I discovered this out first-hand when loading up my copy of Pokémon Gold—whether or not I’d caught ‘em all again in 2001, I’ll by no means have the ability to affirm, because the battery died sooner or later within the final quarter-century(!). Booting it up via the GB Operator was like switching it on for the primary time. Nevertheless, if it had nonetheless contained my surely-completed Pokédex, I’d have been in a position to copy that information to my laptop computer’s arduous drive, substitute the battery within the cartridge (a fiddly course of, however doable), after which load the save again onto it—magic.
Nevertheless, it’s price noting that at current, the whole lot depends on the cartridge’s precise save processes. Whereas digital “snapshot” saves—capturing a recreation at any given second—are on Epilogue’s roadmap, the characteristic is just not but accessible. It is going to first be examined via the experimental “Nightly Builds” model of Playback (discovered on the backside of the downloads web page) earlier than being totally applied.
You may also use the GB Operator to dump the whole principal recreation information from a cart you personally personal, permitting you to make a authorized copy on your personal archival functions (don’t share; that’s when it turns into piracy). The method itself is fast, relying on the sport’s dimension, however even the Recreation Boy Advance’s largest video games have been 32 MB at most. Even should you do again up a recreation on this method, GB Operator nonetheless requires the unique cart to run something, although—you’ll be able to’t simply load the dumped ROM via the Playback software program.
Lastly, should you’re an aspiring developer or into retro-style indie video games, it lets you switch homebrew video games created via the likes of GB Studio onto a flash cart and play them on an precise Recreation Boy. It’s one other area of interest characteristic, however one which’s nice to have, permitting present-day creators to construct on the legacy of the beloved handhelds.
It’s actually arduous to search out a lot fault with the GB Operator. Even highlighting that it lacks actual portability—positive, it’s tiny, however needing to be hooked as much as a pc robs it of the pick-up-and-play enchantment of the pocket-sized consoles it homages—looks like splitting hairs. It in the end does the whole lot it guarantees, all for lower than $50.
It is a marvelous little bit of package, and the general efficiency and utility bode extraordinarily effectively for Epilogue’s upcoming SN Operator, which goals to do the identical for the Tremendous Nintendo as this does for the Recreation Boy household (and a mysterious “?? Operator” to comply with). In the event you’re searching for a simple, low-budget method to revisit or revive your Recreation Boy assortment, that is the best choice.
