War of the Worlds: An E-Book for Game Boy Released on itch.io

H.G. Wells’ 1898 science fiction classic The War of the Worlds has always had a special relationship with dread — but now it has a new one with your flash cart. A developer going by Chef_buh_r_dee has just released War of the Worlds: An E-Book For GameBoy, a fully playable ROM adaptation of Wells’ public domain novel designed to run on original Game Boy hardware, the Game Boy Color, flash cartridges, and emulators alike.

The timing is perfect: it’s free (pay-what-you-want), it ships today, and if you have an Everdrive GB, EZ-Flash Jr., or BennVenn Joey Jr., you can load it right now.

What Is It?

This isn’t a game in the traditional sense — and that’s exactly what makes it interesting. The developer describes it as “not a conventional book. It is not a game. It is a record of events as they unfolded, preserved in a format not originally intended for this purpose.”

The ROM is a faithful adaptation of Wells’ novel, reformatted to feel like a native Game Boy experience. Text appears one screen at a time, compressed to fit within the constraints of the hardware. It’s minimal, clean, and genuinely readable — the developer says the presentation was designed to evoke the original Game Boy aesthetic rather than just being a raw text dump.

Why Public Domain Matters Here

The backstory makes this release even more interesting. The same developer previously ported Dune to Game Boy and was flooded with requests to share the ROM — but had to decline because Frank Herbert’s novel is still under copyright. Rather than sit on the technique, they pivoted to The War of the Worlds, which entered the US public domain decades ago, meaning this release is entirely above board and freely distributable.

That’s a meaningful distinction in the homebrew space. This isn’t a grey-area ROM hack or a redistribution of copyrighted material — it’s an original creative work using public domain source material, released properly through itch.io with a pay-what-you-want model. The developer has explicitly said donations go toward producing more eBook ROMs from other public domain works.

Flash Cart Compatibility

The ROM is listed as compatible with:

• Original Game Boy (DMG)
• Game Boy Color
• Flash cartridges (any standard GB flash cart)
• Modern emulators

If you’re running an Everdrive GB X series, EZ-Flash Jr., or a BennVenn Joey Jr., this will load and run without any issues. The ROM format is standard .gb, so there are no compatibility headaches. It should also run fine on the Analogue Pocket via its OpenFPGA SD card or through the official Game Boy core.

For emulator users, it’ll work in anything that handles standard GB ROMs — RetroArch Gambatte, mGBA, and SameBoy all apply.

A Glimpse at What’s Coming

The developer has signaled this is the beginning of a series. The stated goal is to build out a library of public domain literature in Game Boy ROM format — potentially with more detailed pixel art scenes for future releases, and eventually custom physical cartridges as novelty items. That’s an ambitious roadmap for what started as a passion project, but the initial execution is solid enough to take seriously.

For collectors and modders in the Game Boy space, the idea of a physical “eBook cartridge” shelf sits somewhere between interesting art object and practical novelty. Whether that materialises depends on community support — which is exactly why the pay-what-you-want model exists.

Get It

The ROM is available now on itch.io. It’s free with optional donation. A plain text version of the novel is also included in the download for reference.

Disclosure: This post contains no affiliate links. The download linked above is free.