mGBA 0.4.0 released, officially supports Wii, 3DS, and PS Vita
Developer endrift has just updated his popular GBA emulator, mGBA. This major update officially supports the Wii, Nintendo 3DS, and PS Vita, in addition to Windows, Linux, and OS X.
mGBA was already compatible with the PS Vita, but this is apparently the first version to “officially” support it, which means we can expect future builds to have our favorite handheld supported.
On the PS Vita, mGBA is different from other emulators such as gpsp, as it was made specifically as a native PS Vita emulator (while GPSP was designed for the PSP). It’s running through the rejuvenate platform and you can run it if you have a PS Vita on firmware 3.51 or lower (see our rejuvenate page for details on how to run homebrews on your PS Vita).
The full changelog (it’s a big one!):
Features:
- Officially supported ports for the Nintendo 3DS, Wii, and PlayStation Vita
- I/O viewer
- Booting of multiboot images
- Customization of GIF recording
- Libretro: Cheat code support
- Support for GLSL shaders
- ROM information view
- Support for VBA-style cheat codes
- Savestates now store creation timestamps
- Key autofire
- Libretro: Allow blocking opposing directional input
- OpenEmu core for OS X
- Libretro: Settings for using BIOS and skipping intro
- Libretro: Customizable idle loop removal
- Implemented cycle counting for sprite rendering
- Cleaner, unified settings window
- Added a setting for pausing when the emulator is not in focus
- Customizable paths for save games, save states, screenshots and patches
- Controller hotplugging
- Ability to store save games and active cheats within savestates
Bugfixes:
- ARM7: Fix sign of unaligned LDRSH
- ARM7: Fix decoding of some ARM ALU instructions with shifters
- Debugger: Fix watchpoints in gdb
- GBA: Fix warnings when creating and loading savestates
- GBA: Fix Iridion II savetype
- GBA BIOS: Fix misaligned CpuSet
- GBA Cheats: Fix cheats setting the Action Replay version
- GBA Hardware: Fix GPIO on big endian
- GBA Memory: Fix DMA register writing behavior
- GBA Memory: Fix DMAs triggering two cycles early
- Libretro: Fix aspect ratio
- Qt: Fix some potential crashes with the gamepad mapping
- Qt: Fix keys being mapped incorrectly when loading configuration file
- Util: Fix PowerPC PNG read/write pixel order
- Util: Fix excessive memory allocation when decoding a PNG
- VFS: Fix VFileReadline and remove
_vfdReadline
Misc:
- All: Improved PowerPC support
- All: Fix some undefined behavior warnings
- ARM7: Combine shifter-immediate and shifter-register functions to reduce binary size
- Debugger: Convert breakpoints and watchpoints from linked-lists to vectors
- GBA: Implement bad I/O register loading
- GBA: Allow jumping to OAM and palette RAM
- GBA BIOS: Finish implementing RegisterRamReset
- GBA Config: Add “override” layer for better one-time configuration
- GBA Input: Consolidate
GBA_KEY_NONE
andGBA_NO_MAPPING
- GBA Memory: Use a dynamically sized mask for ROM memory
- GBA Memory: Implement several unimplemented memory access types
Download mGBA 0.4.0
You can Download mGBA 0.4.0 on the official download page here
Update: We incorrectly stated initially that this release supports the Wii U. This was, in fact, the Wii (although you can probably run it on Wii U through vWii). Not sure what weird stuff I’ve been drinking lately, apologies for the confusion.
Source: mgba.io
Good!!
am i missing something here? How can it run on the wiiu???
No, my mistake, I fixed the typo in the article, so sorry about this. (You can run it through VWii though)
Wii supported, Not wii u
The full changelog (it’s a big one!):
Features:
Officially supported ports for the Nintendo 3DS, Wii, and PlayStation Vita
Yup, sorry about this, I typed too fast
Great article, but you might want to fix the title…it’s not officially supported on the Wii U, but rather, the Wii. I know you can run it through vWii, but the point is that some people might be misled with that moniker.
Yup, complete mistake on my end, apologies for that, I will update
First!
I don’t mean to dump on his efforts here because Vita home-brew devs are in short supply, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m only getting 333mhz clock speed from Rejuvenate under Unity 1.05, but there are still serious problems with this :-
* All the games have choppy graphics and sound to the point where it’s distracting.
* If I use a proper GBA BIOS most of them won’t even load.
* The option to use no background or stretched graphics in the config menu do nothing.
* The four or five titles I’ve tried are basically unplayable.
* On occasion it still crashes Unity outright, on others it hangs it so you have to quit and relaunch Rejuvenate entirely.
