.
What makes it stand out:
- Precise, fast emulation from a proper core, not a rough approximation
- Game Link Cable support, so you can play online multiplayer for up to four players
- A preloaded cheat database, plus both 30 and 60 fps modes
- Controls actually designed for a tiny screen
- It runs on iPhone and iPad too, so one purchase follows you across devices
At 4.9 stars from more than 1,200 ratings, it is also by far the most proven emulator on either platform. If you have an Apple Watch, this is the one.
Wear OS: three real choices
Wear OS is the busier scene, with three emulators worth a look.
SquintBoy (Squint Boy Advance) by Anaglych is the easiest one to recommend to a newcomer. It handles Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance, and it ships with Apotris, a free homebrew game, so you can play something the moment you install it without hunting down a single file. The free tier keeps you to three ROMs and fifteen minute sessions, with touch controls built for small round screens. It sits at 4.9 stars, a small sample, but the best rated of the group.
WearGB by Takohi is the pick for Game Boy and Game Boy Color purists. It focuses on those two systems, runs full speed at 60 fps in color, drops the ads, and lets you load unlimited ROMs from your phone. If your nostalgia stops at the Game Boy Color era, this is the clean, no nonsense option.
WearGBA, also by Takohi, goes the other way and specializes in Game Boy Advance. It renders at the GBA native 240 by 160 resolution, offers five button layouts, haptic feedback, an auto save every thirty seconds, and turbo speed modes, and it needs no companion phone app. It is brand new with no ratings yet, so treat it as promising rather than proven.
Our vote
On Apple Watch, it is not close: ArcEmu is the only serious option, and it happens to be excellent.
On Wear OS, start with SquintBoy. It covers all three Game Boy systems and gives you something to play immediately, which is the whole point of an impulse install on your wrist. If you only care about Game Boy and Game Boy Color and want unlimited ROMs, go with WearGB. If you specifically want Game Boy Advance and do not mind riding an early release, WearGBA is built just for that.
One caveat worth repeating: apart from ArcEmu, these are small apps with modest rating counts. We are judging them on features and the limited feedback that exists so far, not a deep hands on review of each. If we spend serious time with them, we will update our picks here.
The bottom line
Watch emulation is a real, if slightly ridiculous, thing now. It will not replace your handheld, but firing up Tetris on your wrist while you wait in line never really gets old. Apple Watch owners have one great option, Wear OS owners have three, and all of them ask only that you bring games you own.