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GBA.js

A Game Boy Advance emulator written in JavaScript

jpfau.github.com

#game boy advance #gba emulator #javascript emulator #browser emulation

Shown by jpfau on Oct 13, 2012. Click the card to turn it over.

76points

25comments

#312of 1,677 in 2012

Top 19%of 2012 by points

How HN took it

MixedNo clear lean

3 positive, 5 neutral or asking, 3 mixed, 7 critical, out of 18 comments about the project. Thread score -0.18.

Execution: 1 for, 6 againstPerformance: 1 for, 0 againstIdea: 0 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

Many games run well, including Pokemon Fire Red and F-Zero GP Legend
From 3 comments
- I'm impressed. It works like a charm with Pokemon Fire Red.
  weslly on HN
- F Zero GP Legend (rs-fzgl.gba) worked for me (FF 15.0.1). It's running at ~80% speed, I suppose we can't expect much more from today's js engines. But given how much faster the…
  jarel on HN
- Games seem to run pretty well. I'm disappointed that there's no sound though :(
  kevingadd on HN

Objections

Sound does not work, at least in Firefox
From 2 comments
- Games seem to run pretty well. I'm disappointed that there's no sound though :(
  kevingadd on HN
- Sound doesn't work on Firefox, this seems to be a common trend among newer webapps these days. Have you tried another browser?
  rjh29 on HN
Several games crash after upload
From 3 comments
- I did a quick search for a game, found "Mario Golf - Advance Tour (USA).gba", and the emulator crashed immediately after upload. edit: Tried one more, "2563 - Tony Hawk's…
  SquareWheel on HN
- Advance Wars 2 (US) crashed when I played it.
  NegativeLatency on HN
- Awww. In an attempt to recreate Inception, I tried to run Foon (a ZX-Spectrum Emulator for the GBA that I wrote about a decade ago) on it. Unfortunately it crashed almost…
  strags on HN
Runs at reduced speed on some machines
From 2 comments
- F Zero GP Legend (rs-fzgl.gba) worked for me (FF 15.0.1). It's running at ~80% speed, I suppose we can't expect much more from today's js engines. But given how much faster the…
  jarel on HN
- I totally got sound out of Pokemon Red! It was pretty choppy but I think that's because my Macbook Air can't quite manage to run the game at full realtime.
  geoffschmidt on HN

Requests

Support for uploading save games
From 2 comments
- Is there a way to upload saves, so I can do things like automatically have the Legendaries? Yeah, cheating, but whatever :)
  tekknolagi on HN
- Hmmm. I loaded "FireRed.GBA" then click "RESET" then clicked "Upload Savegame" — and got "FAILED".
  tekknolagi on HN
Automatic save-type detection
From 2 comments
- Although it's not quite in the same style as the original GBA, you might want to consider putting the keybinding information above or below the screen, instead of to either side…
  thristian on HN
- I can definitely see about moving some of the controls around. When I was testing it, I just had a lot of "wasted space" around the edges, so I figured I could use that for the…
  jpfau on HN
Better layout so controls fit at narrow widths
From 1 comment
- Although it's not quite in the same style as the original GBA, you might want to consider putting the keybinding information above or below the screen, instead of to either side…
  thristian on HN

Questions

Which file to select, .GBA or .SAV
From 2 comments
- Hi, What kind of file should I be selecting? .SAV? .GBA? Not sure; neither worked. The .GBA seemed to select and do nothing, and the .SAV got stuck at "Loading..." I'm trying…
  tekknolagi on HN
- You definitely want the .gba file. There's no upload-progress indicator, it may just be that the .gba file is taking a while to process - I think Fire Red is like 16MB or…
  thristian on HN
Whether the BIOS file is licensed for hosting on GitHub
From 2 comments
- not sure you can post a proprietary bios like that on github, while the emulator itself may be the author's code , i'm pretty sure the bios is not open source.
  camus on HN
- The "bios.bin" in the resources directory is 216 bytes; the proprietary GBA bios is 16KB. I'm pretty sure this the author's own code.
  thristian on HN

Alternatives named

n64js, a JavaScript N64 emulator
From 1 comment
- Imma just gonna leave this here: http://hulkholden.github.com/n64js/ fully functioning n64 emulator in javascript, which dynamically recompiles mips asm to js so that your…
  mm_alex on HN
MAME in the browser project
From 1 comment
- You should let Jason Scott know about this. He's been pushing a similar project for MAME. http://ascii.textfiles.com/archives/3685
  Bakkot on HN