A homebrew game is a new game, written today for a machine from the 1990s, then published by its author. You download it from their page, you copy it to your microSD card, and it runs like any other. No grey area: the file is handed to you by the person who made it. Every year the scene turns out dozens of finished titles, some of which hold their own against the commercial productions of the period. Here are fifty games whose name, platform, author and distribution method we checked one by one.
What homebrew is, and why legality is not an issue
Homebrew is software written by an independent developer for a console they have no contract with. New code, new graphics, new music: it is an original creation aimed at old hardware, not a copy of an existing game. The author therefore holds the rights and decides to release it. When they put a ROM up for download on their page, they grant you the right to take it. Many also publish the source code, under MIT, zlib or GPL.
The models vary: free, pay what you want, paid, or sold on cartridge by a publisher. We only kept games that can be downloaded without paying, flagging the cases where only a demo is free.
Game Boy and Game Boy Color: ten games
- Deadeus — Game Boy, by -IZMA-. Black-and-white horror: a child dreams that their village will die in three days. Eleven endings, pay what you want.
- Tobu Tobu Girl — Game Boy, by Tangram Games, music by potato-tan. Demanding vertical arcade game, free, source code under MIT and CC-BY.
-
Tobu Tobu Girl Deluxe — Game Boy Color, by Tangram Games. The same mechanics in colour, with a freely available
tobudx.gbROM. - Dangan GB — Game Boy, by snorpung and nordloef. Bullet-dense shoot'em up, six multi-phase bosses, on a machine you would not expect it on.
- Opossum Country — Game Boy Color, by BenJelter. A half-hour horror investigation in a trailer park, in 512 KB.
- Soul Void — Game Boy, by Kadabura. Dark, narrative exploration; the Redux version adds a ROM for real hardware.
- Sheep It Up! — Game Boy, by Dr. Ludos. A sheep climbs by grabbing onto flying velcro strips. Thirty-two kilobytes, one score.
- DMG Deals Damage — Game Boy, by Dr. Ludos. The original Game Boy sets off to recover its birthday cake. A 32 KB ROM and a manual.
- GB-Wordyl — Game Boy and Game Boy Color, by bbbbbr. A Wordle with several dictionaries, open source code.
- µCity — Game Boy Color, by AntonioND. A complete city builder under GPLv3, sixteen saved cities.
Game Boy Advance: seven games
- Anguna — by gauauu. Top-down action-adventure, one of the oldest GBA homebrew titles still distributed by its author.
-
Skyland — by evanbowman. Real-time strategy on a handheld from 2001, delivered as
Skyland.gba. - BlindJump — by evanbowman. Adventure with generated levels, items to collect and regular fights.
- Varooom 3D — by GValiente, Kaappis and tempest. A pseudo-3D racer that pushes the machine; code and assets under zlib and CC.
- Butano Fighter — by GValiente. A free shoot'em up that serves as a showcase for the open Butano engine.
- MeteoRain — by Dr. Ludos. A short arcade game made for GBA Jam 2021.
- Goodboy Galaxy — free demo. The full game is commercial, but the demo shows what the GBA can handle today.
NES: fifteen games
- Böbl — by Morphcat Games. An underwater Metroidvania where you steer a bubble: hold A to dive, release to rise.
- Spacegulls — by Morphcat Games. One- or two-player platformer, somewhere between Joust and Mega Man, in 64 KB.
- Super Bat Puncher — by Morphcat Games. Free demo of a game that was never finished, cited as a benchmark technical showcase.
- FROM BELOW — by Matt Hughson. Free puzzle-action game supplied with a manual and cover art, in 40 KB.
- Nova the Squirrel — by NovaSquirrel. A platformer with power copying and puzzles; the author releases everything as open source.
- Sliding Blaster — by NovaSquirrel. A top-down shooter where you slide constantly and ammunition is counted. Code under zlib.
- Old Towers — by RetroSouls, music by Oleg Nikitin. Puzzle-action in booby-trapped towers, with two heroes to alternate between.
- Galactor — by Dr. Ludos. A shoot'em up designed to fit inside a Game Genie cartridge. Commented source under MIT.
- Alter Ego — by Shiru. A port of a ZX Spectrum puzzle-platformer, released with its code.
- Lan Master — by Shiru. A logic game based on connections, free, code included.
- Lawn Mower — by Shiru. A minimal arcade game, often the first example quoted by anyone learning to develop on the NES.
- Zooming Secretary — by Shiru and PinWizz. An original arcade game, free, code included.
- Wolfling — by Lazycow. Ling switches between human and wolf form to escape a dungeon. A 43 KB ROM.
- Light From Within — by Atarath. An action-adventure whose demo is distributed as a free ROM; the full version will be paid.
- Super Tilt Bro. for NES — by sgadrat. Pay-what-you-want platform fighting, with an online mode when the cartridge carries the Wi-Fi chip.
Super Nintendo: four games
- The Last Super — by Dr. Ludos. Twenty platform levels for the console's thirtieth anniversary, a 256 KB ROM.
- Keeping SNES Alive! — by Dr. Ludos. A cartridge to pass between four consoles so that none of them falls asleep. C code included.
- Dottie Flowers — by Goldlocke. Six platform levels in the spirit of the German productions of 1990, with a widescreen variant.
- Supercooked! — by Goldlocke, bennysnesdev and ChronoMoogle. Co-operative cooking for up to four players, eight levels.
Mega Drive: five games
- Zero Tolerance — by Technopop. A special case: this first-person shooter from 1994 was put back up as a free download by the rights holder, along with its unreleased sequel.
