[Black Zero]

Found out about this emulator a while ago and it looks really promising.
It aims to be faster and more accurate than many existing Game Boy Advance emulators, as well as adding features that other emulators lack.

https://endrift.com/mgba/
https://endrift.com/mgba/about.html

It even looks like all the Classic NES Collection games are working too:

https://endrift.com/mgba//2014/12/28/classic-nes/

mGBA is a new Game Boy Advance emulator written in C.

The project started in April 2013 with the goal of being fast enough to run on lower end hardware than other emulators support, without sacrificing accuracy or portability. Even in the initial version, games generally play without problems. It is loosely based on the previous GBA.js emulator, although very little of GBA.js can still be seen in mGBA.

Other goals include accurate enough emulation to provide a development environment for homebrew software, a good workflow for tool-assist runners, and a modern feature set for emulators that older emulators may not support.

mGBA is licensed under the Mozilla Public License 2.0, and the code can be found on GitHub.

Try it out if you haven't already, new GBA emulators is always welcome!

 

[zeta1]

After the apparent death of VBA-M, a new, actively developed, fast and accurate GBA emulator is welcome news!

 

[Black Zero]

I've used Visual Boy Advance 1.8.0 Beta3 since 2005 and have used it for all my GB/GBC/GBA games.
It was in late December 2013 I switched to VBA-M for GBA games and Gambatte for GB/GBC games.

* Gambatte is a accuracy focused GB/GBC emulator and the past two-three years accuracy is all that matters to me.

I've tried mGBA 0.1.1 and the newer nightly builds and it's a breath of fresh air and exactly what the GBA emulator scene needs.

Don't get me wrong though as I like what the VBA-M team have done for VBA but seeing that it rarely get's any updates anymore I would say that it's safe to assume it's more or less dead or that the development at least have halted significantly.

I look forward to the 0.2.0 release of mGBA which hopefully get's released later this year.

* http://sourceforge.net/projects/gambatte/ and https://github.com/sinamas/gambatte

 

[ubersyte]

Aaaaah. This emulator is what I've been looking for. Accuracy+better options than VBA-M. The singular feature it's missing is support for "GBA colours".

 

[Black Zero]

Well I've been toying around with this emulator further, testing all the games I have back and forth with VBA-M as comparison and most of the things I thought were bugs were also present in VBA-M except for a few games like the Japanese Famicom Mini series Hikari Shinwa Palutena no Kagami (Kid Icarus) and Metroid which didn't work so well in mGBA, at least not yet.

However the Classic NES series games works quite well on mGBA.

The conclusion is that mGBA is excellent even though it's quite young compared to VBA-M.

It's simple, fast and accurate though it lacks some options and settings like filter plugins, GBA Colours that ubersyte mentioned that I think is essential among a few others.

You don't have to fiddle around with save types because mGBA handles that superbly.
Just start Mario vs. Donkey Kong and Super Mario Advance 4 and you'll see.

I've been using a real SNES pad and it works great, but only downside is that you have to manually delete the default gamepad controls in the Config.ini before you can configure them in the GUI properly.
Not a big deal but hopefully it's fixed later.

Again this is definitely an Game Boy Advance emulator to watch and I'm eagerly anticipating the future 0.2.0 release but in the meantime try the latest nightly build from here:

https://endrift.com/mgba/nightlies/mGBA-nightly-latest-win32.7z

It won't let you down!

 

[ubersyte]

This is exactly how I feel, and I'm hoping that it gets the spotlight despite the stagnant state of current GBA emulation

 

[[email protected]]

Rumours of VBA-M's demise are greatly exagerated (and stupid).

 

[[email protected]]

Well I've been toying around with this emulator further, testing all the games I have back and forth with VBA-M as comparison and most of the things I thought were bugs were also present in VBA-M except for a few games like the Japanese Famicom Mini series Hikari Shinwa Palutena no Kagami (Kid Icarus) and Metroid which didn't work so well in mGBA, at least not yet.

Japanese games tend to use undocumented behavior, making it difficult to make them work.

However the Classic NES series games works quite well on mGBA.

Classic NES games work fine in VBA-M, you just need to toggle Mirroring, or use the included vba-over.ini

It's simple, fast and accurate though it lacks some options and settings like filter plugins, GBA Colours that ubersyte mentioned that I think is essential among a few others.

