CHIP-8 Emulator

A terminal-based CHIP-8 emulator written in Zig.

_{IBM Logo. Source}

_{Test opcode. Source}

CHIP-8 was created by Joseph Weisbecker in the mid-1970s. It’s a simple programming language with hexadecimal instructions that run on a virtual machine. The language was designed to make it easier to create games for the COSMAC VIP microcomputer.

This project is an almost complete reimplementation of the CHIP-8 virtual machine. Although sound is not implemented yet.

Building and Running

IMPORTANT Zig version 0.15.1 or higher is required. Since the 0.14.1 release, many Standard Library APIs have been changed, revamped, or removed. See the release notes for details.

zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseSafe

Run the emulator:

./zig-out/bin/chip8 <rom file>

Acknowledgements

• https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIP-8
• https://tobiasvl.github.io/blog/write-a-chip-8-emulator
• https://austinmorlan.com/posts/chip8_emulator