If you are not happy with these controls, you can go to "Options" -> "Joypad" -> "Configure" -> "1" and change the controls here: Screen Capture (to take a picture of your gaming) = F12 Speed Boost (to quickly speed through loading screens etc.) = Space Bar
( GameBoy Advance Control = Keyboard Key)Īnd there are some specific emulator controls that do not appear on a Real GameBoy Advance: Between 95% and 105% are perfectly playable speeds.Ĭongratulations, you are now playing your first GameBoy Advance game on your computer! That should bring up the following screen:ĭon't worry if your percentage rating (the 98%) isn't the same, this is just a measure of how fast the emulator is running compared to the game being played on a GameBoy Advance, thus it varies depending on what else is going on on your computer. Some games (especially homebrew ones - those made by freelance programmers) come with the. The game is a file called AsteroidsGBA.BIN. In my case this was the root of the C: drive, so it is already there. Select "Open." from the dropdown menu (or press Ctrl+O) if you are planning to open a GameBoy Advance game (such as Asteroids that you downloaded earlier).ĭoing so should open a screen similar to this:ĭon't worry if you can't instantly see the Asteroids game, just navigate to where you extracted it on your computer. Go the "File" menu, either by clicking it or holding Alt+F. Check this screenshot to see the right option to click. Choosing "Off" will make the emulator run too fast for most computers. Note - if you want to turn off Sound then go to "Options" -> "Sound" -> "Mute" NOT "Off". There are many options in the menus that you can play with to improve the appearance of VBA and customise it to your needs, but for now I will just leave the window as default.
This is the basic interface to VisualBoy Advance. You should be confronted by the following screen if opening for the first time: Run the program VisualBoyAdvance.exe (by double-clicking it unless you have your computer setup differently).
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Navigate to where you extracted the emulator and game (this is basic Windows use, if you don't know how to navigate through Explorer then emulation isn't for you :). Ok, open up Windows Explorer (if you have a mouse wheel, usually clicking it brings up Windows Explorer - If not, go to the Start Menu and click "My Computer"). For example, to make things simple I extracted both VisualBoy Advance and Asteroids to the root of my C: Drive. You will also need to unzip Asteroids GBA - make a note of where you extracted it to. If you don't know how to unzip files, then try reading this guide on unzipping files using WinZip. You will get a file called VisualBoyAdvance.exe, "COPYING", "NEWS" and some other text documents (usually a readme) as you can see here. If you have not already done so, it is time to unzip VBA / VBALink to your hard drive.
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Downloading Public Domain games is legal and free and you aren't expected to register, but don't download copyrigted games like Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh! even if you find them on Google!įor the purposes of this tutorial I will be using a Public Domain game by (Chris Adams) Asteroids GBA. If you head over to Google and search for "Gameboy Advance Roms" you can find hundreds of public domain GameBoy Advance games for you to play. Ok, now you have your emulator (either VBA or VBALink - there are others but for this tutorial I will be using VisualBoy Advance version 1.7.2) you will need some games. It is based on the VisualBoy Advance source codes, so looks the same as VBA, but adds link emulation to it. If you want an emulator with multiplayer support, then you will need VBALink. Not only does it support GameBoy Advance games (GBA ROMs), but also GameBoy (GB ROMs) and GameBoy Color (GBC ROMs and SNES Super GameBoy). It has a large list of features and high compatibility. For GameBoy Advance, the best one is VisualBoy Advance.