Retro Gaming Hacks

Play Homebrews on Your GBA

Use Flash Linkers to put Game Boy Advance ROMs onto your system.

So, let’s say you’ve set up a Game Boy Advance emulator [Hack #44] and begun to delve into enjoying the fruits of the vibrant GBA homebrew scene. But playing these games on your PC monitor just isn’t enough—isn’t there some way to get them from there onto the GBA SP sitting on your desk? Yes, there is. And it’s easier than you might think (albeit a little expensive).

What you need is commonly referred to as a flash linker. It’s a small device that connects to your PC and lets you write Game Boy Advance-compatible ROMs to what is known as a flash cart—a blank, rewriteable cartridge that will work with your GBA. These come in many different sizes from 64 Mb all the way up to 1 GB. The average user tends to buy either a 256 Mb or 512 Mb cartridge. The average GBA game is much smaller than this, but you can write multiple games to a flash cart.

Warning

Most vendors will report the size of flash carts in megabits (Mb). So a 128 Mb cart is actually 16 megabytes (MB).

One major advantage to playing GBA homebrews via a flash linker is that they will play perfectly. You won’t have to worry about adjusting emulator settings, wondering if the homebrew you’re playing is just badly programmed or if there’s something wrong with your emulator. What you see is what you get on the real GBA hardware.

Tip

Since the newly released Nintendo DS console has a GBA media port, the devices described next will all work ...