Homebrew Gba emulators are slow

[mike a]

I have mgba and gpse and neither run at full speed. Sure a game like ffta might be alright to play but is annoying. Are there any other emulators that run at full speed? Or am I sol

 

[RyanTheArchivist]

I have mgba and gpse and neither run at full speed. Sure a game like ffta might be alright to play but is annoying. Are there any other emulators that run at full speed? Or am I sol

if you are on an old 3ds your best bet is using virtual console injects though that just straight up loads the game on a special gba chip so no savestates or cheats

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[Itzumi]

I usually use injects for my gba needs, as I dont really use stuff like savestates and cheats. But if your looking for those, im not sure what you can use, I use mgba for romhacks or when im too lazy to vc inject.

 

[mike a]

On a n3ds, figured I'd have to use vc injects. Oh well.

 

[FrozenKetchup]

With something like the GBA Virtual Console injections that can run games at full speed I don't think emulators are going to serve much of a use

 

[Rahkeesh]

If you need to use mGBA it does have a frameskip feature. A lot of games will avoid slowdown with frameskip = 1 (i.e. 30 FPS.) Particularly those turn based RPGs and the like.

 

[Deleted User]

With something like the GBA Virtual Console injections that can run games at full speed I don't think emulators are going to serve much of a use

You can switch games from your collection much faster with mGBA and the use of savestates is much more easier than with GBA VC.

 

[Giodude]

if you miss sleep mode in the gba vc, you can patch it back in to activate with a button press. Also, i'm surprised that mgba and gpse are running slow for you, as i've never really had issues with them. I mean gpse has a well known crashing bug that im not sure is fixed, but it was fast and smooth on n3ds. Are you using the lastest nightly of each? Is v-sync enabled in gpse? What games are you testing?

 

[Rahkeesh]

Many of the top GBA exclusives cannot maintain 60 FPS on either emulator. (unless you like crashing with gPSP dynarec..) Both metroid games, Sonic Advance games, tactics ogre/advance, mario vs. donkey kong, golden sun, castlevania, final fantasy iv-vi, drill dozer. Sure a lot of these are playable at 45-55 FPS, but the sound is garbage then so you better like playing silent. The only thing that did run well for me without frameskip is the super mario ports, I'm sure there are many more games out there that run fine but its hard to recommend when so many top games fall flat.

 

[Clydefrosch]

unfortunately, as dynarec is buggy for gpsp (it runs everything i've ever tried fullspeed but it randomly crashes since it's also buggy) and mgba apparently doesn't intend to add dynarec because they're all about accuracy over speed, the only current option for gba on either o3ds and n3ds is injects. at least those can be found premade online (look for the ones that fix screen blurr).

 

[Deleted User]

Endrift plans to add dynarec to the 3ds version of mgba. Look at the Timeline below.

 

[Dracari]

hunh w/ mentioning bits for "PSP" i surmise thats the overall timeline for mGBA? but the possibility of online multiplay if that feature hits the 3DS Port ..

 

[Tac 21]

if you miss sleep mode in the gba vc, you can patch it back in to activate with a button press. Also, i'm surprised that mgba and gpse are running slow for you, as i've never really had issues with them. I mean gpse has a well known crashing bug that im not sure is fixed, but it was fast and smooth on n3ds. Are you using the lastest nightly of each? Is v-sync enabled in gpse? What games are you testing?

last I remembered not every game works with sleep mode... actually a lot of them do not..

BUT mGBA IS getting better! it may overtake GBA VC one day

 

[N7Kopper]

if you miss sleep mode in the gba vc, you can patch it back in to activate with a button press.

Interestingly, AGB_FIRM can't put games to sleep when you close the system, but it can wake them when you open it.

 

[mike a]

Honestly I don't know where to get the nightlies at, and Ivan using them as retroarch cores, so I didn't know you can frameskip. Was playing Mario Kart, activision anthology, and the midway games, which those are the only ones that play at full speed

 

[Deleted User]

Honestly I don't know where to get the nightlies at, and Ivan using them as retroarch cores, so I didn't know you can frameskip. Was playing Mario Kart, activision anthology, and the midway games, which those are the only ones that play at full speed

This is the link to the latest nightly for mgba: https://mgba.io/downloads.html.
You find them in the category Development builds.

This a link to the New 3DS mgba compatibility list for the previous stable build 0.6.3: https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/MGBA
The lates nightly has better compatibility than the 0.6.3 stable.

 

[ankylosource]

You could get a DSTwo cart. it has its own processor to let you run GBA games. It has the occasional slow down, but I think it's a pretty good.

 

[mike a]

You could get a DSTwo cart. it has its own processor to let you run GBA games. It has the occasional slow down, but I think it's a pretty good.

It was hard enough to get the flashcard I have now lol

 

[able]

I have mgba and gpse and neither run at full speed. Sure a game like ffta might be alright to play but is annoying. Are there any other emulators that run at full speed? Or am I sol

heres the thing: playing on original hardware will always beat emulation, a more powerful computer doesnt mean better game play for old games. you are able to play on official hardware, so id recommend doing so through vc injections personally

 

[Rahkeesh]

DStwo uses frameskip by default, it isn't really any faster than mGBA on a N3DS.