Chipster

CHIP-8 isn't a real computer. It's a tiny imaginary one, invented in 1977 so that people could write games for hobby machines without learning the raw machine code underneath. It never really stopped: people have been writing CHIP-8 games continuously since the 70s. Chipster is a careful, complete way to play them on your phone.

101 public-domain programs come built in — arcade games, puzzles, demos and oddities from the Chip8 Community Archive, whose authors placed them in the public domain. You can also load your own .ch8 files through the system file picker.

🕹 GAMES RUN THE WAY THEIR AUTHORS MEANT
CHIP-8 was re-implemented many times, and the versions quietly disagree. A game written for one can look broken on another — not crash, just misbehave. Every bundled program carries the speed and compatibility settings its author recorded, so it runs on the interpreter it was tested against.

⚙️ COMPATIBILITY YOU CONTROL
Switchable profiles — COSMAC VIP, CHIP-48, SUPER-CHIP, XO-CHIP — plus every individual quirk as its own toggle, saved per game. If something misbehaves, try another profile instead of giving up on it.

🔍 A REAL DEBUGGER
Pause, single-step, and watch the machine think. Live registers, a disassembly listing that follows the program counter, a hex memory viewer, breakpoints, and a speed slider that goes down to one instruction per second. Timers stay locked at 60 Hz however fast you run the processor, exactly as on the original.

💾 SAVE STATES AND REWIND
Four slots per game plus an automatic save when you leave, so you can pick up where you stopped. Rewind steps back through the last few seconds when something goes wrong.

🎨 MADE TO LOOK RIGHT
Six palettes — classic monochrome, green phosphor, amber terminal, Game Boy and more — or pick your own two colours. Optional scanlines, bloom, and phosphor ghosting, which smooths over the sprite flicker CHIP-8 games are famous for. Pixels stay hard-edged squares at the correct 2:1 shape, never blurred.

🎮 CONTROLS THAT FIT THUMBS
The authentic 16-key hex keypad, or a D-pad and action buttons instead. Keys respond the instant your finger lands, not when it lifts, and several work at once. Any game's keypad can be remapped, with presets for common control schemes.

🔊 SOUND
The buzzer as square, sine or triangle, with adjustable tone and volume — or vibration instead.

📺 EXTENSIONS
Full SUPER-CHIP (128×64 display, scrolling, large sprites) and XO-CHIP (four colours, 64 KB memory, extended audio).

🔒 COMPLETELY OFFLINE
Chipster has no network code in it at all. Nothing is uploaded, there is no analytics and no account. The only permission it asks for is vibration. Your library, saves and settings live on your device and are removed when you uninstall.

Whether you want to play some genuinely charming little games, or open the debugger and watch a 1977 virtual machine execute one instruction at a time, Chipster is built to be honest about both.