All these issues are present whether running through VitaShell or mGBA direct. It’s really a shame that with the full power of the Vita hardware (well, most of it in my case) it still can’t rival gPSP, which although graphically looks worse due to scaling the GBA screen to fit the PSP resolution, which is then scaled again to bring ePSP up to Vita resolution all the games play near-perfectly all the time.
It’s worth keeping in mind that this is because MGBA’s striving to be more accurate than GPSP. They’ve actually made some great strides in a short period of time – really excited to see where it goes from here.
Agreed, it has improved. I’ve been regularly testing the nightlies and comparing against the old build from July/August last year. I’m getting my Vita on new firmware configured at the weekend so I can test in 444mhz mode with Unity, see if that makes a difference with that and RetroArch emulators like CATSFC/Genesis Plus GX.
I’ve only tried Zelda Minish Cap and everything went quite well (FPS: 57~62)
“* If I use a proper GBA BIOS most of them won’t even load.”
What’s a proper GBA BIOS? for me it worked fine without doing anything.
“* The option to use no background or stretched graphics in the config menu do nothing.”
Sometimes do, but Press Square, it works better.
“* On occasion it still crashes Unity outright, on others it hangs it so you have to quit and relaunch Rejuvenate entirely.”
Didn’t crash for me although I didn’t really test it much. Only crashed while trying to exit to VitaShell holding Start while in-game.
“What’s a proper GBA BIOS? for me it worked fine without doing anything.”
– 16KB file ripped from an original GBA. Other emulators I’ve used often benefit from having it for accuracy reasons or somesuch, there’s an option to enable it by running a game, pressing Triangle, going to Configure and enabling the relevant option/choosing the source path.
“Sometimes do, but Press Square, it works better.”
– Ah, I might try that if I haven’t already.
“Didn’t crash for me although I didn’t really test it much. Only crashed while trying to exit to VitaShell holding Start while in-game.”
– The easiest way to hang it is to enable GBA BIOS and load a game. It usually takes several minutes to even show the emulator screen and FPS counter which is stuck at 0.00, then you can’t get the menus up and force quit to VitaShell usually does nothing.
Changelog says Wii not Wii U 😀
Yes, sorry, this was a typo, I have now fixed the article
I installed 3DS version. Run 2 games. But its too slow. Cant even play it. Tried mario bross 3 advance and castlevania. The fps are bad. There something i need to do?
It supports Wii(and vWii), not Wii U.
Woops, apologies for the (pretty big) mistake here, I will update!
Is there will be a port of dolphin emu for vita?
I’m pretty sure the vita can handle it. Vita is powerful to emulate dolphin emu as well as ps2 emu. But it needs developers to port dolphin on vita.
This is our dream and I hope our dream will come true.
Oh yeah of course it will be ported. But first they’re porting the PS3 emu and the Xbox One emulator since those might require more work and therefore is better to start earlier.
PS: In case you didn’t get it: no, the vita can’t emulate PS2…
Can this code – ( http://moonlight-stream.com/ ) be ported to PS Vita…. I’m using it on my Android mobile and it works so good……
Thanks for supporting the vita 😀
To the ppl complaining about the typo of WiiU instead of Wii, shhhhh for god sake, dont u ppl ever read the first comments?? -_-
On my mobile phone. I can’t read the first comments. I see there are comments, but if I click on the article they are (all) missing. Happens only here.
Wii and Wii U users should check out this excellent, faster port. Even has .zip support.
http://www.gc-forever.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3129
Oh look…yet another GBA emulator we dont need…..every piece of technology today and their predecessors can run GBA games…specifically any smart phone can easily run GBA games to…
Shows what you know. This is the only truly full speed GBA emulator on the Wii, probably the fastest on the 3DS and the only GBA emulator for the Vita.
The vita has a GBA EMU via ECFW, my PC emulates WII and GBA. I’ve never owned a 3DS, haven’t we all played enough GBA though?
Evidently not, because this emulator is very popular at the monent.
Not sure what your lack of a 3DS has to do with anything.
This Emulator will never be “very popular” (on the Vita). Where you even pulled that from is beyond me. The simple fact that Rejuvenate has a firmware requirement, and has a moderate to difficult launch process dictates that. It may be getting some attention now because it’s headlining, but that will fade. I ran Rejuvenate once, and honestly never wanted to test any new homebrew due to the pain in the *** that is Rejuvenate. Did I mention the redundancy? You need a PC or Android device to launch rejuvenate. Both devices have a better GBA Emulator, so GG. Also my “lack” of a DS is relevant, because I’ve never played nor cared about this GBA Emulator on the device. Even the Wii seems like too much of a hassle when almost any PC can emulate GBA.