Goby

Goby was the first Gameboy emulator for Symbian's EPOC operating system (used by the Psion Series 5). It was written specifically for the Psion 5mx and was a major technical achievement for the underpowerered machine (with an ARM CPU clocked at just 36 Mhz). Goby was also a major innovation, still providing some of the best games available for the platform to this day. The success of the product has been recognised by the awards it has won and the comments it has received from users and reviewers alike (see below).

For several months, trading under the name BacklitGames, I marketed and sold Goby myself. However, upon returning to university for my final year I turned over the software to Proporta (previously PalmTec) who published it for several years.

Now that plenty of time has passed since the commercial release I've made the registration key generator available so that anyone can use Goby freely. José Luis Cruz took the initiative of porting the key generator to OPL so that it can be run on an EPOC machine without requiring a Windows PC to hand which is also available to download.

Thanks must go to the people who cracked Goby and put it up on the peer-to-peer network edonkey - I'm very flattered that anyone thought it was worth the effort!

Screenshot of Goby running Tetris


Download

Goby demo 58 Kb Zip Archive
Goby Registration Code Generator for Windows 6 Kb Zip Archive
Goby Registration Code Generator for EPOC 2 Kb Zip Archive


Reviews

Symbian Developer Competition
Runner-up (i.e. 2nd place) for the Best non-Java game on the Symbian platform, 2000.

Symbian Developer Network
Edge magazine

Edge article
Issue #89, October 2000, published by Future Publishing.

PDAGeek.com
Goby v1.1 reviewed (local copy) by PDAGeek.com giving it a massive 5/5 for quality and 5/5 for geekness (apparently this is good!) as well as being made a Geek.com Pick. It reviews version 1.0 with an update for the latest version.

"Excellent and addictive gameplay, almost like the real thing"

"The programmers really listen to their users."

EPOCGamer.com

Goby v1.0 reviewed (local copy) by EPOCGamer.com on 18th July 2000 (the day after first release), receiving a 10/10 rating, making BacklitGames only the fourth company to receive an EPOCGamer Gold Award.

"...Backlit Games has achieved one of the ultimate feats on EPOC..."

Miscellaneous

Three miscellaneous reviews in languages other than english, one in Japanese, one in Czech and one in Russian.


Comments

"This is one of the best pieces of software I've seen on the EPOC platform..." - Ian

"Wow. Wow. Wow." - Mat

"...*the* games release of 2000!" - Darren

"...it looks good, in fact it looks very very good." - Steve

"Can I say, HOLY %$&* !!! How good is this program ! I've just registered it (5 minutes after seeing it!)." - Bob

"I have just downloaded your brilliant Gameboy emulator and I am addicted..." - Gids

"Having used Goby for about 3 weeks I have to admit I've stopped playing all other Psion games. This is an excellent piece of software." - John

"...the boss wouldn't like me using a Game Boy in meetings ! Now he'll think I'm being productive using the Psion all the time :-) An absolutely STUNNING job !!" - Bob

"Just wanted to say how cool I think Goby is. Nice work indeed to create an emulator like that." - Phil

"Thanks for a tremendous application..." - Darren

"I have tried goby and was very impressed..." - Tom

"I have to say its a very good product..." - Ralph

"Well done, a great program." - Ian

"It's a great piece of software, nice job!" - Joe