Homebrew Is there any gba emulator for the 3ds that allows speedup/fast forward

[ThatOneCookie]

I've been looking for one and haven't been enable to find one.

 

[Shadow#1]

I've been looking for one and haven't been enable to find one.

Because it doesn't exist

 

[fmkid]

I've been looking for one and haven't been enable to find one.

Did you check/try with either mgba or gpSP (Retroarch core)?

And is your console a NEW or OLD model one? This is really important, because emulators don't work adequately on OLD models

 

[SAIYAN48]

+1 For mgba it works great on my 3DS and does a decent speed-up job.

 

[Kwyjor]

GBARunner2 and Open_AGB_Firm/VC Injects both run code "natively" and cannot use speedup or fast-forward. Other, true emulators that have such functionality will not run as well, especially on the old 3DS.

 

[MarioKartFan]

Because it doesn't exist

What? There are at least two great emulators that have this functionality. But New 3DS necessary for good performance.

 

[nicopinzel]

What? There are at least two great emulators that have this functionality. But New 3DS necessary for good performance.

And which are they?

 

[Pk11]

And which are they?

Probably mGBA and gpSP in RetroArch

 

[Kwyjor]

Probably mGBA and gpSP in RetroArch

Haven't heard much at all about gpSP. How does it compare to mGBA?

mGBA is a fine piece of work but by all accounts even on a new 3DS its performance is modest, and doesn't really provide much of a "fast forward".

 

[Pk11]

4
4

Haven't heard much at all about gpSP. How does it compare to mGBA?

mGBA is a fine piece of work but by all accounts even on a new 3DS its performance is modest, and doesn't really provide much of a "fast forward".

I haven't tried it on 3DS, but I've heard it's much faster. On Vita it certainly is, mGBA can never hit 60FPS for me where gpSP is really consistent

Not sure how much faster it'll get though

 

[Ryab]

I've been looking for one and haven't been enable to find one.

The 3ds struggles to run GBA to begin with already. Fast forward if it was a thing would be less than 1.5x

 

[MrHuu]

Haven't heard much at all about gpSP. How does it compare to mGBA?

May i ask why you keep advertising: "RetroArch on 3DS is generally a bad idea", if you're not familiar with it yourself?
Retroarch 3DS offers nearly 100 cores, with a lot of them working great.


Anyway, I do not know about 'stand-alone' mGBA. But libretro GPSP performs much faster than libretro mGBA..

Libretro GPSP gains it's speed due to the use of dynamic recompilation. While this gains speed, compatibility suffers.

It strongly depends on the game if fast forwarding is possible with GPSP. It usually results in a few additional FPS,
while other games are fully capable of running at a multitude of their intended FPS.

A matter of trial and error, the 3DS has it's limits.
Old 3DS obviously being out of the question.

 

[Ryab]

May i ask why you keep advertising: "RetroArch on 3DS is generally a bad idea", if you're not familiar with it yourself?
Retroarch 3DS offers nearly 100 cores, with a lot of them working great.


Anyway, I do not know about 'stand-alone' mGBA. But libretro GPSP performs much faster than libretro mGBA..

Libretro GPSP gains it's speed due to the use of dynamic recompilation. While this gains speed, compatibility suffers.

It strongly depends on the game if fast forwarding is possible with GPSP. It usually results in a few additional FPS,
while other games are fully capable of running at a multitude of their intended FPS.

A matter of trial and error, the 3DS has it's limits.
Old 3DS obviously being out of the question.

I think it falls under the limited power of the 3DS. Retroarch can take a bit of that precious power. When possible it's suggested to use standalone apps.

 

[BuyTimeShares]

May i ask why you keep advertising: "RetroArch on 3DS is generally a bad idea", if you're not familiar with it yourself?
Retroarch 3DS offers nearly 100 cores, with a lot of them working great.


Anyway, I do not know about 'stand-alone' mGBA. But libretro GPSP performs much faster than libretro mGBA..

Libretro GPSP gains it's speed due to the use of dynamic recompilation. While this gains speed, compatibility suffers.

It strongly depends on the game if fast forwarding is possible with GPSP. It usually results in a few additional FPS,
while other games are fully capable of running at a multitude of their intended FPS.

A matter of trial and error, the 3DS has it's limits.
Old 3DS obviously being out of the question.

