You can use several GBA emulators on Android, iOS, and Windows PC.
Many GBA emulator apps are available for Android, iOS, and Windows PC. Installing a GBA emulator on your device is an easy process.
Want to use GBA emulators on your favorite devices? Before getting started, You need to understand what is a GBA Emulator. In this article, I will give you download links to GBA emulators, detailed information about GBA emulators, and everything about GBA Emulators.
What are GBA Emulator and ROM?
The GBA Emulator simulates GBA games on your smartphone or PC so that you can play GBA games on a variety of devices without needing to have a physical Game Boy Advance device. A GBA emulator typically allows the host system to run GBA games.
There is a difference between an emulator and an emulator ROM. The emulator is essentially a virtual environment for a console like the Gameboy Advanced, while the ROM is the game itself. The ROM could be something like Animal Crossing or Super Mario Bros.
However, you will need one of the emulators listed below to play. But after that, you will need to find a ROM that you can boot into one of the emulators - you can usually find them all over the web. With the emulator installed on your phone, go online and search for Gameboy Advanced ROMs for Android.
From there, almost every emulator below will have the ability to boot a ROM onto the system. A GBA Emulator allows you to play the GameBoy Advanced game of your choice.
How does it work
The GBA emulator is software that simulates GBA games on your devices. You need to download a specific ROM of the game. After downloading a ROM, boot it into your GBA emulator. After booting the ROM, you can play the game flawlessly.
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What are the best GBA Emulators for Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows PC?
Here is the list of the best GBA emulators available for Android, iOS, Mac, and Windows PC.
1. My Boy! Free - GBA Emulator [Available for Android]
My Boy is a GBA emulator for Android available on the Google Play Store. It is a great emulator among gamers. Thousands of players downloaded it. It has several features - cheat code support, external hardware, save/load states, fast forward, and more. You can find better graphics with the My Boy as it uses OpenGL rendering. It's also much easier to set up as it has BIOS emulation, so you won't need a BIOS file to play your favorite ROMs.
There are very few bugs. However, if you run into an error or a bug, it will rarely break the game. My Boy also has decent developer support. The developers update it from time to time to keep the latest versions of Android compatible with it.
2. John GBA [Available for Android]
John GBA is another affordable Game Boy Advanced emulator for Android. It works similarly to GBA.emu and has several features. You get things like cheat code support, fast forward and slow down modes, save/load states, and more. There is not good hardware support for it, which is disappointing for those who prefer to play with a controller.
It costs $2.99, which isn't too expensive. It is ad-free means ads won't appear while you play. Unfortunately, cross-platform support is not available. All in all, it's a cheap way to start playing the Game Boy Advance.
3. GBA4iOS [Available for iOS]
GBA4iOS is a Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Color, and Gameboy emulator created by Riley Testut for iPhone and iPad. GBA4iOS is the first emulator that can run almost all video games and offer different levels of customization. You can use it without jailbreaking and in major iOS operating systems.
It comes with cloud storage compatibility to save games and download ROMs from your account. It also includes a browser for downloading ROMs directly to the emulator. Through GBA4iOS, you can play more than 1,000 games.
4. Delta Emulator [Available for iOS]
Delta is a successor of GBA4iOS created by Riley Testut, the same developer of the original GBA4iOS. It is one of the best GBA emulators for iOS. It is a fully-featured application that supports the entire Game Boy family, Super Nintendo and N64.
Its main features are touch screen control and gamepad support with built-in vibration. It also offers cheats, a customizable user interface, DropBox sync, and even the ability to freeze or fast forward during gameplay. Best of all, it doesn't require a jailbreak to run. You have to install Delta with AltStore which is one of the best third-party app stores for iOS.
5. VisualBoy Advance-M emulator [Available for Windows PC, macOS]
It is a Game Boy/Color/Advance emulator for Windows. It is based on VBA and claims to be the most functional emulator because it combines the most features of other VBA-based projects. VBA, whose developers no longer release updates, was replaced by VBA-M. It has an identical codebase. Therefore, the VBA-M emulator is similar to regular VBA but advanced in features.
The main feature is that the VBA-M emulator combines and optimizes many modifications of its predecessor. In addition, the emulator has excellent compatibility and can run several games that Visual Boy Advance cannot. You can also download its source code from GitHub.
6. No$GBA emulator [Available for Windows PC]
NO$GBA is a good emulator for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS game consoles. It has a user-friendly interface. It has several features like support for codes and a joystick, combining games into one connection - the Link function, creating screenshots, saving game states as separate files, that is, outside the emulator. In addition to video, color, and sound settings, NO$GBA has an acceleration setting. It is possible to change the window size in the latest version of NO$GBA.
Its compatibility with GBA games is excellent, but with NDS, things are a little more complicated. Pokémon Diamond/Pearl/Platinum will run without issue, but later games such as Pokémon HG/SS, Pokémon W/B, and Pokémon W2/B2 will generally not run at all.
7. VGBAnext [Available for Android]
VGBAnext offers several Android GBA emulators internally - for the Gameboy Advance, Game Boy Color, and even the Nintendo Entertainment System. It works great and allows you to play your favorite ROMs from these three consoles without any problems.
One of the highlights of this is that it supports the controller. Are you tired of using the on-screen digital controls? VGBAnext has MOGA support, allowing you to play your favorite games on GBA, GBC, and NES. You can also rewind the gameplay by 16 seconds by using its button. It also has a Network Play feature. The network play feature lets you play your favorite games wirelessly with friends.
8. Pizza Boy GBA [Available for Android]
Pizza Boy GBA is one of our favorites. It is one of the few GBA emulators on the market that doesn't annoy you with ads all over the place. Another unique feature of Pizza Boy is that it was written in the C and Assembly programming languages, making it one of the best performers. It is a lightweight emulator and also consumes less battery.
The developers say that you can easily play your favorite games at 60fps, including the older Android devices on the market.
9. Retroarch [Available for iOS]
When it comes to emulating a classic game, RetroArch is king. It's not so much a Game Boy emulator as it's an emulator of everything, allowing users to choose which systems to emulate by installing different kernels. It's free, comes with a bunch of organization and customization features, and most importantly, it gives you access to a ton of retro games.
Of course, there must be a catch here. In many cases, running RetroArch requires jailbreaking the iPhone. If you don't know what it is, you shouldn't try it. However, it is possible to install RetroArch without using tweaked app stores like TweakBox or Altstore. Both of these apps comply with Apple's terms of service, so again, you'll have to figure out the details yourself. Luckily, the development team has provided detailed instructions for installing RetroArch on iOS devices.
10. Atlantis [Available for iOS, Android, Windows PC, macOS]
If you don't want to jailbreak your iPhone or install third-party storefronts, all you have left is Internet emulation. Luckily, developer Brian Blakely created a Game Boy web emulator called Atlantis. It works entirely from internet browsers.
Because it works from the internet, performance may not be as smooth as software emulation. Also, you will need to play around with a few options for video and controls. However, it's free and allows you to upload and play your ROMs or choose from several default home games.
11. MyEmulator GBA [Available for Windows PC and macOS]
MyEmulator.online is one of the best websites where you can play a vast selection of free games. You don't need to install any game or emulator because this website runs several GBA games directly in your web browser.
To play a GBA game using this site, You need to search for a particular game and then click on load game to start the game. You can view game controls (keyboard) in each game on the screen before the game start.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are a lot of Game Boy Advanced (and Game Boy Color) emulators available on the Internet. However, these are the best Game Boy emulators available in 2022.