VisualBoyAdvance (VBA for short) is the number one, the most successful and most popular handheld emulator in the history of Game Boy Advance emulation. It is also one of the best video game emulators, and it's completely free and open source.

VisualBoyAdvance is developed by Forgotten and the VBA team (has stopped updating). Its latest version 1.8.0 has supported all the GBA games (including commercial Game Boy games). At the same time, it also has powerful game debugging, video enhancement and cheating functions.

In a word, with VisualBoyAdvance, you can play all the games released by Nintendo for their handheld game consoles on your computer, like: Game Boy (GB), Super Game Boy (SGB), Game Boy Color (GBC) and Game Boy Advance (GBA).

Key Features

  • Save the game state in any position
  • Configurable GB/GBA keys
  • Joystick support
  • Accelerator Key
  • Game sound recording
  • Screen capture shortcut
  • Game Boy printer emulation
  • Option to use BIOS file
  • Zip/GZIP file support
  • Directory selection for save state, battery and screen capture
  • Fullscreen mode (selectable resolution)
  • Video sizes 1x, 2x, 3x and 4x
  • Graphic filters Normal, TV Mode, 2xSaI, Super 2xSaI and more
  • Interframe blending support
  • Same emulation core as VisualBoyAdvance: GB and GBA emulation
  • Built-in ARM/THUMB assembly debugger
  • 10 save states accessible through keyboard
  • Automatic battery file load/save
  • Auto-fire support
  • Pause, reset through keyboard
  • 16, 24 and 32 bit desktop support
  • GDB remote debugging (see below for information)
  • Auto frameskipping and throttle
  • AGBPrint support for development
  • RTC support
  • SGB border support

Related Links

Download URLs

Version Status Download Size
v1.2 Stable reserved n/a
v1.3.1 reserved n/a
v1.4 reserved n/a
v1.5.1 reserved n/a
v1.6a reserved n/a
v1.7.2 reserved n/a
v1.8.0-beta 3 Beta 445 KB
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