Hardware GBA 'ambassador mode' an emulator?

fenderjaguar

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I'm surprised to read so many people say that the GBA games in ambassador mode are emulated. If they are, then why are the injected VC titles the same file size as the original GBA ROM, and not the GBA ROM + the emulator (all other VC titles have the emulator included in the file size and are far bigger than the original ROM was on its own).

Also, why does it boot into a completely different mode, just like the DS games do? I don't think anyone would suggest the DS games are emulated as well, yet it appears to be using a very similar system. I think if it really was an emulator, then you'd simply be able to suspend it and go back to the 3ds system menu, and have at least some options that all the other VC emulators have.

Is it not more likely that this mode is either completely native/backward compatible, or some kind of hardware virtualization etc?
 

froggestspirit

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IIRC, its a mode like the NDS mode. Nintendo did try to make an emulator, but it was buggy and slow, which was from injecting GBA games into other VC's (like gameboy color)
 

nccom

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Its not an emulator, 3ds has gba hardware in it. It runs on special gbafirm which switches console to gba mode but its not really finished (no settings at all, no sleep mode, no brightness adjustment, weird screen filter, etc.) so they haven't tried to actually sell GBA games in such incomplete state and only given them for free for ambassadors.
 

fenderjaguar

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but its not really finished (no settings at all, no sleep mode, no brightness adjustment, weird screen filter, etc.

Incomplete, how? It does everything that the GBA did, since we both agree it's not emulation, the GBA didn't have sleep mode for most games. And the DS/DSi games obviously don't have settings or brightness either. Also, the weird screen filter can be removed by a very simple tool to alter the rom header, perfect no ghosting or ultra washed out colours
 
Last edited by fenderjaguar,

nccom

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Thats more or less the official reason why nintendo won't sell gba games on eshop, it just doesn't live up to their quality standarts.
 

gamesquest1

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Incomplete, how? It does everything that the GBA did, since we both agree it's not emulation, the GBA didn't have sleep mode for most games. And the DS/DSi games obviously don't have settings or brightness either. Also, the weird screen filter can be removed by a very simple tool to alter the rom header, perfect no ghosting or ultra washed out colours
there is AGBFIRM which is what ambassidor games use, this isnt a software emulator, this is basically running the 3ds in gba mode, but there was also remnants of a wip software emulator included in the normal vc titles that run in 3ds mode, Nintendo presumably had toyed with the idea of making a software emulator but dropped the idea early on as it's barely functional , only loads up a handful of games and runs them so slow it's like 1 frame per second (if that)

here is a post about the gba emulator I made a long time ago
GBA

another simple one, remove the old roms and copy a GBA rom into the rom folder, the name to match a similar set up to the old filename (but not exactly the same) and leave the extension as .gba so for example you could have AdvanceW.gba

worth noting the GBA emulation is very poor, very slow and only works on smaller roms i think after about 4MB it will just crash the 3DS
IMG_20140922_013419.jpg
 
Last edited by gamesquest1,
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The thing is, even o3DS is more than powerful enough to make a good, accurate, all-time 60fps GBA emulator. The TI-Nspire CX, which is a freaking graphing calculator with an old ARM@138MHz, and can be OC'ed to 230 MHz, plays GBA games at full speed some times with a gPSP port. (It needs to be set in pixel-perfect mode, since the calc's resolution is around 2x the GBA's). And the o3DS has an ARM tens of times more powerful and yet it struggles. That's really bullshit.
 

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