Emulating Game Boy Advance Games on Windows Computer with Visual Boy Advance

One of the first steps in setting up an emulator for playing Game Boy Advance games is to choose the right software. In this case, we will be using Visual Boy Advance (VBA), a popular and widely-used emulator for Game Boy Advance games.

For those who may not know, VBA allows you to run Game Boy Advance games on your Windows computer. This can be useful for several reasons, such as being able to play classic games that are no longer available in their original form, or simply having access to a library of games without the need for an actual Game Boy Advance console.

In order to use VBA, you will need to download and install it on your computer. Once installed, you can load ROMs (game files) from your collection into the emulator. This process is relatively straightforward, and most people are able to get up and running with minimal difficulty.

One of the unique features of VBA is its ability to save game states at specific points in a game. This allows players to be able to pause the game at any point and resume where they left off later. There are 10 saved slots available by default, but these can be increased if needed. Additionally, you can also save exactly where you are in the game, making it possible to go back to a specific point even if you're not currently saving the game.

Another useful feature of VBA is its ability to import game saves from other sources. This can be useful for those who have already played through a game and want to resume playing from where they left off, or for those who are looking to try out different save files or strategies.

VBA also includes a screen capture option, which allows you to take screenshots of your gameplay experience. However, this feature is not necessary for most players, and there are other tools available that can provide more advanced screenshot capabilities.

For those who want to take their VBA experience to the next level, there are several third-party programs available that can provide additional features and functionality. One such program is Dxtory, which can capture high-quality screenshots of your gameplay experience. Another option is Fraps, which provides similar functionality to Dxtory but with a more user-friendly interface.

In addition to these tools, VBA also includes some advanced settings that allow you to customize the emulator's behavior and appearance. For example, you can choose between different rendering methods (such as Open GL or DirectX), adjust the game speed to match the original console speed, and add borders to the screen. You can also set up wireless adapter settings and configure hotkeys for easier gameplay.

One of the most advanced features of VBA is its ability to customize the language, priority system, and joypad settings. This allows you to tailor the emulator's behavior to your specific needs and preferences. For example, you can change the language from English to any other language supported by VBA, adjust the priority system to optimize performance, or set up custom hotkeys for different actions.

Another useful feature of VBA is its ability to record gameplay footage. This allows you to capture your gameplay experience in a more permanent and shareable format. You can use this feature to create tutorials, showcase game strategies, or simply to demonstrate your gaming skills.

In order to use some of the more advanced features of VBA, you may need to install additional software or configure certain settings. However, these options are not necessary for most players, and the basic functionality of the emulator is still accessible even without them.

For those who want to take their VBA experience to the next level, there are several tutorials and guides available that can provide more advanced information on using the emulator's features and settings. One such tutorial will be recorded in the future on my e+ Fox Gaming channel.

One of the most useful things about VBA is its ability to run games via a one-click shortcut. This allows you to quickly launch your favorite game without having to navigate through menus or select options every time you play it. To set this up, simply right-click on the ROM file and go to "Properties", then click on the "Open with" option and select VBA as the application.

In conclusion, Visual Boy Advance is a powerful and versatile emulator for Game Boy Advance games that provides a wide range of features and functionality. Whether you're looking to play classic games, test out different save files or strategies, or simply show off your gaming skills, VBA has something to offer.

Game Availability on Windows

One of the best things about using VBA is its ability to run Game Boy Advance games on your Windows computer. This means that you can access a wide range of classic games without needing an actual Game Boy Advance console.

There are many different options for downloading and installing VBA, but one of the most popular and widely-used versions is Visual Boy Advance 1.7.0. Once installed, you can load ROMs (game files) from your collection into the emulator.

Importing ROMs into VBA

In order to use VBA, you will need to download and install the software on your computer. Once installed, you can load ROMs from your collection into the emulator. This process is relatively straightforward, but there are a few things to keep in mind:

* Make sure that you have a copy of the original Game Boy Advance game or the ROM file for the game.

* Download the VBA ROM from a reputable source to ensure that it is accurate and compatible with your version of the emulator.

* Be aware of any copyright restrictions or limitations on using certain games.

Using VBA's Save Functionality

One of the unique features of VBA is its ability to save game states at specific points in a game. This allows players to be able to pause the game at any point and resume where they left off later. There are 10 saved slots available by default, but these can be increased if needed.

