Game & Watch Emulation

Mickaël Isman

13 min readAug 27, 2024

Cleanest Artwork Set + Installation Tutorials and Packs for :

Android (Retroarch + mess core, Daijisho)
Windows (Mame, Retrobat)
Linux Based systems (Batocera, Emuelec, ArkOS, etc) — Coming soon

Playing game & watch games is still relevant today : especially using a phone (not ideal for controls except if you add a bluetooth controller) or a handheld emulator console (Anbernic, Retroid, PowKiddy, etc), which is the best way in my opinion (I use an Anbernic RG556 based on Android and the result is awesome on the beatiful Oled screen).

It’s still a lot of fun and I personnally play several G&W games every day, such as Donkey Kong Jr. (both widescreen and panorama screen version, both are great), Popeye (love the simplicity and still addictive gameplay), Green House (excellent dual screen game, fast action), and other great classics that are also very addictive such as Turtle Bridge, Octopus, Parachute, Fire, Donkey Kong (dual screen), Oil Panic, Mario’s Cement Factory, Helmet, etc.

But emulating G&W properly and finding clean artworks can be very tricky, so I gathered a lot of informations on it and summarized it on here, and also, I’ll give you links to manually cleaned Artworks packs to use with your emulator and frontends (box images, logos, screen shots). I used a lot of Launchbox artworks, but tweaked it, resized it, cleaned it bit to fit popular Frontends like Daijisho (android), Retrobat or Batocera. The medias that are available on scraping engines like screensraper or others are pure crap.

I’ll also link you to the needed artwork and config files for Mame, and the proper way to find the correct romset (can’t link you directly to the download, but it’s very easy to find).

So, there will be 4 parts on this page :

I. Android

II. Windows

III. Linux based systems- Coming Soon

IV. Summary of Links to download artwork packs, preview media, rom searching recommendation, configuration files.

I. Android (Handhelds, smartphones, TV Boxes, etc.)

There are 3 main ways to emulate Game & Watch games on Android :

Using the standalone Mame4Droid emulator (latest one > .268), but it seems slow and the UI is not very user friendly.
Using the Handheld Electronic Games core (lr_gw) under Retroarch, but it only support few actual Nintendo G&W games (8 or 10), and other crappy 3rd party brand handhelds (tommy, bandai, Tiger, etc)
Using the mess core latest under Retroarch (lr_mess), which is the way to go, but it needs some tweaking to be playable : otherwise it’s very slow and unplayable.

I don’t even mentionned the crappy and full of adds g&w simulators available on the google store, don’t waste your time with this.

So the present Android Tutorial will focus on the 3rd solution above. And it will be perfect, you will see. Note that the roms for the gw core and the mame roms are totally different and not compatible with each other.

I-1. Retroarch installation and general configuration :

Install Latest Retroarch build from Retroarch website (1.19.1 or newer) : scroll down to the Android Section and click on “Download”. I recommend not downloading the 64bit version (I had issues with it), just click on “download” : (skip if Retroarch latest build is already installed on your device)

I assume you configured general settings in Retroarch first, such as binding controls, setting Hotkeys, setting Bios directory etc. There are plenty of great tutorials for this. I recommend this one : Retroarch Starter Guide by Retro Game Corps. For Android devices, I recommend keeping the stock appearance menu “ozone”, which is more suited for mobile devices.”xmb” menu is better on windows.
Then open Retroarch, and scroll to “online updater”, and select “Download Core” : select Multi (MESS), which is the latest version of Mame-Mess core (0.268). Only the mess core will play g&w games correctly, but it will need some tweaking, otherwise it will be very slow (especially when using mame artworks for g&w).

That’s it for now for Retroarch general configuration ; I could also show you how to create a g&w playlist and play games directly within Retroarch, but I’ll focus only on Daijisho for now, wich is a popular and powerfull frontend for Android. (see part I-5).

There will be more retroarch tweaking, once everything is installed (see chapter I-6). These fine tunings will be mandatory to experiment smooth gameplay. Yeah, even for an old system like this, the fact that mame uses high resolution artwork can slow down gameplay drastically if you don’t tweak retroarch a bit.

I-2. Downloading and Installing Game & Watch Mame rom files :

Create a “gw” or “gameandwatch” (or whatever name you like) folder inside your main Roms folder, (which is supposed to be stored on an SD Card or the root of the Internal storage of your device)
Search and download the Mame full set of Game & watch games. Can’t really link it to you, but here is a great place to find it, you’ll see, it will be very easy ! ( ;) ) : Search for curated mame game & watch rom set.
Extract the .7z file into the gw folder you just created. It will be populated with 56 .zip files (the mame g&w roms).

I-3. Downloading and Installing Game & Watch Mame Artwork files :

g&w games without these files look very minimal and it doesn’t do justice to the original gameplay. Example : Popeye without its artwork (background) :

By adding these artwork files, you’ll have a nice and authentic result like this :

Download the curated Artwork files (56 files), that will match the roms you just installed : Mame g&w Artwork curated.
Extract the artwork.7z into : Internal Storage/RetroArch/system/mame/artwork. It will be populated with 56 .zip files that match exactlyu the roms you just installed.

I-4. Downloading and Installing Game & Watch Mame .cfg files :

These are .cfg configuration files that will tell the emulator to directly display the g&w games in full screen, with only the background and layer artworks. (Just like the above screenshots). This is the cleanest and best way to play it on a handheld imo.

(You will still be able to toggle the presentation of the games in the mame OSD Video options, if you prefer. For example, displaying the entire game & watch handheld console instead of just the screen and backgrounds. By default, you can display the mame OSD menu with selct+Y buttons on your hanfheld)

Download the .cfg files here : Fullscreen+Background .cfg mame files
Extract the 56 .cfg files placed in this config.7z file into your Internal Stoarage/Retroarch/saves/MAME/mame/cfg folder.