Hey man cool post and neat insight. I tried to run retroarch a while back but it didn't work the first try so I gave up and moved on, but I'm gonna revisit this tonight and let you know how it compares for me on my New 3DS after I spent 2 days powering through some Pokemon Emerald turbo mode gimmicks with mGBA which was like... IDK felt like 1.2-1.7 at best averaging 1.4

 

[Kwyjor]

May i ask why you keep advertising: "RetroArch on 3DS is generally a bad idea", if you're not familiar with it yourself?
Retroarch 3DS offers nearly 100 cores, with a lot of them working great.

You're expecting someone to be familiar with them all, particularly on 3DS..? This might be the first time I've seen anyone here mention gpSP.

Anyway, you answered your own question.

A matter of trial and error, the 3DS has it's limits.

 

[BuyTimeShares]

I think it falls under the limited power of the 3DS. Retroarch can take a bit of that precious power. When possible it's suggested to use standalone apps.

Not based on what I just experienced lol and not really how it works I think, RetroArch is just a frontend for the cores and I do not believe RetroArch is doing anything that might impact the performance.

In this case, installing retroarch and then running gbsp core actually results in a standalone gbsp core app on the 3DS

May i ask why you keep advertising: "RetroArch on 3DS is generally a bad idea", if you're not familiar with it yourself?
Retroarch 3DS offers nearly 100 cores, with a lot of them working great.


Anyway, I do not know about 'stand-alone' mGBA. But libretro GPSP performs much faster than libretro mGBA..

Libretro GPSP gains it's speed due to the use of dynamic recompilation. While this gains speed, compatibility suffers.

It strongly depends on the game if fast forwarding is possible with GPSP. It usually results in a few additional FPS,
while other games are fully capable of running at a multitude of their intended FPS.

A matter of trial and error, the 3DS has it's limits.
Old 3DS obviously being out of the question.

Buddddyyyy this was great advice what a game changer GBsp core has been. It did take a bit to setup and actually run Emerald and import my save and remove the graphical issues and set a nice video filter but damn. Filter wasn’t there on mGBA. Performance is way better on Pokémon Emerald like crazy fast compared to mGBA which had me doubting the capabilities of my New 3DS lol.

Just from a bit of walking around and menus usage, anecdotally it feels twice as fast. Also my sav files from mGBA aren’t compatible with the virtual console and I have to convert them, but I just had to convert them also for retroarch to the same file conversion method just changing the .srm back to .sav for gbsp to recognize.

Basically seems as tho so far maybe mGBA works out of box better and maybe has more accurate video by default, not necessarily out of reach for gbsp, and the gbsp save files seem more easy to manage since I think I can use the same save and inject it into a VC title without any edits unlike using mGBA

 

[Kwyjor]

Also my sav files from mGBA aren’t compatible with the virtual console and I have to convert them,

FYI, one reason it is much preferable to use open_agb_firm instead of virtual console injects because save data management is considerably easier.

 

[BuyTimeShares]

FYI, one reason it is much preferable to use open_agb_firm instead of virtual console injects because save data management is considerably easier.

I still like to use the VC for the purpose of having the most native experience possible. I know open agb is capable of producing it as well, and I got it installed and tested it out, but haven't really put any time into it beyond that. I will try to read on its features a bit more, personally I only load into it here and there, but we'll see.

 

[MarioKartFan]

GPSP for Retroarch is an excellent full speed option on the New 3DS and the Fast forward mode on it works. Depending upon the game it will run at 3x speed or higher. Performance is stable and save state support is also included. This isn’t a mystery. It’s been available and the Dynamic Rec has worked for years since Justin fixed some major bugs back in 2019 or 2020.

 

[BuyTimeShares]

GPSP for Retroarch is an excellent full speed option on the New 3DS and the Fast forward mode on it works. Depending upon the game it will run at 3x speed or higher. Performance is stable and save state support is also included. This isn’t a mystery. It’s been available and the Dynamic Rec has worked for years since Justin fixed some major bugs back in 2019 or 2020.

Yup, I had to throttle it back to only 3x. Amazing performance, it is everything I wanted, like it so much I installed it and duplicated the playlists across all my compatible platforms. Had too many experiences where retroarch < standalone, so never gave it a chance here.