CHGame Player

An Android app for playing CHGame handheld games (.CHG files) on Android handhelds such as the Retroid Pocket, and phones. It runs joyrider3774's cycle-accurate CHGame Emulator, so games play as they do on the real board.

• A game list with each game's cartridge picture, credits and version, in sections: favourites, last played, CHGame originals and ports.
• A live preview of the selected game, with its sound.
• Save states (4 slots a game), resume where you left off, the games' own saves with export and import, fast-forward, screenshots, button mapping, per-game sound settings.
• ES-DE support (start games from ES-DE, quit back with SELECT + START) and an ES-DE media maker: a video, a screenshot and a cover for every game, made on the device.
• One permission, internet, used only by Get games; no storage permission: the app sees only the folders you choose.

No games are included: put your .CHG files (and any .DAT files they use) in a folder and choose it in the app.

An illustrated how-to with screenshots: docs/HOW-TO.md.

Download: the APK is on the releases page. Setup, ES-DE and every option: docs/GUIDE.md.

The same emulator as a RetroArch core: CHGame-libretro.

Building

On Windows with zig, a JDK 21 and the Android SDK (build-tools 37.0.0, platform 36) in ~/tools/android (or the folder in ANDROID_TOOLS):

./android/build_apk.sh          # build/CHGamePlayer-<version>.apk

The native part is the emulator and the libretro wrapper (emu/, libretro/) compiled for arm64 with zig against musl's headers, linked to Android's own C library at run time (libretro/android_shim.c). android/jni/fe_*.c run the app's native layer on a PC.

Credits and licences

• CHGame Emulator by joyrider3774, MIT licence (emu/LICENSE): all of the emulation, unchanged at the commit in EMULATOR_VERSION.txt.
• CHGame by Kevin Bates (bateske), https://chgame.website, Apache-2.0. The bootloader embedded in the emulator is MIT.
• Press Start 2P by CodeMan38, SIL Open Font License 1.1 (android/assets/fonts/OFL.txt).
• libretro/libretro.h from libretro-common, by the RetroArch team.
• The app: jadflat, MIT licence (LICENSE). See NOTICE.