Game & Watch (GW.pak) for NextUI — TrimUI Brick

This pak lets you play Game & Watch simulators (and other handheld LCD games converted from MADrigal's simulators) on the TrimUI Brick (and Smart Pro, tg5040 platform) under NextUI or MinUI, via the libretro core gw-libretro launched by minarch.

Since this is an "embedded libretro core" type pak, you get all of NextUI's standard features: resume from the menu, quicksave / auto-resume, in-game menu, etc.

Installation

1. Download the GW.pakz archive from the Releases page.
2. Extract it to the root of your SD card (the Emus/ and Roms/ folders will merge with your existing ones).
3. You should end up with:

SDCARD/
├── Emus/
│   └── tg5040/
│       └── GW.pak/
│           ├── launch.sh
│           └── gw_libretro.so
└── Roms/
    └── Game & Watch (GW)/
        └── (your .mgw files here)

4. Reinsert the SD card: "Game & Watch" appears in the list of systems.

Games (.mgw)

The core does not read Nintendo ROMs, but .mgw files: MADrigal's simulators converted for libretro. Put your .mgw files in Roms/Game & Watch (GW)/.

Building the core yourself

The easiest way is through Docker, it uses a toolchain matching the Brick's firmware, so you don't have to install anything:

./build/docker-build.sh   # or: mise run docker-build

This clones gw-libretro, cross-compiles it for aarch64 and drops the core into Emus/tg5040/GW.pak/. Then zip everything into a .pakz ready to drop on the SD card:

./build/package.sh        # or: mise run package

If you already have a tg5040 toolchain on your machine, you can skip Docker and run ./build/build-core.sh directly. Just don't build with a stock gcc-aarch64-linux-gnu from a recent distro: the resulting .so links against a glibc newer than the firmware's, and the pak will crash on launch (strong vibration, straight back to the rom list).

Automated release (GitHub Actions)

The Build & Release GW.pak workflow is triggered manually:

1. Actions tab -> Build & Release GW.pak -> Run workflow.
2. Choose the branch and fill in the version (e.g. v1.0.0).
3. The workflow compiles the core, assembles the pak zip and publishes a GitHub release (with SHA-256 checksum) from the chosen branch.

Credits & licenses

• gw-libretro — libretro core for Game & Watch simulators (zlib license).
• MADrigal — original simulators.
• NextUI / MinUI by Shaun Inman — frontend & minarch.
• Project structure inspired by Zelda-Classic-MinUI by cobaltgit.

The gw-libretro core is under the zlib license (see LICENSE).