Game Boy Advance Development

I've created several GBA mini-games over the past three years, all of which can be played either on a GBA emulator such as Boycott Advance, or downloaded to a flash cartridge and run on an actual GBA. These games are primarily testbeds for trying out ideas... I haven't spent a lot of time tuning the gameplay of these games, and most of the art and media work is (gasp... wheeze...) programer art. On the other hand, I've had a lot of fun putting them together!

Star Shot! My first attempt at programming on the Game Boy Advance became Starshot! That original version is here (with complete source code), as well as the latest update of the game. Version 5.0 of Starshot adds a second playfield, filled with buildings that are damaged by crashing ships, and version 6.0 adds back in the old shield weapon and improves the look and behavior of the missiles.

Blod-Runner, staring Dude My second attempt at a GBA mini-game is a shameless copy of the classic game "Loderunner." Here you can find a first pass at the game (complete with source code), as well as a more advanced version with some new levels and features.

Dork Tower Mini-RPG My latest and biggest GBA mini-game. Its (most of) an RPG game, themed around my favorite comic: Dork Tower!

Gameboy Advance Technical Links

Boycott Advance - a GBA Emulator - one of the best pure emulators for the GBA. It contains no debugging abilities, but it will run most of the freeware ROMs, and it runs faster than most. If you want to try out my little game demos, this is the emulator to run them on.

DevKitAdvance - Here's where to get the C compiler I've been using. Its a great compiler, and its also free to use. Grab the source code for my "Blodrunner" mini-game and read the readme.txt for info about how to set it up.

The Pern Project - I found this website more useful than any other when I first started programming the GBA. It contains everything you need to get up to speed on the GBA, including tools and a detailed 5 part tutorial (with source code) explaining how the GBA hardware works and how to program for it.

GBA Dev - lots of GBA development news and resources... home-brew demos (some with source code), tools, and docs.

Jeff Frohwein's Technical Info Page - a page with tons of GBA news and links to GameBoy and GameBoy Advance resources.

GBA Emu - another GBA news site with a message board.

Mappy - a GBA Emulator - the best debugging emulator for the GBA out there. As long as you plan to do homebrew (non-commercial) stuff, it is even free! You can see (graphically) the contents of VRAM, do disassembly debugging, and even limited source level debugging. The current version runs a bit slow, and the source level debugger is still buggy, but the debugging capabilities more than make up for it.

You can send me mail at opus@opusgames.com