Awesome Game Boy Advance development
A curated list of development resources for Game Boy Advance.
Contribute adding resources or providing feedback through Pull Requests, Issues or joining us on Discord. You can find a web version of this list here.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Community
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GBAdev Forum - Our new hub for announcements and long-form discussion. It's a good place to ask questions and share progress on your projects.
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GBAdev Discord / IRC - This is where everyone hangs out to chat nowadays. Come say hi!
Other places
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GBAdev.org - The longstanding homepage of the scene. Still updated with news and releases (but the forums have been broken for a while).
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GBAtemp - The site carries the GBA name, but nowadays the console is relegated to the backbenches. It's a good place to talk about gaming and hardware though.
Documentation
Tutorials
Articles
Software Development
Compilers
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devkitARM - C/C++ cross-compiler toolchain, which includes libgba, libtonc, maxmod, and various tools and example projects.
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gba-toolchain - GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain based alternative to devkitARM.
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gvasm - Stand-alone assembler and disassembler (WIP) designed specifically for GBA homebrew
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TinyGo - An alternative Go compiler for embedded systems, that supports GBA compilation
Toolkits
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rust-console - GBA programming in Rust, plus tutorial.
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natu - GBA programming in Nim (provides wrapper around libtonc, maxmod and more).
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gba-modern - Write GBA games using modern C++.
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ZigGBA - WIP SDK for creating GBA games using Zig (Inspired by Tonc).
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Butano - Modern C++ high level engine for the GBA.
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BPCore Engine - Create GBA applications with the Lua programming language
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GBA Dlang - WIP SDK for GBA development using D, using LLVM toolchain. provides fully functional TONC, GBFS, Maxmod.
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dusk - Simple, lightweight, intuitive framework for GBA game development
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gbsenpai - GB Studio player GBA port with some enhancements.
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meson-gba - Meson-based GBA toolkit with support for many different libraries and tools.
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sdk-seven - Modern runtime and tooling, and libraries for GBA development. Works with meson-gba or standalone.
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rath - Forth programming environment for the Game Boy Advance
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ada-gba-dev - A build system, libraries, and tools for producing programs for the Game Boy Advance using the Ada programming language.
Libraries
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agbabi - Drop-in application binary interface library (context switching, division, irq, memcpy, sine).
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gba-hpp - C++20 header-only library for GBA development.
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HeartLib - Comprehensive C library inspired by the classic HAMLib.
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libseven - Modern, from-scratch replacement for libgba and libtonc.
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GBAdv - High level utilities on top of libgba.
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Maxmod - Music and sound library (supports .mod, .xm, .s3m, .it)
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Apex Audio System - Music and sound library (supports .mod only, but very good performance)
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Krawall - Music and sound library (supports .xm, .s3m)
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Pimpmobile - Music library (supports .mod, .xm)
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GBT Player - Music library that uses the DMG sound channels (close to 0% CPU usage).
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posprintf - An
sprintf
routine written in Thumb assembler.
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GBFS - Practical filesystem
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agb - Rust library. It attempts to be a high level abstraction over the internal workings of the Game Boy Advance whilst still being high performance and memory efficient.
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gbaLib - Library for programming the GBA with TinyGo
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gba-link-connection: A set of C++ libraries to interact with the Serial Port (Link Cable, Wireless Adapter, GPIO, SPI)
Emulators
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mGBA - Actively developed GBA emulator. Runs on a bunch of platforms. Text debugger through GDB stub.
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No$gba - Venerable GBA emulator. Windows only, but runs well under Wine. Not very actively maintained but still gets updates now and then. Sports graphical debugger.
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NanoBoyAdvance - GBA emulator with high accuracy, especially in timing and CPU emulation. Does not have debugging features.
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SkyEmu - GB/GBA/NDS Emulator with built in debuggers, REST API for scripting, and high accuracy.
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MiSTer FPGA implementation - Needs MiSTer setup to run.
Emulator Development
Testing
Homebrews
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Goodboy Advance - Made in 2018, and has a nice bit of information on how it's made.
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Celeste Classic - 2019 port of Pico8 version of Celeste.
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GBADoom - 2019/2020 GBA port of prBoom version of Doom.
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BlindJump - Adventure game, developed in 2020. Implementation of link-cable multiplayer, fully digital audio.
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Tigermoth - Bullet hell game, developed for the GBAJam 2021
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Duster - A sleek strategy board game for the gba
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OpenLara - Classic Tomb Raider open-source engine
Jams
Miscellanea
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gba_bios - WIP disassembly of the Game Boy Advance BIOS
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GBA bare metal code - Various experiments by Krom, such as video playback and 3D, written in ARM Assembly
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dkarm_gba_docker - A Docker image that includes DevkitARM and other GBA SDK tools, packaged together to allow a consistent toolchain configuration and reproducibility in builds. Also can be helpful in ensuring a consistent build environment for continuous integration.
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Usenti - Simple bitmap editor for paletted images aimed at GBA development.
Dumping the GBA BIOS
Reverse engineering
Historical links
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HEL - GBA C library built on top of HAM (a classic SDK from back in the day)
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Headspin's Guide to Compression, Files Systems, Screen Effects and MOD Players for the Gameboy Advance