Skull Buster GB demake

20 waves. 5 lives. One very annoyed skull.

A Game Boy Color demake of the PICO-8 game Skull Buster.
Built from scratch in C with GBDK-2020 to run at a locked 60 fps on real hardware.

WEB EMULATOR CONTROLS:
Move: Arrow Keys · Fire: X · Start/Pause: Enter · Secrets: Tab
(On mobile devices, touch controls will automatically appear on screen)

You fly a single ship along the bottom of the screen while formations of grinning skulls hang above you — they peel off, dive, and spit bullets. Clear the formation and the next wave arrives. Survive twenty of them and the final boss shows up.

ONE SHOT ON SCREEN. THE SHIP HAS MOMENTUM.
You cannot spray, and the ship coasts when you let go. Make it count, and lead your turns. Their bullets and their bodies both hurt, and you only get 5 hearts.

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The Enemy Roster

Six types · six attack routines · six palettes.

• Grinner (1 HP): Dives straight down, swaying. One shot kills it.
• Bloodhound (2 HP): Tracks you — drifts toward your ship all the way down.
• Strafer (2 HP): Dives, then charges along your row firing. The only one that shoots mid-dive.
• Ironjaw (3 HP): Armoured. Dives like the Grinner, soaks three hits.
• Ricochet (10 HP): Miniboss. Double-size, ricochets off the edges, firing all the way.
• The Warden (50 HP): Wave 20 final boss. Sweeps across the screen on a sine wave, bouncing off the walls, firing far faster than anything else in the game.

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Controls

• D-PAD: Fly the ship — 8 directions including diagonals. The ship accelerates while you hold and coasts to a stop when you let go.
• A: Fire. One shot on screen at a time.
• START: Pause / unpause. On the title screen, begin a new game. Skips the publisher splash and the score tally.
• D-PAD+START: High score screen — ↑/↓ change letter, ←/→ move between the three letters, START saves.

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Secrets (Undocumented. Now documented.)

• BOSS RUSH (SELECT on title screen): Skips all nineteen normal waves and drops you straight into the Wave 20 boss fight.
• PANIC BUTTON (SELECT during play): Instantly wipes every skull in the current wave and advances you to the next one. The price: your score is reset to zero.

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On the Cartridge

• 20 hand-built waves
• Locked 60 fps on original hardware
• Battery-backed high score with three-letter initials
• Chiptune soundtrack by MuteAudio
• Super Game Boy compatible (custom border)

SKULL BUSTER GB (GitLab Source) — © 2026 Ursiny.cz · Music by MuteAudio
Based on Skull Buster by Jimmac — original graphics used with the author's blessing.