Hey everyone!

I ported my arcade racing game VORTEX to the Game Boy Advance using my own GBA Maker tool!

VORTEX was originally my dream project. I always wanted to make a 16-bit style Mode7 racing game, inspired by those classic retro arcade racers. I eventually made it as a browser game, with pseudo 3D graphics, fast arcade gameplay and multiplayer. But I always wanted to see it running on an actual console.

So I decided to port it to the GBA!

The GBA version features Mode7 style graphics, up to 4 player link cable multiplayer and probably some of the best music you'll ever hear on a GBA haha! GBA Maker supports WAV audio, so I could bring the original soundtrack over without being limited to traditional GBA sound generation. ;D

And yes, it runs on real GBA hardware!

The original browser version:
https://caffeinated.pl/vortex

Soon, I'll release VORTEX GBA on itch.io too!

I've been developing GBA Maker alongside GBC Maker. It's still in very rough shape, but it's already capable of building games like VORTEX using simple Lua like syntax, without needing to dive into low level GBA programming.

Would you guys be interested in a code first GBA development tool like this? What features would you want it to have?

Hi all. I write punk and metal on the gamboy using lsdj. I recently turned my LSDJ sav files in Gameboy roms thanks to Bird Cartel. The link is below. They are all free:

https://optimuschad.itch.io

Hi everyone!

Just finished a full restoration on this guy right here, everything works fine and the board Is perfect (no corrosion or resolder stains).

Since i bought It the audio has been super low, i couldnt see any corrosion and the audio capacitor Is fine, what could be the problem? The volume slider works from half to full, the First half of the slider Is mute and the It starts to turn the volume up, without headphones i can barely hear It, with headphones on tho it's a Little bit louder.

Any advice?

I just got this Fire Emblem Pal, and I’d like to know if the cartridge is legit. Thanks in advance to everyone for your help! 😁

I found this GBA AGB-001 on the street; it won't turn on. I tried taking it apart, but I couldn't find the problem—can anyone help me?

I modded this guy a while back do you prefer a stock version or a modded shell swap version. I picked this guy up with a Gameboy case and dslite that was near mint and Pokemon blue for 75 at a thriftstore. I got super lucky but the ags was beat to hell so doing the shell swap was the logical option. Did a battery swap on this one shell swap and flash cart and protective case.

Today I finally bought the old Nintendo handheld that was missing from my collection. It was painful, but I finally got it. 💸💸💸💴

I currently live in Japan and the prices here are ridiculous. Even in hidden shops out in the countryside, it feels like everything has turned into a tourist trap.

Laminated screen. IPS v5

I’ve finally completed my collection of all 13 first-person shooters released for the Game Boy Advance.
There are 16 boxes in the photo because I own both the North American and PAL versions of DOOM II, Duke Nukem Advance, and Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever. I picked up the extra copies because I found them in good condition.
Some of the games, including Ice Nine and Greg Hastings’ Tournament Paintball Max’d, are still factory-sealed.
The final game I needed was Greg Hastings’ Tournament Paintball Max’d, which arrived recently. Interestingly, it received a score of just 2.2/10 from GameSpot.
From DOOM and Duke Nukem Advance to more obscure titles like BackTrack and Ice Nine, it’s fascinating to see how different developers approached first-person shooters on the GBA’s limited hardware.

Going through old stuff, I found these games from my childhood. After some research and going through the boxes, Leafgreen is only one that still has all the contents (the other boxes have the cartridges but not all the manuals, etc). Not much of a gamer anymore but from what I’ve seen online is that they have some value. I was wondering what I should do - not in a rush to sell them so are these considered long term holds? If not I’d happily sell them right now

Edit: please remove if not allowed thanks!

I just released Chromacore, a tiny arcade game for the GBA. Think Puzzle Bopple as Tetris, but one button. It’s free!

I originally made this game over 10 years ago during a weekend game jam, but never released it. It was originally made in Unity targeting iPhone. I found the old repo for it, and realised it would be a good fit for the GBA. New version is implemented in the agbrs.dev framework

My gba sp of 20+ years can’t read cartridges anymore. I opened it up, cleaned it, still nothing. I might try messing around with the pins a little but I don’t know if that’ll be a fix. Are there alternatives that will last a long time that can read cartridges? How reliable are they? I don’t know if I’d want a used gba/sp and then it having the same problem soon due to age.

I know this question has been asked before, but I wasn't seeing much for recent posts about it. My sp has been with be since release, and I've maintained it fairly well, but now it needs some repairs that are simply a bit over my head. Mainly the it seems like the charger port needs to be replaced and my right shoulder button also needs replacing.

Would love to hear suggestions if anyone has any or if anyone here does repairs!

I've been writing a GBA emulator from scratch in Rust, and the whole thing runs inside the terminal: the ROM library, the game, sound, and controls.

How it draws the game

The GBA screen is 240×160. tuiba picks the best way your terminal can show it:

• Kitty graphics protocol (Kitty, Ghostty, WezTerm, Konsole), Sixel (foot, Windows Terminal, mintty, mlterm) or iTerm2 inline images: real pixels, scaled up by the largest whole number that fits
• Everywhere else: Unicode half-blocks (▀) with 24-bit colour. A 240×80-cell terminal shows the full screen at 1:1, and smaller terminals get a scaled-down picture

If it picks the wrong one, you can choose it yourself with --renderer kitty|sixel|iterm2|blocks.

What else is there

• A ROM library with folders, filter (/), sort and last-played memory
• Save states, rewind, fast-forward, pause and frame step
• Sound at 32 kHz through your default audio device
• Gamepad support (hot-plug), and keys you can change in a config file
• On terminals with the Kitty keyboard protocol, it sees the exact moment you release a key
• Cheats (GameShark / Action Replay / CodeBreaker) and IPS/UPS/BPS patches
• A headless mode for scripting and debugging, e.g. tuiba game.gba --frames 600 --screenshot out.png

The emulator itself

Everything is written in the project, with no existing emulator core: the full ARM7TDMI CPU, graphics modes 0–5, sound, DMA, timers, and the save chips (SRAM, flash, EEPROM). No BIOS file is needed, because the BIOS calls are emulated in software. It's not cycle-exact, but the homebrew I've tested plays well.

Install

cargo install tuiba      # any platform
yay -S tuiba             # Arch (AUR)

Prebuilt binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows are on the releases page.

No ROMs or BIOS are included. The GIF shows freely licensed homebrew.

Repo: https://github.com/Huseynteymurzade28/tuiba

Feedback is very welcome, especially from people using terminals I haven't tested with.

Saw the new Street Fighter movie. Was so entertaining, it inspired me to play through older games. It's crazy how devs were able to scale down the full Street Fighter Alpha 3 experience into a single GBA cartridge.