To use the save functionality, simply pause the game by clicking on the "Pause" button or pressing the corresponding keyboard shortcut. Then, select the desired save slot from the menu and click on "Save". You can also choose to load a specific save file from the previous session.

Using VBA's Screen Capture Functionality

VBA includes a screen capture option that allows you to take screenshots of your gameplay experience. This feature is useful for capturing screenshots of your game or demonstrating certain strategies or techniques to others.

To use the screen capture functionality, simply click on the "Capture" button or press the corresponding keyboard shortcut. You can also choose to customize the capture settings to optimize image quality or adjust the frame rate.

Using VBA's Advanced Features

VBA includes a wide range of advanced features that allow you to customize the emulator's behavior and appearance. Some of these features include:

* Choosing between different rendering methods (such as Open GL or DirectX)

* Adjusting the game speed to match the original console speed

* Adding borders to the screen

* Setting up wireless adapter settings

These options can be accessed by clicking on the "Options" menu in the VBA interface and selecting the desired option.

Using VBA's Language, Priority System, and Joypad Settings

VBA also includes advanced settings for customizing the language, priority system, and joypad behavior. These options are useful for optimizing performance or tailoring the emulator to your specific needs and preferences.

Language: You can change the language of VBA by selecting from a list of supported languages in the Options menu. This allows you to switch between different languages without having to restart the emulator.

Priority System: The priority system allows you to adjust the order in which VBA executes certain tasks or processes. This option is useful for optimizing performance or customizing the behavior of the emulator.

Joypad Settings: You can set up custom joypad settings to control how VBA responds to input from your controller or keyboard. This allows you to customize the feel and responsiveness of the game.

Recording Gameplay Footage

VBA also includes a feature that allows you to record gameplay footage in a more permanent and shareable format. This feature is useful for creating tutorials, showcasing game strategies, or simply demonstrating your gaming skills.