"Accuracy" is relative to what you know needs to be done, simply reverse engineering the hardware with Game A will not give a definite understanding of what the hardware does with Game B.

At present, VBA-M has implemented functionality expected by certain games that were not accurately (if at all) documented.

You don't have to fiddle around with save types because mGBA handles that superbly.
Just start Mario vs. Donkey Kong and Super Mario Advance 4 and you'll see.

Had you been using the recommended vba-over.ini previously, you wouldn't have had to either.

Regardless, as of r1245 save types are now detected automatically, with or without the game overrides, save type settings only remaining in the case of games which do not for some reason, report the correct save type.

There is a remaining edge case in our save support, where games expecting a 256 byte file are saving and reading a 512 byte file. The majority of other emulators don't even bother trying to get this save size correct and simply write an 8kb file.

 

[fagoatse]

Rumours of VBA-M's demise are greatly exagerated (and stupid).

agreed
it has become the zsnes of gba emulation and retards will keep on using it for years to come

 

[Black Zero]

Rumours of VBA-M's demise are greatly exagerated (and stupid).

Yeah well I'm glad all the rumors were false then because I would be sad if VBA-M died.
I see you're close to 1300 commits and development have started again rapidly, that's wonderful and I wish you all the best!

 

[[email protected]]

agreed
it has become the zsnes of gba emulation and retards will keep on using it for years to come

You're thinking No$Gba

Yeah well I'm glad all the rumors were false then because I would be sad if VBA-M died.
I see you're close to 1300 commits and development have started again rapidly, that's wonderful and I wish you all the best!

Skid recently joined the team, reminds me i need to update the contributors/team list

 

[wowzaman12]

Skid has been a great addition to the team. Bouncing off ideas with him has been really great.

 

[Black Zero]

Well I'm glad nevertheless that serious things are happening in the GB/GBC/GBA department.
We're being spoiled completely!

 

[Azary1977]

mGBA version 0.2.0 was finally released!

http://endrift.com/mgba/2015/04/03/mgba-0.2.0/

EDIT:- Fixed version number typo!

 

[Black Zero]

NICE FIND!
Wonder how I missed this but I've been busy looking at other stuff in the last couple of days. So 0.2.0 is finally here, yummy!

 

[Azary1977]

mGBA is now version 0.2.1 right now!!!

https://endrift.com/mgba/2015/05/13/mgba-0.2.1/

More bug fixes!

 

[Black Zero]

Thats just awesome, looking forward to try it out.
Thanks for sharing!

 

[Azary1977]

2 years later, mGBA is now added Nintendo DS support with new name is....

medusa

Visit this website for info and download!

https://mgba.io/

Coming soon... medusa will added DSi, 3DS etc.... Oh yeah!

 

[Samuh]

Hi, I need to ask something about mGBA Emulator that I was using for a long time, in recent times while I'm playing the games the sound just disappeared after few seconds it comes back, and that this repeats every time after 30 sec or more. What should be the problem, is there a new update of this emulator or some script that I need to add.

 

[Qamic59]

I've got tested all games on mGBA3DS they are:
007 - Everything or Nothing: Works perfect.
Ace Combat: Works perfect.
Activision Anthology: Works perfect. Some Games have some slowdown.
Bit Generations - Boundish (JP): Works perfect.
Bomberman Tournament (US/EU): Works perfect.
Cars: Works perfect.
Cars Mater National Championship: Works perfect.
Classic NES - Bomberman: Runs at 43-45 FPS.
Classic NES - Star Soldier: OK With mGBA3DS it runs very slow, between 10 and 17 frames and takes some time loading. I recommend you play it with GBARunner2 commit 6e4ce45 (2020/08/12), this gives better speed.
Crash Bandicoot Fusion: Works perfect.
Dai-Mahjong: Works perfect.
Mario Kart Super Circuit: Works perfect.
Saibara Rieko no Dendou Mahjong: OK it does not seem to work with mGBA3DS. Nethertheless it goes with GBARunner2 commit 6e4ce45 (2020/08/12) only without a save handler.
Sanrio Puroland All Characters: Works perfect. Audio isn't synchronized yet.
Star Wars Jedi Power Battles: Works perfect.
Super Mario Advance 1: Works perfect.
Super Mario Advance 2: Works perfect.
Super Mario Advance 3: Works perfect.
Super Mario Advance 4: Works perfect.