Hacking How do you play GBA games on an R4 card ?

[tw_fan]

I read in another post that you have to download a certain file to be able to play GBA games on an R4 card

I didn't want to butt into that post just for asking that person so I thought it would be better to make my own post about that

This is what they said

For GBA games, you can just add GBARUNNER2.nds and some GBA games to the root of your memory card and it should work. I have that in mine and it works perfectly.

So can you really play GBA games on your R4 card after downloading this file and how do you actually get it to work, do you have to insert the games to this file, place them below it or put the file with the GBA games in its own folder ?


Thanks in advance

 

[Shadow#1]

I read in another post that you have to download a certain file to be able to play GBA games on an R4 card

I didn't want to butt into that post just for asking that person so I thought it would be better to make my own post about that

This is what they said



So can you really play GBA games on your R4 card after downloading this file and how do you actually get it to work, do you have to insert the games to this file, place them below it or put the file with the GBA games in its own folder ?


Thanks in advance

No u still need a gba flashcart

 

[Zense]

I read in another post that you have to download a certain file to be able to play GBA games on an R4 card

I didn't want to butt into that post just for asking that person so I thought it would be better to make my own post about that

This is what they said



So can you really play GBA games on your R4 card after downloading this file and how do you actually get it to work, do you have to insert the games to this file, place them below it or put the file with the GBA games in its own folder ?


Thanks in advance

You could try GBARunner2. Just make a folder called _gba on your sd card and put the gba bios there (don't ask where to get it). The bios should be named. You can find instructions on GBARunner2's gbatemp wiki. Just google it. Gba game backups can go anywhere on your sd card except the _gba folder you made.

 

[tw_fan]

You could try GBARunner2. Just make a folder called _gba on your sd card and put the gba bios there (don't ask where to get it). The bios should be named. You can find instructions on GBARunner2's gbatemp wiki. Just google it. Gba game backups can go anywhere on your sd card except the _gba folder you made.

Which sd card you mean, the one for my 3DS R4 card or what do you mean ?

 

[Zense]

Which sd card you mean, the one for my 3DS R4 card or what do you mean ?

I see you have a 3DS. I take it you do not have it modded with cfw and prefer to use your R4?

Anyways, you need to put it on the sd card that goes into the R4. Nothing needs to be in your 3ds' sd card when you don't have cfw.

Also I would like to recommend modding your 3ds as that is the only way to get perfect gba support for any game. Well, 99,9% compatibility.

 

[raxadian]

Also I would like to recommend modding your 3ds as that is the only way to get perfect gba support for any game. Well, 99,9% compatibility.

For a hacked 3DS to play GBA games is better to use this:

https://gbatemp.net/threads/discussion-new-super-ultimate-injector-nsui.500376/

Beware, GBA Pokemon games save for perhaps Ruby and Sapphire do not work well. Emerald specifically works so badly you have more luck with a GBA or DS fat or Lite running a pirate version of Pokemon Emerald than doing the conversion.

 

[Mythical]

Yeah as said above you can try various homebrew methods with the runner method being one of the best ones.
The other person probably just doesn't have much experience with ds flashcart homebrew lol

 

[raxadian]

Yeah as said above you can try various homebrew methods with the runner method being one of the best ones.
The other person probably just doesn't have much experience with ds flashcart homebrew lol

The DS and DS Lite are not powerful enough to run emulators of anything over 8 bit systems well.

The DSi however has more ram so is worth a try to run Snes and Sega Genesis emulators in a hacked one.

the 3DS can run a GBA emulator and it doesn't work so bad but is better to inject it so it runs on the native GBA hardware.

 

[Kwyjor]

The DS and DS Lite are not powerful enough to run emulators of anything over 8 bit systems well.

To be clear: GBARunner2 is not emulation and runs the GBA code natively on the ARM processor of the DS . It just doesn't work quite as well as running things directly from Slot-2.

 

[Zense]

The DS and DS Lite are not powerful enough to run emulators of anything over 8 bit systems well.

The DSi however has more ram so is worth a try to run Snes and Sega Genesis emulators in a hacked one.

the 3DS can run a GBA emulator and it doesn't work so bad but is better to inject it so it runs on the native GBA hardware.

GBARunner2 emulates some of the hardware of the gba and some things not. For example graphics are run natively.

As for NSUI you can choose to either emulate GBA with retroarch or run it natively using the built in GBA hardware in the 3DS, which the latter works as I said above with 99% of games. Before we only had Nintendo's agb_firm to run GBA natively, but now we have a homebrew counterpart called open_agb_firm which is still being developed and is very good already thanks to profi200 and others.

The only thing you will have trouble with with regards to GBA on the 3DS is either if you want cheats or if you want to play games using specific peripherals, or certain ROMhacks.

 

[Mythical]

The DS and DS Lite are not powerful enough to run emulators of anything over 8 bit systems well.

The DSi however has more ram so is worth a try to run Snes and Sega Genesis emulators in a hacked one.

the 3DS can run a GBA emulator and it doesn't work so bad but is better to inject it so it runs on the native GBA hardware.

I've used it on my dslite just fine
iirc I used it for golden sun, but I don't think I played anything else. Maybe I just got lucky

 

[Zense]

I've used it on my dslite just fine
iirc I used it for golden sun, but I don't think I played anything else. Maybe I just got lucky

I mean most games, like 70% run fine on a DS or a flashcard using gbarunner2 so there is a higher chance that a game will work than not. That said, Golden Sun 2 does not work fyi.

To know what games work or not for GBARunner2 there are the official compatibility lists
Here's the DS/Flashcard one:
https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/GBARunner2#Compatibility_list

Here's the DSi/3DS CFW one:
https://wiki.gbatemp.net/wiki/GBARunner2

They are not completely up to date since many ROMs and issues have been fixed since 04/21 with several new releases. The most interesting one being the hybrid hicode one for DSi and 3DS which allows some tricky ROMs and more ROMhacks to run or avoids some crashes in some games, though not all.

 

[raxadian]

Yeah because Golden Sun 1 was one of the most pirated games for the GBA that wasn't a Pokemon game, they went crazy with the anti-piracy in the sequels.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

For a hacked 3DS to play GBA games is better to use this:

https://gbatemp.net/threads/discussion-new-super-ultimate-injector-nsui.500376/

Beware, GBA Pokemon games save for perhaps Ruby and Sapphire do not work well. Emerald specifically works so badly you have more luck with a GBA or DS fat or Lite running a pirate version of Pokemon Emerald than doing the conversion.

What's wrong with Emerald? The 64k save issue was figured out a while back.

 

[raxadian]

What's wrong with Emerald? The 64k save issue was figured out a while back.

I don't know, might be the copy protection. I have no problems with my pirate Emerald card but I run it on a real GBA.

 

[Momoro]

No u still need a gba flashcart

What?? I didn't think you needed a GBA flashcart to play GBA games on an R4 card??

 

[Shadow#1]

What?? I didn't think you needed a GBA flashcart to play GBA games on an R4 card??

Nope u still need a GBA Flashcart

 

[Momoro]

Nope u still need a GBA Flashcart

I'll have to test this when my R4 comes in

 

[raxadian]

I'll have to test this when my R4 comes in

Do not get the Omega Jr for the GBA, it can't use cheats.

 

[Kwyjor]

What?? I didn't think you needed a GBA flashcart to play GBA games on an R4 card??

As discussed in the rest of the thread, you can use gbarunner2, but it doesn't always work very well, and certainly not as well as injections made with NSUI.