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I just recently decided to check out all the quality games and tools which the homebrew community cooked up while the GBA was alive. I have to say, I have been extremely impressed with what they pulled off using the GBA's measily 17mhz processor.

First up, the music, image, text, and video viewers are awesome. Some of the links for them are dead, but here's a good place to start:
http://www.gbaflashguide.com/main.php?p=utilities

With these in hand, your GBA + Flash Cart becomes a budget PSP of sorts.

The downsides are usually related to the GBA's meager 240x160 resolution. For example, your lines in a text file will be wrapping many times more then they were intended to, which can make some GameFAQs guides a bit hard to navigate. But it works great for simple item or monster lists and such.

The music player seems very stable and basic. Unfortunately it monoizes the audio and downsamples it a good bit. It's still usuable, but it's obviously much better suited for podcasts or other low quality broadcasts.

The image viewer is fantastic. It does so much of the work for you. It's very intelligent about how the images should be resizes, cropped, or rotated to fit the GBA screen as best as possible. You can also tell it to resize the pics to double resolution, so that you can zoom in 2x on any picture for greater detail. It has a great GUI with a help screen, and a very handy thumbnail mode and slideshow.

The video player is the most technically impressive. It is also highly intelligent on the default settings about things like resize, crop, bitrate, frame rate, etc. You can tweak the settings yourself for even better display. The GBA remains stable up to 24fps, 240x160, 250KB/sec footage. This is ideal for most anime episodes which have been telecined to their native 24fps. The video quality you can achieve is much better than the FMVs you may have seen in the few GBA games or GBA TV Carts that are out there, provided that you have the storage space. If you bought one of the flash carts which use MiniSD cards, then you're in business here.


On to the homebrew games, there aren't a whole lot of great ones, but there are a few that everyone needs.

http://www.gbadev.org/demos.php?showinfo=1271
This rom has 10 homebrew games all in one. Half of them are just cheap but fun clones of classic titles like battleship, but others are original titles. The first game contained within is actually a fantastic platformer that reminds me of Ristar's gameplay through and through. Give it a try.

http://www.gbadev.org/demos.php?showinfo=1279
A flawless port of the beloved classic Another World. Not much more to say about that. Great suspenseful adventure game.

http://www.gbadev.org/demos.php?showinfo=376
GBA got Super Bust a Move a long time ago, but honestly it's terrible. This fan-made version is greatly superior in all ways except gameplay modes. If you're looking for authentic arcade mode, go here.

Maybe I can expand on this a bit more and turn it into an article for Racketboy to post.

You can do all that and more on your DS as well

metaleggman wrote:You can do all that and more on your DS as well

Because it supports GBA carts? I don't keep up with DS piracy. I'll probably get one when DS is dying, and nab the best flash solution at the time.

Mozgus wrote:

metaleggman wrote:You can do all that and more on your DS as well

Because it supports GBA carts? I don't keep up with DS piracy. I'll probably get one when DS is dying, and nab the best flash solution at the time.

Kindof. See you can use flash carts and such to launch both NDS and GBA homebrew. And you can actually use flash memory too with M3 GBA cart converters
http://nintendo-ds.dcemu.co.uk/
Just scroll down; there is plenty of cool stuff, like comic viewer, multimedia shells, and even scummvm!

After reading just how much homebrew stuff is available for the Gba im problaby gonna buy one and a flash cart..but just to be sure would these programs work with a gba sp ?

arion wrote:After reading just how much homebrew stuff is available for the Gba im problaby gonna buy one and a flash cart..but just to be sure would these programs work with a gba sp ?

Yup, I have a GBASP2. Theres a couple older carts that dont work in the Micros, but basically, any mid to final generation GBA flash cart will work in any GBA. But just avoid those purple Extreme Flash Advances. I got 3 of those in a row that wouldn't hold the saves, no matter how many days you charged them. I downgraded to the trusty EZ Flash 2 Powerstar, and it's great. It has a date of 2005 printed on the cart so I know the battery will last many more years before it won't charge anymore.

If you would prefer to go with a Flash Cart w/ MiniSD solution, then be warned that the GBA compatibility usually takes a hit, in exchange for the insane potential for storage space.

And the GBA is pretty much dead in America now, and it's 100% dead in Japan. Hopefully Racketboy won't mind the discussion of GBA flashing at this point.

when i buy a flash cart i was thinking of getting a EZFlash II 1gigabit PowerStar since i like the idea of having a big storage space for tv episodes and movies..and some extra for room for games are carts of that size as reliable as the 256mb ones ?

arion wrote:when i buy a flash cart i was thinking of getting a EZFlash II 1gigabit PowerStar since i like the idea of having a big storage space for tv episodes and movies..and some extra for room for games are carts of that size as reliable as the 256mb ones ?

Size doesn't matter regarding stability. As long as you buy a solid brand, you should be ok. Be warned that even the 1gigabit one is only enough to hold maybe a half hour of good quality footage.

I own a ez flash and a m3 adapter. M3 adapter is much superior. Has more room on it and my ez flash stopped being able to use its battery back up after a while. That really sucked.

alonzobots wrote:I own a ez flash and a m3 adapter. M3 adapter is much superior. Has more room on it and my ez flash stopped being able to use its battery back up after a while. That really sucked.

The M3 line is for DS first, and GBA second. GBA is not their priority, and not even the best M3 model can match the reliability of most any GBA exclusive flash line. If someone were getting a GBA of some type, with the intention of getting a DS later on, then the M3 is an option. But for GBA only, M3s aren't worth it.

And if your battery died on you, it's not the fault of the EZFlash. Batteries or not immortal. It's going to happen to any cart that relies on a battery. Just solder in a new one when it happens every few years.