Kempa.com » Gameboy Advance ADVANCE

4.2.04

I’d imagine most people who read this site don’t have a Gameboy Advance, but I do, so that’s what you get to hear about.

Around christmastime, I saw a little blurb over on slatch.com about flash memory for the Gameboy Advance. This is important because it means you can flash GBA roms onto the cartridge and carry around more than one game at a time (This also means that depending on the quality of your moral fiber, you might not exactly have to pay for the games). Even better, it means that a whole programming community has sprung up around the gameboy advance, writing all sorts of ridiculous and entirely unneccesary software. As you well know, ridiculous and uneccesary are my two favorite adjectives, so I did a bit of digging around.

The first great thing I found out is that you aren’t limited to playing Gameboy Advance games on your Gameboy Advance anymore. Emulators have been ported for a shitload of systems, including the original gameboy, NES, SNES, ~~Atari~~ (Not released yet), and even ~~MAME~~ a few classic arcade games, so you can load your GBA up with favorites from systems of days gone by. You can download all the GBA emulation software from this page.

Beyond emulation, developers for the Gameboy Advance have coded TWO basic operating systems – GBA WinS and pogoshell, not to mention useful items like a calculator and guitar tuner.

The sites to visit to keep abreast of the latest developments in the world of GBA development are gbadev.com and the GBA section of devrs.com. There’s also a ridiculously comprehensive tutorial to authoring Gameboy Advance games from scratch here, if you’re so inclined.

I ordered my EZF II Adavnce from this company (They’re in Hong Kong). It arrived with no instructions whatsoever, but it was relatively easy to figure out with the assistance of google and some common sense. Fellow nerds will want to know that the cartridge I ordered is 256 Megs and currently holds five games (Metroid: Zero Mission, Super Mario Advance 2, Wario Ware, Advance Wars 2, and Mario Kart). In summary: WATCH OUT METROID ZERO MISSION.

Comments

4.2.04

wagz says:

i bought my g/f a gba for christmas, but since she only plays one game, and ridiculous and uneccesary are not her thing i haven’t gone the extra mile and picked up a flash card. the best feature wold have to be being able to save your game anywhere, esp. in mario.

wario ware owns. enjoy

4.2.04

Andy Baio says:

I love my EZ-Flash II, which I got from Linkerworld. A friend of mine got the X-ROM 512MB with double the capacity of mine, and he loves it.

There’s also a very active homebrew scene, with hundreds of public domain games and graphic demos available.

A couple small corrections to your post, though… Two Atari 2600 emulators were in development, but never publicly released. MAME has never been ported to the GBA, only a couple standalone arcade game emulators.

4.2.04

Andy Baio says:

Ack! You have HTML turned off?! I had several links in my comment, but here’s the most important one…

Public Domain GBA Roms:
http://www.pdroms.de/typ.php?system=Gameboy+Advance

4.2.04

mark nerdcore says:

Nah dude, it’s on (at least for me).

4.2.04

groverloaf says:

I just thought you should know….

One-time Zombie guitarist and veteran A&R exec Paul Atkinson passed away last evening. His friend George Ghiz writes: I received a call from Helen at 12:08 a.m this morning. Our dear friend Paul has passed away. She had been informed that he went to sleep & his tired heart just stopped. When I saw him at 7:30 p.m. last night, his conversation was all about feeling better & hopeful of joining the new Warner Music Group when he was able. Paul fought the good fight. May he rest in peace.” An ailing Atkinson was presented with NARAS’ President’s Merit Award at L.A.’s House of Blues in January, where he sat in with his old bandmates in the Zombies and a celebrity auction helped raise money for the kidney transplant he needed.
Atkinson was head of A&R at CBS, RCA and MCA, signing the likes of ABBA, Bruce Hornsby, Judas Priest, Mr. Mister, Michael Penn and Patty Smyth. (4/2p)

4.2.04

Adam says:

Andy showed me how to turn it on, so you can now post links in the comments. Good times.

4.2.04

Zach says:

http://www.naked-dudes.com

FINALLY.

4.3.04

max says:

is the pc cable OS X compatible? how do you get the games from your computer to the flash card?

4.4.04

Adam says:

I couldn’t find an OSX compatible product so I run it off my ancient PC. One end of the cord is USB, the other plugs directly into the gameboy.

4.5.04

Josh says:

now that you’ve entered the small time console pirating world, it’ll soon be time to move up to the xbox! if you think all the home brewed software available for the gba is insane, the xbox scene will destroy your mind!

go to xbox-scene.com and start reading.

4.9.04

donna says:

HELP! I’m IN Hong Kong and I want to buy my b/f a flash card BUT i can’t find a store. I need a supplier.

I’m only here for another day.

4.16.04

adam says:

Oh man:
GBA as microcontroller:

http://www.charmedlabs.com/

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