game boy advance

48 Articles

Using An Unmodded GBA As A Music Synth

October 23, 2026 by 3 Comments

The style and sound of older video games is unique enough that they’re still copied in relatively modern games like Undertale, Celeste, or Shovel Knight. There’s also a vibrant chiptune community making music on the older hardware directly. Often this involves hardware modding or otherwise finding chips from older gaming systems to replicate that unique retro gaming sound authentically. But disassembling older systems is not always necessary. Take a look at this Game Boy Advance synthesizer which uses the GBA hardware with no modifications at all.

The key to making this work is the GBA’s multiboot feature, which allowed these systems to send executable code over a link cable to other consoles which didn’t have cartridges. This meant that friends could play multiplayer games without each one needing their own cartridge, but it also means that nowadays people can send their own custom software directly to the console’s RAM without much extra effort. To run the synthesizer software, the GBA is connected to a computer, the software is started, and then when the GBA is powered on the snythesizer is automatically loaded into its RAM. The audio output is played over the headphone jack, and various controls are available on the computer and on the console.

In the video linked below, [Andy] is using the GBA with some other musical hardware and the sounds he’s getting from the unmodified console are impressive. It could certainly be a go-to for anyone interested in getting started in this style of music or who doesn’t want to do something like take apart an original Sega Genesis for the audio circuitry.

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An Enhanced Game Boy Advance

September 17, 2026 by 14 Comments

[Bucket Mouse] has long been a fan of the various iterations of the Nintendo Game Boy. Now, he’s turned his eye to the Game Boy Advance, building an enhanced version for the console’s 25th anniversary.

There are plenty of ways to mod an existing GBA to be better than the original, but this build recreates the console from the ground up. It’s basically a brand new motherboard that replaces the original entirely, requiring only the CPU and RAM to be harvested from the original board.

It’s perfect for when you find a badly-damaged handheld that needs heavy repair, because every other part on the board can be purchased new. You can buy a nice shiny screen kit online, and even upgrade to LiPo power if so desired. The new motherboard also eliminates sound issues that are common when upgrading the screen in a classic GBA, and there’s stereo audio available on the headphone jack as standard. Battery life is also improved compared to the original.

If you’ve got a haggard old GBA in need of repair, or you just want to build the best classic handheld you can, it’s worth taking a look at this build. You might also appreciate previous works from [Bucket Mouse], like his efforts to improve the original Game Boy.

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At Last, A Gameboy Advance With Decent Audio

August 24, 2026 by 2 Comments

Many pieces of consumer electronics are build down to a price, and the corners cut show up in their performance. The Gameboy Advance from Nintendo is no exception: its audio is a PWM stream that sounds awful through the included amplifier. [Cajun Panda] has a fix though, in the form of a replacement audio chain.

It takes the form of a PCB that hooks into the pads of the removed GBA audio chip, and provides a much cleaner audio path with filtering and EQ and a class D audio amplifier. In addition there’s an audio codec and an ESP32 for Bluetooth connectivity, enabled by a long press of a GBA button and configured via a web interface on the ESP. Best of all there is no case modification, this is designed to remain as stock as possible.

Everything can be found in a GitHub repository should you wish to make your own, so if you want to bring your GBA audio up to scratch you know where to go. If you want to make it even better don’t forget, you can always upgrade the screen.

A New Screen Upgrade For The GBA

August 27, 2025 by 8 Comments

The Game Boy Advance (GBA) was released in 2001 to breathe some new life into the handheld market, and it did it with remarkable success. Unfortunately, the original models had a glaring problem: their unlit LCD screens could be very difficult to see. For that reason, console modders who work on these systems tend to improve the screen first like this project which brings a few other upgrades as well.

The fully open-source modification is called the Open AGB Display and brings an IPS display to the classic console. The new screen has 480×480 resolution which is slightly larger than the original resolution but handles upscaling with no noticeable artifacts and even supports adding some back in like scanlines and pixelation to keep the early 00s aesthetic. The build does require permanently modifying the case though, but for the original GBA we don’t see much downside. [Tobi] also goes through a ton of detail on how the mod works as well, for those who want to take a deep dive into the background theory.

