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 Content

• Introduction
  • Community
• Documentation
  • Tutorials
  • Articles
• Software Development
  • Compilers
  • Toolkits
  • Libraries
  • Emulators
• Emulator Development
  • Testing
• Homebrews
  • Jams
• Miscellanea
  • Dumping the GBA BIOS
  • Reverse engineering
  • Historical links

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Introduction

• Technical introduction to the GBA

Community

• 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.

• GBAdev Discord - This is where everyone hangs out to chat nowadays. Come say hi!

  Info for IRC users

  All rooms are bridged to IRC channels on EFnet.

  Main channel
  #gbadev - general chat

  Additional channels
  #gba-meta - community feedback/discussion
  #gba-help - help & support
  #gba-emudev - emulator development
  #gba-asm - ARM/Thumb assembly and CPU architecture
  #gba-showcase - share what you're working on!
  #gba-music - listening, composing and audio programming
  #gba-offtopic - off-topic chat
  #gba-docs - community documentation projects (tutorials, technical docs etc.)
  #gbajam - hang out with other GBA Jam participants & share your progress

  Project-specific channels
  #gba-toolchain - gba-toolchain, agbabi, and gba-hpp development & support
  #butano - Butano engine development & support
  #natu - Natu toolkit development & support
  #sdk-seven - sdk-seven development & support

Other places

• GBAdev.org - The longstanding homepage of the scene. Still updated with news and releases (but the forums have been broken for a while).
• 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

• 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

Tutorials

• Tonc - The new, revamped but WIP version of the GBA Programming guide. The original version is here
• Compile C++ for GBA in under an hour - Cinemint's video for getting started with C++/Butano
• Sound on the Gameboy Advance - How to write your own sound mixer / MOD music player

Articles

• 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

Software Development

Compilers

• 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.
• gvasm - Stand-alone assembler and disassembler (WIP) designed specifically for GBA homebrew
• TinyGo - An alternative Go compiler for embedded systems, that supports GBA compilation

Toolkits

• 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.
• BPCore Engine - Create GBA applications with the Lua programming language
• GBA Dlang - WIP SDK for GBA development using D, using LLVM toolchain. provides fully functional TONC, GBFS, Maxmod.
• dusk - Simple, lightweight, intuitive framework for GBA game development
• gbsenpai - GB Studio player GBA port with some enhancements.
• meson-gba - Meson-based GBA toolkit with support for many different libraries and tools.
• sdk-seven - Modern runtime and tooling, and libraries for GBA development. Works with meson-gba or standalone.
• rath - Forth programming environment for the Game Boy Advance
• ada-gba-dev - A build system, libraries, and tools for producing programs for the Game Boy Advance using the Ada programming language.

Libraries

• agbabi - Drop-in application binary interface library (context switching, division, irq, memcpy, sine).
• gba-hpp - C++20 header-only library for GBA development.
• HeartLib - Comprehensive C library inspired by the classic HAMLib.
• libseven - Modern, from-scratch replacement for libgba and libtonc.
• 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)
• GBT Player - Music library that uses the DMG sound channels (close to 0% CPU usage).
• posprintf - An sprintf routine written in Thumb assembler.
• GBFS - Practical filesystem
• 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.
• gbaLib - Library for programming the GBA with TinyGo
• gba-link-connection: A set of C++ libraries to interact with the Serial Port (Link Cable, Wireless Adapter, GPIO, SPI)

Emulators

• 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. Does not have debugging features.
• SkyEmu - GB/GBA/NDS Emulator with built in debuggers, REST API for scripting, and high accuracy.
• MiSTer FPGA implementation - Needs MiSTer setup to run.

Emulator Development

Testing

• mGBA test suite
• GBA Suite
• 240p-test-mini - video signal tests
• NBA hardware tests

Homebrews

• 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
• Duster - A sleek strategy board game for the gba
• OpenLara - Classic Tomb Raider open-source engine

Jams

• GBA Jam 2021
• GBA Winter Jam '21
• GBA Jam 2022
• GBA Winter Jam '23

Miscellanea

• 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
• 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.

Dumping the GBA BIOS

• Software interrupt $1F / MidiKey2Freq, canonical method
• Cracking the GBA BIOS by endrift
• Dumping the GBA BIOS, another method by MerryMage

Reverse engineering

• 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

Historical links

• 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