COcorysama·Jan 18, 2026
Go make a game for the Sega Genesis https://mdengine.dev/
Or, the GameBoy Advance https://github.com/GValiente/butano
In ASCII characters are not pixels: a deep dive into ASCII renderingGValiente
butano
C++2020–2026
GValiente / butano
butano
Modern C++ high level GBA engine
4Distinct people
5Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
1.8KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Modern C++ high level GBA engine
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use has been verified yet.
What people are saying
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Also in these discussions
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This week on Hacker News
Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year5 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2020-11-14 09:34:15 UTC to 2026-01-18 00:18:52 UTC.
* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2021 | 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2025 | 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2026 (partial) | 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 2 | 2 |
What Hacker News says
5 sourcesShow HN: I ported classic flash game Bloxorz to Game Boy Advance
I had 2 weeks of holiday vacation and I wasn't interested enough to work on my other long running projects so I decided to get into GBA homebrew when my brother gifted me a Game Boy Advance SP for Christmas. I was going to remake Wordle but someone else already did that so Bloxorz was my second choice.
Most of the hard work is done by the Butano engine: https://github.com/GValiente/butano
I'm also using go to process the original assets and prerender the static part of the levels.
It runs on real hardware but you can (ironically) play it now in the browser thanks to EmulatorJS: https://nostabyte.itch.io/bloxorzgba
I might writeup a full tech breakdown of how it works at some point if anyone is interested.
2 points · Open discussionSome people have the skills to make C++ work on a GBA, https://github.com/GValiente/butano
Arduino, https://docs.arduino.cc/arduino-cloud/guides/arduino-c/
Or even ESP32, https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/stable/esp32/...
Others do not.
As for C does not such thing, strangly there are enough examples from TI, Microchip, Atmel that prove otherwise.
In C Is Best (2025)Butano, a modern C++ high level GBA engine
3 points · Open discussionButano: Modern C++ high level GameBoy Advance engine
86 points · Open discussion