-
30 Years of Nintendon't — by Dr. Ludos. A tribute to the console's thirtieth anniversary, as a free
.bin. - Break An Egg — by Dr. Ludos. Made during a one-hour jam; ROM and source code published together.
- Aratu & Shaolin — by Amaweks and the Mangangá team. Two Brazilian-inspired scrolling fighting games, free.
- Abyssal Infants — by kakoeimon. A hard two-player shooter, also released on Neo Geo and PlayStation 1.
PC Engine: two games
- Reflectron — by Aetherbyte Studios. A score-chasing game built on laser bounces, pay what you want.
- Nantettatte Engine — by Aetherbyte Studios. An arcade shooter for the console's thirtieth anniversary: shoot the enemies down before they touch the ground.
Other machines: seven games
- Mai Nurse — eight machines, by lunoka. A pill puzzler in the Dr. Mario vein, released on Game Boy, NES, SNES, Master System, Game Gear, Mega Drive and PC Engine.
-
Devwill SMS — Master System, by Amaweks. Horror-inspired action platformer; demo as a
.sms, full version through resellers. -
Plug 'N' Repair — Nintendo 64, by Dr. Ludos. A short experience built around plugging a controller into each of the four ports.
.z64ROM, MIT source. -
Running Knight — Atari Lynx, by Dr. Ludos. A knight runs without stopping through a maze of pillars.
.lnxand.lyxformats. - Blasting Robots — Atari Lynx, by Dr. Ludos. Top-down shooter, score-chasing, commented code.
- Mini Running Ant — Pokémon Mini, by Dr. Ludos. A machine the scene almost never serves, and one of the few free new games made for it.
- MeteoRain — Dreamcast, by Dr. Ludos. The same idea as the GBA version, ported to Dreamcast for a competition.
Where to find them, source by source
| Source | What you will find there | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| itch.io | The personal page of most authors, ROM included | Free or pay what you want; the "free" filter isolates the titles with no mandatory payment. |
| Homebrew Hub (hh.gbdev.io) | Community archive of the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance and NES scenes | 1,568 entries to date, playable in the browser before downloading. |
| PDRoms (pdroms.de) | Homebrew and public domain, all machines | 2,530 files across 46 platforms, from the Commodore 64 to the Switch. |
| Authors' personal sites | Games and source code, sometimes found nowhere else | Shiru's page, for instance, gathers his nine free NES productions and their sources. |
| GitHub and open forges | Open projects: µCity, Tobu Tobu Girl, the Butano engine | Compiled ROM in the released versions, or compile it yourself. |
The annual competitions, the best source of new releases
If you do not follow the scene day to day, the competitions are enough: they condense a whole year onto one page, and their rules often require the entries to be free.
The gbdev collective's Game Boy Competition is the best stocked. The 2021, 2023 and 2025 editions are documented; the 2025 one ran from 31 May to 31 August and gathered 113 submissions — games, demos, music cartridges and tools. Its rules require every entry to be free for the public, not just for the jury. On the Game Boy Advance side, gbadev.net organised GBA Jam 2021 and 2022, which produced several titles in this selection. The NES, SNES and Mega Drive scenes have their own, announced on their forums.
Installing them on your console
A homebrew game is copied like any other file: into the folder for the system it targets, with the expected extension. A .nes in the NES folder, a .gb or .gbc in the Game Boy folder, a .sfc in the SNES folder. We detail the folder tree firmware by firmware in our guide to transferring games, and the reasons a game fails to launch in my game won't start.
Two points specific to homebrew. Some titles ship in several variants inside the same archive, with or without save support, standard or widescreen ROM: the text file included says which one to take. And a few games push the hardware far enough to expose an emulator's weaknesses; if one stutters or shows wrong colours, try another core before blaming the file.
What homebrew does not replace
Let's be honest about the limits. A game written by one person has neither the lifespan nor the polish of a commercial production from the period: many are over in twenty minutes, and some are technical exercises before they are games. In return, they are short and often more inventive than what the market allowed back then, which suits a console you switch on for ten minutes on the train.
Is homebrew really legal?
Yes, as long as it is the author who distributes it: they hold the rights to their code, graphics and music, and choose to hand them to you. The only thing to watch out for is games that reuse characters or trademarks belonging to others. Those exist too, and their situation is different.
Will these games run on my retro handheld?
Yes, they are ordinary ROMs for the emulators concerned. An entry-level Linux console runs Game Boy, Game Boy Color, NES, Master System, Game Boy Advance, PC Engine, Mega Drive and SNES without difficulty. Only the Nintendo 64 and Dreamcast entries in this list call for a faster machine, on the Android consoles side.
Do you have to pay anything?
No. All fifty titles can be downloaded without paying, and many are pay what you want: the payment field accepts zero. If a game keeps you busy for several evenings, leaving two or three euros with its author is still the best way to keep the scene going. A few are only free as a demo, and that is flagged.
How do you recognise a reliable source?
A reliable source names the author and links to their page. A developer's page on itch.io, the repository of an open project or an archive identified as Homebrew Hub all meet that test. A site that mixes homebrew and commercial games in the same catalogue does not.
Can homebrew damage my console?
A game loaded by an emulator carries no risk: it runs inside the emulator, not on the hardware. On an original console with a flash cartridge, the risk stays theoretical for a finished game; a test build can freeze the machine, and a restart is enough.
Where do you find new releases once this list is exhausted?
The competition results pages are the best entry point: a year of production, ranked by the jury, links included. Following three or four authors whose games you enjoyed gives the same result, since most release something new each year.
A card filled with homebrew is a library that is entirely yours, with no questions about where the files came from. If you are looking for the machine to go with it, our retro handheld consoles section states, for each model, the systems it actually emulates.