My take on a chip8 interpreter in python.
This should handle most ROMs fine. If games run too fast, run them with a delay (see below).
Note: Chip8 is a bit of a weird plattform given it's different implementations with their own quirks. This specific implementation only handles the original chip8.
chip8.py [-h] -r ROM [-d] [-w WAIT]
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-r ROM, --rom ROM ROM to load
-d, --debug Print debug information
-w WAIT, --wait WAIT Sleep n ms between instructions (default 0)
Pygame is the sole dependency. If not installed, run pip install -r requirements.txt.
Developed/tested against Python 3.11, however lower versions might work as well.
The chip8 only knows one beep sound. I find it rather annoying and doesn't add much value, which is why I didn't include one. You may add your favorite beep sound as 'sound.wav' to the root directory and it will be used.
Run ./run_benchmark.sh to run a benchmark. Automatically downloads required ROMs.
This exists mostly for me to iterate over different ideas to make things more efficient.
Big shoutouts to the following articles / posts / repos:
https://tobiasvl.github.io/blog/write-a-chip-8-emulator - Great reference overall
http://devernay.free.fr/hacks/chip8/C8TECH10.HTM - Used this for implementing the opcodes and other technical stuff
https://github.com/craigthomas/Chip8Python - Really nice emulator which I took much inspiration from
https://github.com/corax89/chip8-test-rom - For providing a test ROM
https://github.com/Timendus/chip8-test-suite - For providing a whole test suite