NanoBoyAdvance
A cycle-accurate Nintendo Game Boy Advance emulator.
Install / Use
/learn @nba-emu/NanoBoyAdvanceREADME
NanoBoyAdvance is a cycle-accurate Game Boy Advance emulator.<br> It aims to be as accurate as possible, while also offering enhancements such as improved audio quality.<br>
Features
- Very high compatibility and accuracy (see Accuracy)
- HQ audio mixer (for games which use Nintendo's MusicPlayer2000 sound engine)
- Post-processing options (color correction, xBRZ upscaling and LCD ghosting simulation)
- Save State support (10x save slots available)
- Game controller support (buttons and axises can be remapped)
- Loading ROMs from archives (Zip, 7z, Tar and limited RAR[^1] support)
- RTC emulation
- Solar Sensor emulation (for example: for Boktai - The Sun is in Your Hand)
- Debug tools: PPU palette, tile, background and sprite viewers
[^1]: RAR 5.0 is currently not supported.
Running
Download a recent development build or the last stable release.
Upon loading a ROM for the first time you will be prompted to assign the Game Boy Advance BIOS file.
You can dump it from a real console (accurate) or use an unofficial BIOS (less accurate).
Accuracy
A lot of research and attention to detail has been put into developing this core and making it accurate.
- Cycle-accurate emulation of most components, including: CPU, DMA, timers, PPU and Game Pak prefetch
- Passes all AGS aging cartridge tests (NBA was the first public emulator to achieve this)
- Passes most tests in the mGBA test suite
- Passes ARMWrestler, gba-suite and FuzzARM CPU tests
- Very high compatibility, including games that require emulation of peculiar hardware edge-cases
Compiling
See COMPILING.md in the docs folder.
Acknowledgements
- Martin Korth: for GBATEK, a good piece of hardware documentation.
- endrift: for hardware research and her excellent test suite.
- destoer, Noumi, Zayd and Sky: for hardware research and tests, countless discussions and being good friends.
- Pokefan531 and hunterk: for the default GBA color correction algorithm
- Talarubi and Near: for higan's GBA color correction algorithm
- DeSmuME team and Hyllian: xBRZ upscaling code
Sister Projects
- Panda3DS: A new HLE Nintendo 3DS emulator
- Dust: Nintendo DS emulator for desktop devices and the web
- Kaizen: Experimental work-in-progress low-level N64 emulator
- SkyEmu: A low-level GameBoy, GameBoy Color, GameBoy Advance and Nintendo DS emulator that is designed to be easy to use, cross platform and accurate
Copyright
NanoBoyAdvance is Copyright © 2015 - 2025 fleroviux.<br> It is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) 3.0 or any later version. See LICENSE for details.
Game Boy Advance is a registered trademark of Nintendo Co., Ltd.
Related Skills
node-connect
335.8kDiagnose OpenClaw node connection and pairing failures for Android, iOS, and macOS companion apps
frontend-design
82.7kCreate distinctive, production-grade frontend interfaces with high design quality. Use this skill when the user asks to build web components, pages, or applications. Generates creative, polished code that avoids generic AI aesthetics.
openai-whisper-api
335.8kTranscribe audio via OpenAI Audio Transcriptions API (Whisper).
commit-push-pr
82.7kCommit, push, and open a PR
