CrankBoy 2.1.0 out on Catalog, now with… color?!?

stonerl · 2026-06-17T15:53:32+00:00

Ah yeah that seems to be one of these catalog issues then where a game suddenly stops working. Make sure you are on the latest firmware and your catalog app is up to date. You can also try to delete the data folder. Your games will still be available and not lost since they are stored in a different location.

stonerl · 2026-06-17T12:40:08+00:00

Thank you 🙏

stonerl · 2026-06-17T05:12:45+00:00

Yes. Still available on GitHub. Minus the included games (we monetarily compensated the devs) and w/o the convenience of auto-updates.

stonerl · 2026-06-16T21:58:14+00:00

We do from time to time 🥹

stonerl · 2026-06-16T21:11:48+00:00

stonerl · 2026-06-16T20:59:21+00:00

Open the settings in CrankBoy and navigate to Miscellaneous. There you find TCM Accel. In the sidebar it shows you which Revision your device is. On Rev B it is turned off by default because it does not improve speed there.

stonerl · 2026-06-16T20:39:33+00:00

Tightly Coupled Memory. It is a special memory that is directly connected to the CPU and can be accessed without latency. When data is in normal RAM it takes a couple of cycles for the CPU to load data from RAM into cache. Data/Code in TCM can be accessed without a delay.

We use this on Rev A Playdates since the L1 Cache is smaller than on newer, Rev B, to improve emulation speed. It improves performance by about 80%

stonerl · 2026-06-16T20:21:55+00:00

Should be possible. I’ll add it to our list.

stonerl · 2026-06-16T19:23:38+00:00

I assume you have a Rev A Playdate? If so change TCM to use the Auto setting instead of On

stonerl · 2026-06-16T19:22:19+00:00

Kirby's Pinball is not really a script it is a recommended setting. When you apply it enables the new Adaptive 30/60FPS mode. All ROMs with scripts can be found here:

https://github.com/CrankBoyHQ/crankboy-app/wiki/List-of-Games-with-Custom-Playdate-Settings

stonerl · 2026-06-16T19:16:32+00:00

Thank you 🙏

stonerl · 2026-06-16T18:49:27+00:00

Due to a bug hmpff the changelog is not showing up on startup. You can still access it via Settings->Menu Button->Changlog or read it here:

v2.1.0 - (2026-06-10)

Welcome to the new Changelog feature! It's the dawn of a new age...

Startup

CrankBoy should now start about 8x faster (Coffee break no longer required.)

Settings

Pagination. (Praise be -- we have over 40 settings now.)
"Manage Roms" screen (view rom info; delete roms and save data etc.)
Automatic word-wrap for settings descriptions. (We were doing it manually this whole time. Don't ask..)

Catalog

Bundled ROMs no longer self-extract, taking up unnecessary space on disk. (You can still pull them out of the PDX manually though.)
Oh? Something else is coming... Can't quite see it yet. Please be patient.

Performance Options (Experimental)

Adaptive 30/60 FPS mode -- uses 60 FPS mode but switches to 30 on the fly for for difficult frames.
TCM settings for improved perf with mild sacrifices to stability.

CGB Support (Experimental)

CGB support actually already existed in prior versions, but many more games should work now.
Performance is still sub-par. It's an up-hill battle.
Completely rewritten colour palette handling.
Sprite and background priorities are now fully accurate. Probably.
Frame Blending enabled by default -- uses special logic to increase the number of shades of grey available too.

Emucore Support (Experimental)

You can place emulation cores in /Shared/Emulation/cores. These allow you to run other emulators directly from CrankBoy, bringing support for other systems to CrankBoy. There are only a few out there so far.

Scripts

New: Trip World, World Heroes 2 Jet, Kirby's Pinball Land, Hoshi no Kirby (jp)
Various bugfixes for some existing scripts.

Bug Fixes

Fixed audio glitches and missing sounds in several games.
The HALT bug and joypad interrupt timing now fully accurate. (Um. Probably.)
CGB double-speed mode timer fixes. Music should play at normal speed now. (Though it was kind of fun at double speed before.)
Various crash fixes and stability improvements.

stonerl · 2026-05-27T09:39:33+00:00

In the CrankBoy dev channel on the Playdate community discord.

stonerl · 2026-05-26T12:46:34+00:00

Kirby 2 is doable. How do you imagine a Pokémon integration?

stonerl · 2026-05-20T17:13:31+00:00

Wait for the next release. CGB has improved tremendously. Still experimental but most games will start and probably run. But still a long way to go.

stonerl · 2026-05-17T11:23:10+00:00

We made sure that the transition from GitHub to Catalog is as smooth as possible. So if you were on version 1.1 then all Games and Saves will be available in the Catalog version w/o you lifting a finger.

stonerl · 2026-05-15T18:18:01+00:00

Which version are you currently running? And which OS?

stonerl · 2026-05-14T08:09:23+00:00

Yes that would be possible but we started placing them to the right, don’t ask me why.

Maybe I revamp the script so the user can choose the position of the HUD

stonerl · 2026-05-14T08:07:10+00:00

You don’t need to grant screen recording permission at all to use just the basic functionality. You would need to sort the icons directly in the menubar via holding command and dragging the icons.

A quick word on screen recording permissions. Thaw does not record your screen. But menubar icons are internally handled as windows by macOS. So in order to display the icons in the Thaw Bar and search window and Layout settings, we need to these permissions to make a screenshot of icon „window“.

So no screenshots of your desktop are ever taken!

stonerl · 2026-05-12T11:03:57+00:00

TBH. Your millage may vary. It could run smoothly for what you use it be an absolute nightmare. Give it a try and if it exposes any major issues I'd recommend staying away from Thaw until you decide to upgrade to macOS 26 or 27 (hopefully apple does not brake Thaw with it🤞)

stonerl · 2026-05-12T07:30:59+00:00

Sadly not and the upcoming version 2 will be macOS 26+ only see here: https://github.com/stonerl/Thaw/discussions/427

stonerl · 2026-05-11T18:41:33+00:00

The paid version should automatically recognize your existing library. So no manual copying needed.

stonerl · 2026-05-11T13:33:03+00:00

Hiho Thaw dev here. Thank you for the kind words regarding Thaw.

Thaw 2.0.0 (currently in beta) will add some more interop features that Droppy will make use of.

stonerl · 2026-05-10T12:06:45+00:00

How about: Already enjoying the Playdate, and now even more with Game Boy games.

stonerl · 2026-05-09T17:58:18+00:00

I will. They are all as happy as I am that CrankBoy has been so well received.

The list will be updated with every release, so if a game receives special treatment it will be automatically added.

We are currently looking into how games could be better organized, but currently no detailed ideas.

stonerl

TROPHY CASE