To use this feature, simply start recording by clicking on the "Record" button or pressing the corresponding keyboard shortcut. You can then continue playing the game and pause at any point to capture the current state of the game.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's going on everyone my name is Adam rles box and welcome back to another tutorial this is going to be a very brief tutorial hopefully because it's a very simple concept but I get asked for some of these things that I've done pretty much my entire technology life and so I'm going to show them here for you in this video I'm going to show you how to emulate Game Boy advanced games on your computer laptop any computer that could run it for free easily first things first you want to go to you're going to want to go to the link I put in the description below to download visual Boy Advance version 1.8.0 the version on Source Forge isn't actually updated for some reason it's very strange and just click the where it says file name visual Boy Advance blah blah blah. exe and download it to wherever you save your downloads to and click save Now navigate to your downloads folder or wherever you downloaded it to and take the visual boy do or visual boy exe this this is the actual executable for the game it's not an installer so cut it and put it in its own folder cuz it's going to make a bunch of temporary and system files for the program so over on one of my solid state drives I'm just going to make a folder called GBA for Game Boy bance and I'm going to paste the visual boy bance exe in there and then I'm going to go ahead and run it and here is the emulator window itself and you can see in the folder it has made a VBA 1. and next you're going to need a Game Boy Advance ROM file now I'm not going to show show you too much detail about how to do this as Game Boy Advance is still somewhat new enough or supported enough generation that I might get into trouble for it but if you navigate on the rest of this website that I linked you for the download which happens to be called mu Paradise you'll see there's a ROM and ISO section and GBA ROMs and they have over 2,800 Game Boy Advance ROMS so you can find your own they are generally GBA files once you have one all you really have to do is drag and drop it onto the ual boy advaned screen as you'll see me do in just a moment now the specific ROM that I am using here is actually a rom hack of one of the Pokémon games so it's going to look a little bit different than if you're playing an official Pokemon game and the first thing you'll notice especially on my giant 4K screen here is that the preview is quite small because Game Boy advanced games basically ran at 240p so you can use your arrows you know the little normal resize Windows to resize the screen now keep in mind it doesn't maintain aspect ratio so you can make it wide screener if you want you can double click to maximize it make it full screen running Pokémon at 4K not necessarily needed although we are running it above 1080p something that you do want to notice here is at the top it has a percentage that is the speed basically how fast the game is running compared to real time so 100% is it's running at 100% normal speed and if you and if you hold in the speed up key which used to be spacebar you can see it goes up into the thousands because you're speeding through the game game all right let's take a really really quick look at the options just to optimize it for you here real quick if you go to file you can open up ROMs Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color you can save game States so instead of just saving in game you can actually save exactly where you are in case you're at a point where you can't actually save the game in the normal game or if you just want to go back to a certain point you have 10 of those by default and then you can load from those spots as well so you can totally pause the game and reset it and then you can import gamesart code files battery files if you want to do more advanced stuff there 's a screen capture option though I do recommend using third party programs such as dxtory or fraps or something like that OBS is what I'm going to be using for some playthroughs over on my e+ fox gaming channel link to that in the description below go sub that up and then you have some options for the video render methods you have some advanced stuff here that I'm not going to get into although I can do an advanced tutorial if you like but if you go to video you can turn on vsync which will sync the frame rate to your monitor's frame rate generally not recommended you can choose whether it uses openg or directex to render it you can actually customize the size here so by default it set to times one and then you resize it yourself or you can tell it specifically times 4 so this is times 4 of what the game normally runs at and as you can see the speed is back up to 100 cuz it's a lower resolution you can add in borders uh what version of Game Boy is running so I'm going to put it at GBA um and you can change how it renders the sound what priority and your system it has and then you can go to joypad here and this is where you set up your hotkey so you have four different joyad options and you can just customize the key bindings for the game and it has ZX uh zxa and S to make the buttons closer together but I usually map them to a LR just because that's what they actually are and that's easier for me to remember or you can map them to a controller if you're using a controller which is makes things a lot easier you can change the language you can set up wireless adapter settings again much more advanced tutorial you can put in cheats game shark codes or I think some action replay codes might work and then you can record some like I said and that's pretty much it but this is how you emulate and run Game Boy games on your Windows computer now Game Boy is an old enough console generation that pretty much any computer can run it so you can run it on your laptop you can run it on a crappy desktop anything running Windows like non- Windows RT will run this there are emulators you can use for Android if you want a tutorial on that leave me a comment down below one last little bit that I did want to mention here I'm recording this after the end of this video here is if you want to actually be able to just run the game via a one-click shortcut what you have to do is right click your GBA file and go to properties then go to where it says opens with click change and then you're going to want to navigate to and go to more apps or actually check that scroll down look for another app on this PC and find your visual Boy Advance file so I'm going to navigate to my solid state drive games GBA visual aboy advance. exe click okay on that click apply and okay again and then you can make a shortcut to this GBA file and put that on your desktop or your start menu or your taskbar and then every time you double click that it'll automatically open it up in visual Boy Advance and all you have to do is load your save file now if you move your visual Boy Advance exe that changes things as it's not going to know where to find it so it's not going to be able to do that so keep that in mind otherwise thank you so much for watching be sure to smash the like button if you enjoyed it let me know what other tutorials like this you might want to see I encourage people to play games of all generations and when Hardware isn't accessible emulation to me is an option I am against piracy on many levels for many different reasons but when it comes to playing older games I believe Games should be accessible and emulation is one way to go about that instead of trying to bargain hunt at a Goodwill or something like that so thank you for watching smash the like button subscribe and I'll see you in a future tutorial come over to my eil fox gaming channel for some gaming videos