World of Warcraft has always had downtime. Flight paths, boat rides, corpse runs, waiting for a fourth. A new addon called MekkaBoy has decided that time belongs to the Game Boy Advance.
MekkaBoy is a Lua addon for World of Warcraft: Forever that runs a full Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance emulator inside the game itself. There is nothing to install beyond the addon folders, and nothing running outside of WoW. Type /mb, or click the little Game Boy button on your minimap, and an emulator window opens on screen, either as a slim see-through overlay or as a virtual handheld via /mb look, in six colors. It comes with a cartridge shelf, four save-state slots, fast-forward and rewind, and it politely closes itself when you enter combat or a ready check goes out.
The party trick goes further than playing Pokémon on a gryphon. Two players with the addon can link up anywhere in the open world: /mb trade or /mb battle in Pokémon Emerald, FireRed and LeafGreen opens a trade or battle right where you both stand, with each side’s team revealed first, while /mb link connects earlier generations through the Cable Club. A Together Mode shows other MekkaBoy players on your realm wandering around inside your copy of a supported Pokémon game, names over their heads, and there’s a shared National Pokédex (/mb dex) built from every Pokémon save on your account.
Mekkaboy ships with five original WoW-themed games, including a Texas Hold’em title called Deadmines Hold’em, and everything else is bring-your-own: ROMs go through a browser-based Workshop that converts files locally without uploading them anywhere. Imported games play silent until a soundtrack pack is recorded, which the Workshop handles for most Advance titles.
MekkaBoy is free and in beta at mekkaboy.com.
Source: MekkaBoy
