Open Source Go Emulators

NES emulator written entirely in Go, aimed at accurately reproducing classic Nintendo Entertainment System games in a modern, cross-platform environment. It reimplements the NES hardware in software, including CPU, PPU (graphics), and APU (audio), and then presents the output using OpenGL for video and PortAudio for sound. The emulator supports a menu mode where, if you point it at a directory instead of a single ROM, it scans all ROMs and shows a game selection screen with thumbnails fetched from an online database keyed by each ROM’s MD5 hash. Once a ROM is chosen, the emulator maps keyboard controls to NES inputs and also supports USB joysticks, letting you play with a gamepad instead of just the keyboard. Under the hood it implements several common NES cartridge mappers such as NROM, MMC1, UNROM, CNROM, MMC3, and AOROM, which together cover the majority of NES titles in circulation.

BigQuery Emulator is an open-source server implementation that replicates the behavior of Google Cloud’s BigQuery service locally, enabling developers to test and develop data workflows without connecting to the real cloud environment. Written in Go, it can run as a standalone binary, Docker container, or embedded library within test environments, making it highly flexible for different workflows. The emulator supports a large portion of the BigQuery API surface, including dataset management, query execution, and data ingestion, allowing applications to interact with it as if it were the real service. It uses SQLite as its underlying storage engine, with options for in-memory or persistent file-based databases depending on the use case. The system also implements many features of Google Standard SQL, including hundreds of functions and advanced query constructs, enabling realistic query testing.

fake-gcs-server is a lightweight emulator for the Google Cloud Storage API that allows developers to test applications locally without relying on actual cloud infrastructure. It replicates the behavior of GCS endpoints, enabling operations such as creating buckets, uploading objects, and querying storage data in a controlled environment. The server can be run as a standalone binary or inside a Docker container, making it flexible for integration into development and testing workflows. It also functions as a Go library, allowing it to be embedded directly into test suites for programmatic control. The emulator supports both HTTP and HTTPS configurations and can preload data to simulate real storage scenarios. This makes it particularly useful for integration testing, CI pipelines, and offline development environments.

Darktile is a GPU-rendered terminal emulator specifically designed for tiling window managers. It utilizes GPU acceleration to provide smooth and efficient rendering, supporting Unicode and a variety of themes. Darktile includes features like font ligatures, context-aware overlays (hints), and customizable cursors, enhancing the terminal experience for users who prefer tiling window environments.

The Lambda Runtime Interface Emulator is a proxy for Lambda’s Runtime and Extensions APIs, which allows customers to locally test their Lambda function packaged as a container image. It is a lightweight web-server that converts HTTP requests to JSON events and maintains functional parity with the Lambda Runtime API in the cloud. It allows you to locally test your functions using familiar tools such as cURL and the Docker CLI (when testing functions packaged as container images). It also simplifies running your application on additional computes. You can include the Lambda Runtime Interface Emulator in your container image to have it accept HTTP requests instead of the JSON events required for deployment to Lambda. This component does not emulate Lambda’s orchestrator, or security and authentication configurations. You can get started by downloading and installing it on your local machine.

GoBoy is a multi-platform Nintendo GameBoy and GameBoy Color emulator written in go. The emulator can run the majority of GB games and some CGB games. There is also colour and sound support. This emulator was primarily built as a development exercise and is still work in progress. Please feel free to contribute if you’re interested in GameBoy emulator development. The program includes debugging functions making it useful for understanding the emulator operation for building one yourself. These functions include printing of opcodes and register values to the console at each step (although will greatly slow down the emulation) and toggling of individual sound channels. GoBoy is compatible with MacOS, Windows and Linux. Building on Windows 10 requires MinGW and on Linux, you’ll need to install gtk.

A basic gameboy emulator with terminal "Cloud Gaming" support. Gameboy.Live is a Gameboy emulator written in go for learning purposes. You can simply play Gameboy games on your desktop. Or, "Cloud Game" in your terminal with a single command (The demo server is down now, you have to deploy on your own server) You can directly download the executable file from the Release page, or build it from the source. Go Version 1.11 or higher is required. Run go version to check what the version currently installed is. On Debian-based systems, the packages libasound2-dev and libgl1-mesa-dev must be installed. You can use Gameboy.Live as a "Cloud Gaming" server, where players use telnet to play Gameboy games in the terminal without additional software installation required.