I'm going to be playing through this Pokemon Heroes rom hack potentially quite soon I don't know much about what it is but it's going to be interestingwhat's going on everyone my name is Adam rles box and welcome back to another tutorial this is going to be a very brief tutorial hopefully because it's a very simple concept but I get asked for some of these things that I've done pretty much my entire technology life and so I'm going to show them here for you in this video I'm going to show you how to emulate Game Boy advanced games on your computer laptop any computer that could run it for free easily first things first you want to go to you're going to want to go to the link I put in the description below to download visual Boy Advance version 1.8.0 the version on Source Forge isn't actually updated for some reason it's very strange and just click the where it says file name visual Boy Advance blah blah blah. exe and download it to wherever you save your downloads to and click save Now navigate to your downloads folder or wherever you downloaded it to and take the visual boy do or visual boy exe this this is the actual executable for the game it's not an installer so cut it and put it in its own folder cuz it's going to make a bunch of temporary and system files for the program so over on one of my solid state drives I'm just going to make a folder called GBA for Game Boy bance and I'm going to paste the visual boy bance exe in there and then I'm going to go ahead and run it and here is the emulator window itself and you can see in the folder it has made a VBA 1. and next you're going to need a Game Boy Advance ROM file now I'm not going to show show you too much detail about how to do this as Game Boy Advance is still somewhat new enough or supported enough generation that I might get into trouble for it but if you navigate on the rest of this website that I linked you for the download which happens to be called mu Paradise you'll see there's a ROM and ISO section and GBA ROMs and they have over 2,800 Game Boy Advance ROMS so you can find your own they are generally GBA files once you have one all you really have to do is drag and drop it onto the ual boy advaned screen as you'll see me do in just a moment now the specific ROM that I am using here is actually a rom hack of one of the Pokémon games so it's going to look a little bit different than if you're playing an official Pokemon game and the first thing you'll notice especially on my giant 4K screen here is that the preview is quite small because Game Boy advanced games basically ran at 240p so you can use your arrows you know the little normal resize Windows to resize the screen now keep in mind it doesn't maintain aspect ratio so you can make it wide screener if you want you can double click to maximize it make it full screen running Pokémon at 4K not necessarily needed although we are running it above 1080p something that you do want to notice here is at the top it has a percentage that is the speed basically how fast the game is running compared to real time so 100% is it's running at 100% normal speed and if you and if you hold in the speed up key which used to be spacebar you can see it goes up into the thousands because you're speeding through the game game all right let's take a really really quick look at the options just to optimize it for you here real quick if you go to file you can open up ROMs Game Boy Advance and Game Boy Color you can save game States so instead of just saving in game you can actually save exactly where you are in case you're at a point where you can't actually save the game in the normal game or if you just want to go back to a certain point you have 10 of those by default and then you can load from those spots as well so you can totally pause the game and reset it and then you can import gamesart code files battery files if you want to do more advanced stuff there 's a screen capture option though I do recommend using third party programs such as dxtory or fraps or something like that OBS is what I'm going to be using for some playthroughs over on my e+ fox gaming channel link to that in the description below go sub that up and then you have some options for the video render methods you have some advanced stuff here that I'm not going to get into although I can do an advanced tutorial if you like but if you go to video you can turn on vsync which will sync the frame rate to your monitor's frame rate generally not recommended you can choose whether it uses openg or directex to render it you can actually customize the size here so by default it set to times one and then you resize it yourself or you can tell it specifically times 4 so this is times 4 of what the game normally runs at and as you can see the speed is back up to 100 cuz it's a lower resolution you can add in borders uh what version of Game Boy is running so I'm going to put it at GBA um and you can change how it renders the sound what priority and your system it has and then you can go to joypad here and this is where you set up your hotkey so you have four different joyad options and you can just customize the key bindings for the game and it has ZX uh zxa and S to make the buttons closer together but I usually map them to a LR just because that's what they actually are and that's easier for me to remember or you can map them to a controller if you're using a controller which is makes things a lot easier you can change the language you can set up wireless adapter settings again much more advanced tutorial you can put in cheats game shark codes or I think some action replay codes might work and then you can record some like I said and that's pretty much it but this is how you emulate and run Game Boy games on your Windows computer now Game Boy is an old enough console generation that pretty much any computer can run it so you can run it on your laptop you can run it on a crappy desktop anything running Windows like non- Windows RT will run this there are emulators you can use for Android if you want a tutorial on that leave me a comment down below one last little bit that I did want to mention here I'm recording this after the end of this video here is if you want to actually be able to just run the game via a one-click shortcut what you have to do is right click your GBA file and go to properties then go to where it says opens with click change and then you're going to want to navigate to and go to more apps or actually check that scroll down look for another app on this PC and find your visual Boy Advance file so I'm going to navigate to my solid state drive games GBA visual aboy advance. exe click okay on that click apply and okay again and then you can make a shortcut to this GBA file and put that on your desktop or your start menu or your taskbar and then every time you double click that it'll automatically open it up in visual Boy Advance and all you have to do is load your save file now if you move your visual Boy Advance exe that changes things as it's not going to know where to find it so it's not going to be able to do that so keep that in mind otherwise thank you so much for watching be sure to smash the like button if you enjoyed it let me know what other tutorials like this you might want to see I encourage people to play games of all generations and when Hardware isn't accessible emulation to me is an option I am against piracy on many levels for many different reasons but when it comes to playing older games I believe Games should be accessible and emulation is one way to go about that instead of trying to bargain hunt at a Goodwill or something like that so thank you for watching smash the like button subscribe and I'll see you in a future tutorial come over to my eil fox gaming channel for some gaming videos I'm going to be playing through this Pokemon Heroes rom hack potentially quite soon I don't know much about what it is but it's going to be interesting\n"