A CHIP-8 emulator written in Go.

CHIP8 is an interpreted programming language designed in the 1970s for writing games. The CHIP-8 programs are run on a virtual machine, which consists of the following components:

• 4 kilobytes of memory
• 16 8-bit general-purpose registers
• A call stack for subroutines
• 64 x 32 pixel monochrome display
• A hexidecimal keypad
• A monotone beeper
• 2 60Hz countdown timers, one for audio and other for instruction delay

For more information on CHIP-8 and how to write programs on it, see the following link: http://devernay.free.fr/hacks/chip8/C8TECH10.HTM.

This project requires Go 1.18+ and Ebiten. Make sure to install all the system dependencies necessary to run Ebiten.

To build the emulator, run the following:

make build

This will create the executable file chip8 in the root directory of the project.

The executable takes in the path to a CHIP-8 ROM file.

$ ./chip8 <path to ROM>

For example,

$ ./chip8 roms/Logo.ch8

The executable also takes in a -scale flag for changing the window size of the emulator.

$ ./chip8 -scale=10 roms/Logo.ch8   // Scales the window size by a factor of 10

The following shows the keys that are virtually mapped to the CHIP-8 keypad:

   Key                   Hex
|1|2|3|4|        \    |0|1|2|3|
|Q|W|E|R|   ------\   |4|5|6|7|
|A|S|D|F|   ------/   |8|9|A|B|
|Z|X|C|V|        /    |C|D|E|F|

The emulator provides a few basic functions for control:

Note: Pausing emulation will only pause the virtual machine. However, it will not pause the timers or keypad.

• CHIP-8 - Wikipedia
• Cowgod's CHIP-8 Technical Reference
• Guide to making a CHIP-8 emulator