what are some good Gameboy Advance emulators?

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 5:21 am

i know of Visualboy Advance and NO$GBA but thats about it for GBA emulation.

xamenus · Post by **xamenus** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 6:18 am

I tried several GBA emulators a while back, and decided that I like Mednafen the most. It's been a while since I used it, though.

http://mednafen.sourceforge.net/

A GUI frontend for Windows is here: http://lhsp.s206.xrea.com/works/frontend.html

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 7:36 am

just looking at the frontend now, so far this emulator is vastly superior to VBA and NO$GBA in terms of playing a game for fun.

thanks very much for pointing it out lol.

edit: that frontend seems awesome enough

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 7:53 am

hmmm, full screen is botched, it runs but the area surrounding the gameplay flcikers madly instead of staying black so ive been playing in windowed mode and there is no vsync or filters for windowed mode.

any ideas on resolving this issue? and whats the best screen refresh rate for GBA games?

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 10:47 am

60 Hz I guess, or 120.

Post by **Nach** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 1:52 pm

franpa wrote:just looking at the frontend now, so far this emulator is vastly superior to VBA and NO$GBA in terms of playing a game for fun.

IINM, Mednafen uses VBA for its AGB core.

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Fri Sep 07, 2007 2:19 pm

mednafen has a better colour palette and does not suffer a strange jerkyness that vba has.

Post by **grinvader** » Sun Sep 09, 2007 2:08 pm

There's no "palette" for AGB games. Call it gamma or whatever but not palette, you make it sound like the old NES stuff.

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 4:19 am

ah, ok then.

Panzer88 · Post by **Panzer88** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 10:33 am

No$GBA always works for me but I guess not what you're after eh?

kick · Post by **kick** » Mon Sep 10, 2007 11:34 pm

I think No$GBA is the best one,just the sound quality of the 2 digital channels is one of the worst I've ever heard in a GBA emulator.What a shame.
No slowdown at all with the Mode7 intro in FF4[one of the most demanding scenes in a GBA title],but the bad sound quality completely ruins the experience.

Mednafen is too jerky and not really accurate.

VBA's video rendering is often plagued by excessive slowdown (which doesn't happen at all on a real GBA) even when the CPU usage is only 10-15%.
The kode54 build of VBA still has the best sound and features (LCD filter,improved renderer).

So,in these times of less-than-optimal GBA emulation,the best you can get is VBA 1.8.0 kode54 build.Use the DirectDraw renderer with VSync and bandlimited sound interpolation for the best experience.
(VBA 1.7.2 k54 is faster but 1.8.0 has improved GB PSG sound and no 100% CPU usage with VSync)

Mednafen is a good choice only for Linux users.

DancemasterGlenn · Post by **DancemasterGlenn** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 5:02 am

Whatever happened to the VBA people? I'm always hoping I'll suddenly see more development, especially in the linux build...

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 6:30 am

the original VBA isnt being developed anymore.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Tue Sep 11, 2007 11:18 am

There's a VBA version here that has the slowdown issue fixed.

Post by **Nach** » Thu Nov 15, 2007 12:56 pm

There's also VBA-M which is trying to merge all the various forks of VBA back together. Our thread on the topic has been moved here: http://board.zsnes.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=10755

franpa · Post by **franpa** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 4:14 pm

my issue with full screen is fixed... either when i re-seated my memory or when i upgraded from 0.8.4rc2 to 0.8.6