I-5. Configuring Daijisho + Adding custom and CLEAN preview Media files :

Daijisho is a great looking frontend and will allow to launch games with a beautiful interface. It will need few steps to configure it to launch games using the correct retroarch core.

Your game & watch library will look even cleaner if you donwload the custom preview media pack I made (see link below). I’ve reworked and renamed correctly launchbox box and logo art, and made custom screenshots and title shots. You can bypass this and scrap the library using Daijisho engines, but the result won’t look as good. The files I provide are high quality cleaned png’s.

Add the Game & Watch platform to Daijisho. This first step is self explainatory. (I assume you know Daijisho and how to add platforms)

Then, click on the Pencil Icon, we have to Edit few parameters first :

1.Uncheck “Scrape preview media for items.

Change the default player (emulator) for this platform to “gw-RetroArch-mess” (or “gw-RetroArch64-mess” if you have installed the 64 bit version of retroarch, which I don’t recommend.) In order to do this, click on the pencil Icon to edit the platform settings : Then scroll down to “Player parameters”, and “Default player” :

Scroll down to “Custom box art aspect ratio” : check this line and enter 7:4, just like this. And just under this, select for the Screen Aspect Ratio : “3:2 gba”. Just like this :

Click on Save at the bottom of the page, that’s it for now.
Add your g&w rom path to this platform. To do this : clicck on “path”, then “add” and browse to your gw rom folder. Allow access. click on “sync”.
Download my : curated and ultra clean Preview Media pack for g&w Daijisho. Extract this .7z file anywhere ; for example in your g&w rom directory. It will extract 3 folders : “box2dfront”, “screenshot” and “screenshottitle”.

I spent quite a lot of time to clean, rotate, rename and format these files to be compatible with Daijisho. The source of these artwork is the Launchbox site. Here are some example of ultra clean preview medias I provide here :

Then, click again on the pencil Icon again. We now have to import these files in Daijisho.:

Manually import preview Media Files : box art, snap shot, title. Click on “Import Preview Media. Select “box art” first, the point to the box2dfront folder you just downloaded. Allow access. Repeat this step for the other 2 folders (snapshot and title) :

Click on Save.

It’s over for Daijisho configuration. But there is one last important setting under Retroarch : see I.6 below. The result in Daijisho should look like this :

platform image (pop! theme), grid view, list view (box art)

I-6. Final RetroArch tweaking (core options):

This is needed, otherwise, with the default core options, it will be probably slow and stuttery.

Launch a g&w game.
Enter the Retroarch UI (quick menu), with whatever hotkey you configured.
Scroll down to “Core Options”, then “system”

Then check the “read” and “write” configuration lines, just like this :

go back and save override configuration (for the core).
Last thing : go to “Core Options”, Video”, and check “alternate renderer”. Try 800x450 and if still stutters, set the minimum value which is 640x360)

Go back and save override configuration (for the core).

That’s it for Android / Daijisho. Enjoy !

II. Windows (Standalone Mame, Retrobat)

The Installation / Configuration process for Windows will be way easier and shorter.

There’s only one way to emulate properly g&w on windows : latest Mame emulator. Forget Retroarch using mame core, the latest mame core is known to be slow and buggy.

I will guide you to the 2 simplest solutions : Mame emulator only (chapter I-1), then Mame using the awesome Retrobat Frontend (chapter I-2). The Retrobat process will be almost as easy ans short than the standalone Mame solution.

II-1 Mame

(skip if latest mame is already installled) First, download and install the latest version of mame emulator on the official mame site. Chose windows platform, then the first choixe which is a self extracting 7z .exe file :

Place the file where you want to install mame, double click on it and it will extract all mame files in a “Mame” Folder. That’s it.

Download the complete Mame GW pack I made. It’s a .7z file which contains all the needed files in the 4 correctly named folders : (roms, snap, artwork, cfg). Extract it using 7zip in the Mame Folder. The best solution is to place or download this file in the mame directory, right click on it and chose “extract here” Overwrite if asked.
Launch mame.exe, you will get the Mame UI. Then, on the left column, click on “Available”. It will show only the games (roms) you have. Note that if you already have the full mame romset, you will have to scroll to “Game a Watch”.

That’s it for Windows Mame Installation/Configuration ! Enjoy !

The result :

II-2 Retrobat

The Retrobat process will be almost as short/simple than the standalone Mame process above ; there will be only 2 short steps more : changing the default emulator to launch g&w games, then, at first launch og a g&w game, Retrobat will ask you to install Mame (see the 2 last steps below).

. I assume you already Installed Retrobat on the official Retrobat page. It’s really simple and self explainatory. It will install a Retrobat Folder at the desired location, that will look like this :

Batgui will allow you to chose between full screen or windowed mode, screen resolution and other parameters.

retrobat.exe is the main frontend app.

Download the complete Retrobat GW pack I made. It’s a .7z file which contains all the needed files in the 3 correctly named folders : (roms, saves, bios). Extract it using 7zip in the Retrobar Folder. The best solution is to place or download this file in the Retrobat directory, right click on it and chose “extract here” Overwrite if asked.
Open Retrobat, and open the game & watch Game list, the click on the “select” button of your controller. You will have a menu like this. Chose the last option “Advanced System Options” :

Then, at the first line, “EMULATOR” chose “MAME64” :

Go back to the list and launch a game, let’s say “Donkey Kong Jr. :

At first launch, Retrobat will detect that the standalone Mame emulator is not Installed and will ask you if you want to install it. Click on “Yes”.