mGBA

A Game Boy Advance emulator that gets the accuracy right and still runs at full speed on weak hardware.

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About mGBA

mGBA emulates the Game Boy Advance, and the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color alongside it. It aims to be both faster and more accurate than the emulators it replaced, and it runs at full speed on hardware as modest as an old netbook.

The detail work is what stands out: save type detection, real-time clock, motion sensors and rumble, solar sensors for the Boktai games, Game Boy Camera and Printer support, and a built-in BIOS so you do not need to supply one. It also records video, GIF, WebP and APNG, and scripts in Lua.

Strengths

  • Accurate enough for the awkward cartridges: motion, solar and clock hardware
  • Full speed on low-end machines, including netbooks
  • Built-in BIOS, so no file hunting to get started
  • Nine save states, rewind, cheats, Lua scripting and video recording

Limitations

  • Game Boy Advance and earlier only; no DS or later
  • Link cable play only works between instances on the same computer
  • Releases are slow; 0.10.5 dates from March 2025
  • You supply the game files

Details

Pricing
Free · Free and open source under the MPL 2.0.
License
MPL-2.0
Developer
Vicki Pfau
Platforms
Windows, macOS, Linux
How it runs
Downloadable app
Account
Not required
Works offline
Yes
Best suited for
Playing Game Boy Advance games properly, including the odd hardware ones
Categories
Game console emulators
Last verified
Added
Provenance
Selected from the TechWalrus downloads catalog (Emulation); facts checked against the developer's own pages, 2 sources on file.

Similar software

Related functionality, not necessarily a direct replacement.

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