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
Emulator Development
- Testing
Homebrews
- Jams
Miscellanea

Introduction

Technical introduction to the GBA

Community

GBADev Discord Server - This is where everyone hangs out nowadays. Come say hi!

Info for IRC users

All rooms are bridged to IRC channels on EFnet.

Main channel
#gbadev - general chat

Additional channels
#gba-meta - community feedback/discussion
#gba-help - help & support
#gba-emudev - emulator development
#gba-asm - ARM/Thumb assembly and CPU architecture
#gba-showcase - share what you're working on!
#gba-music - listening, composing and audio programming
#gba-offtopic - off-topic chat
#gba-docs - community documentation projects (tutorials, technical docs etc.)
#gba-tools - tool discussion (grit, tiled, aseprite, etc.)

Project-specific channels
#gba-toolchain - gba-toolchain, agbabi and gba-plusplus development & support
#butano - Butano engine development & support
#natu - Natu toolkit development & support
GBADev - The longstanding homepage of the scene. Regularly updated with the lastest news and releases.
GBAtemp - The site carries the GBA name, but now the console is relegated to the backbenches.

Documentation

GBATEK - Programming specs for the GBA and NDS hardware
CowBite Virtual Hardware Specifications - Older 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
Using Beepbox for GBA Music Composition

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.
gvasm - Stand-alone assembler and disassembler (WIP) designed specifically for GBA homebrew

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.
BPCore Engine - Create GBA applications with the Lua programming language
GBA Dlang - WIP SDK for GBA development using D, using LLVM toolchain. provides fully functional TONC, GBFS, Maxmod.
dusk - Simple, lightweight, intuitive framework for GBA game development
gbsenpai - GB Studio player GBA port with some enhancements.

Libraries

agbabi - Drop-in application binary interface library (context switching, division, irq, memcpy, sine).
gba-plusplus - Modern C++ alternative to libgba and libtonc.
HeartLib - Comprehensive C library inspired by the classic HAMLib.
libseven - Lightweight, from-scratch replacement for libgba.
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.
NanoBoyAdvance - GBA emulator with high accuracy, especially in timing and CPU emulation. Does not have debugging features.
MiSTer FPGA implementation - Needs MiSTer setup to run.

Emulator Development

Testing

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.
Tigermoth - Bullet hell game, developed for the GBAJam 2021
Duster - A sleek strategy board game for the gba
OpenLara - Classic Tomb Raider open-source engine

Jams

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
dkarm_gba_docker - A Docker image that includes DevkitARM and other GBA SDK tools, packaged together to allow a consistent toolchain configuration and reproducibility in builds. Also can be helpful in ensuring a consistent build environment for continuous integration.

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

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