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
• Miscellanea
  • Dumping the GBA BIOS
  • Reverse engineering

Links marked with WIP are Work In Progress and still in development - don't expect complete resources.

Introduction

• Technical introduction to the GBA

Community

• #gba on gbdev Discord Server - Perhaps the only truely active GBA community today.
• GBADEV - Tons and tons of info on GBA development: homebrew, tools, documentation.. Clearly laid out.
• GBATEMP - The site carries the GBA name, but now the console is relegated to the backbenches.

Documentation

• GBATEK - Technical Info
• CowBite Virtual Hardware Specifications - Incomplete GBA hardware documentation
• The Audio Advance - Audio hardware documentation and basic test ROMs

Tutorials

• Tonc - Complete programming tutorial
• 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

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.

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.

Libraries

• gba++ - WIP modern C++ header-only library for GBA.
• HeartLib - Comprehensive C library inspired by the classic HAMLib.
• 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)
• posprintf - An sprintf routine written in Thumb assembler.
• GBFS - Practical filesystem

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.
• MiSTer FPGA implementation - Needs MiSTer setup to run.

Emulator Development

Testing

• mGBA test suite
• GBA Suite
• 240p-test-mini - video signal 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.

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

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