Chip-8 Emulator and Debugger

I built this Chip-8 emulator to get more hands-on practice with instruction decoding, memory models, display updates, timing, and event loops. The goal was not just to run ROMs, but to understand the moving parts well enough to debug them confidently.

Adding debugger functionality turned the project from a simple interpreter into a much better learning tool because I could step through execution and inspect state while validating behavior.

• Models the Chip-8 CPU state, memory, registers, timers, and stack explicitly so opcode behavior is easy to reason about.
• Separates the execution loop from rendering and input handling so debugging features do not fight the runtime.
• Uses SDL2 for display/input plumbing while keeping emulator logic isolated from the windowing layer.

• Writing emulator code sharpened my understanding of state machines, deterministic execution, and careful edge-case testing.
• The debugger work reinforced how valuable visibility and tooling are when working close to the hardware model.
• This project gave me a stronger intuition for how to structure complex logic without losing debuggability.