The Gameboy Advance handheld console
The Game Boy Advance (often shortened to GBA) is a 32-bit handheld video game console developed by Nintendo. It is the successor to the Game Boy Color. It was released in Japan on March 21, 2001; in North America on June 11, 2001; in Australia and Europe on June 22, 2001.
Emulators[]
| Name | Operating System(s) | Latest Version | GB/GBC | GBA | NDS | Game Link Support | Recommended |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| mGBA | Windows, OS X, Linux, Wii, PS Vita, 3DS, Switch | 0.9.3 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ (WIP) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Visual Boy Advance-M (VBA-M) | Windows, Linux, OS X, Wii, Gamecube | 2.1.4 | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| RetroArch (VBA-Next) | Multi-platform | 1.2.2 | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ |
| No$GBA | Windows, MS-DOS | 2.8f | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ |
| Meteor | Linux | 1.4 | ✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
| higan | Windows, OS X, Linux | 0.106 | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✗ |
| iDeaS | Windows, Linux | 1.0.4.0 | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ |
| gpSP | PlayStation Portable |
0.9 |
✗ | ✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ |
Comparison[]
Visual Boy Advance-M is a fork of VisualBoyAdvance with additional improvements. RetroArch's VBA-Next is based off an older revision of VBA-M with added speedhacks and tweaks, making it a bit less accurate in some respects, though it fixes a few games such as Advance Wars 2. Higan's GBA core is cycle-accurate, but is otherwise very much a WIP and not as compatible as either version of VBA.
The last official release of gpSP was version 0.9 by Exophase. There are, however, two superior forks: gpSPmod and gpSP-J. gpSP-J has superior compatibility, while gpSPmod has more options for customization (full screen, cheats, etc). Both are superior to Kai.