There has been a lot of activity in the Game Boy Advance communities lately though as the hardware and software become more understood. If you don’t want to modify original hardware, want an upgraded experience, but still want to use the original game cartridges we might recommend something like the Game Bub instead.

Running FreeDOS And 8086tiny On The Game Boy Advance Because You Can

June 5, 2025 by 21 Comments

How many people haven’t looked at their Game Boy Advance (GBA) handheld gaming device and wondered how much better it might be if it could run FreeDOS. Inside an 8086 emulator. If you’re like [ZZAZZ] and similarly suffer intrusive project-related thoughts, then this might be a moment of clear recognition, somewhat like sharing one’s story at a Programmers Anonymous meeting, but we digress.

In the video, the basic premise of making even the 8086tiny emulator work on the GBA seemed improbable on the outset – courtesy of the rather limited memory environment provided by the GBA – before even daring to look at things like disk access.

However, letting silly things like segmented memory and mismatched memory addresses deter us from pleasing said intrusive thoughts would be beyond the pale. Ergo we get a shining example of how days of rewriting code, stripping code, debugging code, fixing alignment issues in code and writing work-arounds for newly discovered issues in code can ultimately lead to the proud moment where FreeDOS boots on the GBA.

Granted it takes over an hour to do so, and has to be started from a butchered Pokémon Emerald save file, courtesy of a well-known exploit in that game, thankfully preserved in counterfeit cartridges.

Admittedly we’re not sure what practical applications there are for FreeDOS on the GBA, but that’s never stopped hackers from taking on impossible projects before, so there’s no sense letting it get in the way now.

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Game Bub Plays ROMs And Cartridges

February 15, 2025 by 11 Comments

With today’s technology, emulating video game consoles from the 90s or before is trivial. A Raspberry Pi and a controller of some sort is perhaps the easiest and simplest way to go to get this job done, but to really impress the masses some extra effort is required. This handheld from [Eli] called the Game Bub not only nails the appearance and feel of the first three generations of Nintendo handhelds but, thanks to its FPGA, can play not only ROMs but the original game cartridges as well.

As [Eli] notes, the FPGA is not strictly necessary for emulation, but does seem to be better at interfacing with physical hardware like controllers and game cartridges. For this task an Xilinx XC7A100T with integrated memory was chosen, with a custom PCB supporting the built-in controller, speaker, a rechargeable lithium battery, and a 480×320 display (that had to be rotated out of portrait mode). An SD Card reader is included for any ROM files, and there’s also a ESP32-S3 included to give the handheld WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities, with future plans to support the communications protocol used by the Game Boy Advance Wireless Adapter.

There are a few other features with the Game Bub as well, including the ability to use an authentic link cable to communicate with the original Game Boy and Game Boy Color, and a Switch-like dock that allows the Game Bub to be connected to an external monitor. It’s also open source, which makes it an even more impressive build. Presumably it doesn’t include the native ability to dump cartridges to ROM files but you don’t need much more than a link cable to do that if you need to build your ROM library.

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Pump It Up Gets Homebrew GBA Port That Rocks

May 16, 2024 by 3 Comments

Pump It Up is a popular music video game that hails from South Korea. It’s similar in vibe to Dance Dance Revolution and In The Groove, but it has an extra arrow panel to make life harder. [Rodrigo Alfonso] loved it so much, he ported it to the Game Boy Advance.

The port looks fantastic, with all the fast-moving arrows and lovely sprite-based graphics you could dream of. But more than that, [Rodrigo’s] port is very fully featured. It doesn’t rely on tracked or sampled music, instead using actual GSM audio files for the songs.

It can also accept input from a PS/2 keyboard, and you can even do multiplayer over the GBA’s Wireless Adapter. What’s even cooler is that some of the game’s neat features have been broken out into separate libraries so other developers can use them. If you need a Serial Port library for the GBA, or a way to read the SD card on flash carts, [Rodrigo] has put the code on GitHub.

As you might have guessed, this isn’t the first time [Rodrigo] has pushed the limits on what Nintendo’s 32-bit handheld can do.

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