mGBA
Latest Release: 0.9.0
Latest Development Version: 6925-d5138bf
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mGBA 0.9.0
Mar 28, 2021
After the seemingly longest year possible, mGBA 0.9.0 is finally here. It’s been a difficult year for the entire world and that definitely had an impact on development this cycle too. While progress marched on with mGBA for the first few months of last year, I was able to release 0.8.1 through 0.8.3 picking up most of the bug fixes I made along the way towards 0.9. After several months there were lots changed under the surface, but not many user visible new features. In the interest of releasing an properly exciting new version of mGBA I decided to hold onto releasing 0.9 until it was polished and featureful. During the latter half of the year I finally started a push for features, and released 0.8.4 as the last of the 0.8 line. Remember, mGBA currently only has one major developer, so things can take quite a long time to finish, and if I’m not actively working on it any given week then there isn’t progress made that week. While this did lead to 0.9 being effectively “coming soon” for many, many months in a row, it has led to what I believe to be an extremely polished release, so I’m now happy to announce that mGBA 0.9.0 is done and out.
Though it has dozens and fixes of tweaks under the hood, there are some pretty major features to announce, including full e-Reader support, some new enhanced utilities such as a save type converter and a bug report tool, and more. The most exciting features added in this release are detailed after the cut, along with a full change log.
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mGBA 0.8.4
Oct 29, 2020
A new release of mGBA, version 0.8.4, is available. This version is a bugfix release, which contains many stability and accuracy fixes. Notably, an issue in the 3DS version that would lead to the 3DS crashing when exiting the emulator, and an issue that would lead mGBA to appearing in a language other than English by default on macOS despite the system language being set to English, have been fixed. The previously mentioned bug with Advance Wars is still present in 0.8.4. It has also been discovered to affect Final Fantasy I. This can be worked around by using a dump of the official BIOS, or using a development build, also available on the download page, which has the bug fixed. An extensive list of changes follows after the cut.
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mGBA 0.8.3
Aug 3, 2020
A new release of mGBA, version 0.8.3, is available. This version is a bugfix release, which contains many stability and accuracy fixes. Notably, an issue leading to stuttered rendering and eventually a crash, mostly on AMD GPUs, has been fixed. However, there is an outstanding bug in all 0.8 versions that causes flickering in Advance Wars games. This can be worked around by using a dump of the official BIOS, or using 0.7.3 until it is fixed. An extensive list of changes follows after the cut.
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mGBA 0.8.2
Jun 14, 2020
A new release of mGBA, version 0.8.2, is available. This version is a bugfix release, which contains many stability and accuracy fixes. Notably, several rendering edge cases were fixed in both the default renderer and the OpenGL renderer. An extensive list of changes follows after the cut.
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mGBA 0.8.1
Feb 16, 2020
A new release of mGBA, version 0.8.1, is available. This version is a bugfix release, which contains many stability and accuracy fixes. Notably, many Qt frontend bugs have been fixed, and the SDL version was updated. An extensive list of changes follows after the cut.
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The Infinite Loop That Wasn't: A Holy Grail Bug Story
Jan 25, 2020
Once upon a time there was a game for the GBA by the name of Hello Kitty Collection: Miracle Fashion Maker. It was a cutesy game based on the famous Sanrio Hello Kitty franchise, developed by Access. But hidden beneath the surface of the seemingly innocuous title was an insidious problem. Somehow, this simple game just did not boot in any GBA emulator. This alone was enough to qualify it as a Holy Grail bug. As with all Holy Grail bugs the bug itself was absolutely baffling. Here the explanation was simple: sometime during the game’s startup sequence, it enters a loop that can never exit due to expecting a specific value reading out of memory that does not exist. While many games have similar bugs, such as the intro sequence in the high-profile game The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, those rely on a specific behavior from reading invalid memory addresses. But this loop seemed to defy that behavior. And yet, it works on actual hardware. Moreover, this same bug also occurs in when loading a save in Sonic Pinball Party after a cold boot. Could the expectation of these invalid memory accesses be wrong somehow? But how?
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mGBA 0.8.0
Jan 21, 2020
A little late (okay, a lot late), mGBA 0.8.0 is finally available as a stable release. This is a major feature release and includes some highly anticipated features. Notably, the high-resolution OpenGL renderer for GBA games, BattleChip Gate support, interframe blending, and much more. Additionally, it includes over 50 bug fixes and hundreds of other changes. A preview of the features follows after the cut, along with a full list of changes.
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mGBA 0.8 beta 1
Oct 20, 2019
After far too long in development, mGBA 0.8.0 is almost ready for release. While there are still a few missing features left to finish, I didn’t want to hold up 0.8 that much longer. While I’m working on those last features I’m hoping a final push for testing will help flatten out any more serious issues before the final release of mGBA 0.8.0, so I’m releasing the first beta for mGBA 0.8.
Some notable new features of mGBA 0.8 include:
- A high-resolution hardware renderer for enhanced GBA graphics
- Discord Rich Presence support
- BattleChip Gate emulation
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mGBA 0.7.3
Sep 15, 2019
A new release of mGBA, version 0.7.3, is available. This version is a bugfix release, which contains many stability and accuracy fixes. Notably, sprites that are broken at the top of the screen are fixed. An extensive list of changes follows after the cut.
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mGBA 0.7.2
May 25, 2019
A new release of mGBA, version 0.7.2, is available. This version is a bugfix release, which contains many stability and accuracy fixes. Notably, the 3DS version no longer hangs on non-CFW New 3DSes. An extensive list of changes follows after the cut.
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