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.
- GBADev Discord Server - This is where everyone hangs out nowadays. Come say hi!
- GBADev - The longstanding homepage of the scene. Regularly updated with the lastest news and releases.
- GBAtemp - The site carries the GBA name, but now the console is relegated to the backbenches.
- GBATEK - Programming specs for the GBA and NDS hardware
- CowBite Virtual Hardware Specifications - Older GBA hardware documentation
- The Audio Advance - Audio hardware documentation and basic test ROMs
- Tonc - Complete programming tutorial
- Sound on the Gameboy Advance - How to write your own sound mixer / MOD music player
- Gameboy Advance Resource Management - Allocation techniques for the GBA's various memory regions
- Managing Sprite Cel VRAM on the Game Boy Advance - Analysis of the VRAM streaming approach for animated sprites
- Using Beepbox for GBA Music Composition
- devkitARM - C/C++ cross-compiler toolchain, which includes libgba, libtonc, maxmod, and various tools and example projects.
- gba-toolchain - GNU Arm Embedded Toolchain based alternative to devkitARM.
- rust-console - GBA programming in Rust, plus tutorial.
- natu - GBA programming in Nim (provides wrapper around libtonc, maxmod and more).
- gba-modern - Write GBA games using modern C++.
- ZigGBA - WIP SDK for creating GBA games using Zig (Inspired by Tonc).
- Butano - Modern C++ high level engine for the GBA.
- agbabi - Drop-in application binary interface library (context switching, division, irq, memcpy, sine).
- gba-plusplus - Modern C++ alternative to libgba and libtonc.
- HeartLib - Comprehensive C library inspired by the classic HAMLib.
- GBAdv - High level utilities on top of libgba.
- Maxmod - Music and sound library (supports .mod, .xm, .s3m, .it)
- Apex Audio System - Music and sound library (supports .mod only, but very good performance)
- Krawall - Music and sound library (supports .xm, .s3m)
- Pimpmobile - Music library (supports .mod, .xm)
- posprintf - An
sprintfroutine written in Thumb assembler. - GBFS - Practical filesystem
- mGBA - Actively developed GBA emulator. Runs on a bunch of platforms. Text debugger through GDB stub.
- 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.
- NanoBoyAdvance - GBA emulator with high accuracy, especially in timing and CPU emulation. Currently lacking a GUI or debugger.
- MiSTer FPGA implementation - Needs MiSTer setup to run.
- mGBA test suite
- GBA Suite
- 240p-test-mini - video signal tests
- Goodboy Advance - Made in 2018, and has a nice bit of information on how it's made.
- Celeste Classic - 2019 port of Pico8 version of Celeste.
- GBADoom - 2019/2020 GBA port of prBoom version of Doom.
- BlindJump - Adventure game, developed in 2020. Implementation of link-cable multiplayer, fully digital audio.
- Tigermoth - Bullet hell game, developed for the GBAJam 2021
- gba_bios - WIP disassembly of the Game Boy Advance BIOS
- GBA bare metal code - Various experiments by Krom, such as video playback and 3D, written in ARM Assembly
- Software interrupt $1F / MidiKey2Freq, canonical method
- Cracking the GBA BIOS by endrift
- Dumping the GBA BIOS, another method by MerryMage
- Reverse Engineering a GameBoy Advance Game - A series of detailed posts and talks about developing a level editor for Klonoa: Empire of Dreams
- Pokemon Ruby - C programming language annotation of a Pokemon Ruby disassembly
- HEL - GBA C library built on top of HAM (a classic SDK from back in the day)
- Headspin's Guide to Compression, Files Systems, Screen Effects and MOD Players for the Gameboy Advance