JavaScript GameBoy Advance Emulator

http://jsemu.github.io/gba/

by ggalitz • 11 years ago

323 52 11 years ago

jsemu.github.io

mrtbld• 11 years ago

Link to code: https://github.com/jsemu/gba

josemwarrior• 11 years ago

thanks! just i was looking for..

kenrick95• 11 years ago

Woah, this is great! Probably need a screen informing the keybindings.

anonova• 11 years ago

Translated keys from https://github.com/jsemu/gba/blob/a09294c8a15e1fe46c05f8dcf3...

right: right arrow

left: left arrow

up: up arrow

down: down arrow

a: X, J

b: Z, Q, Y

select: shift

start: enter

r: 2

l: 1

lower volume: D

raise volume: R

increase speed: 3

decrease speed: 4

MrBuddyCasino• 11 years ago

On OSX, theres "USB Overdrive" in case you want to get your gamepad to work. Took me a bit to figure that out.

Retr0spectrum2• 11 years ago

I'm not sure it's a great idea to host the binaries, although it's unlikely that you'll get any complaints from the publishers.

sleepychu• 11 years ago

Am I in trouble if I fork this? https://github.com/jsemu/gba/tree/gh-pages/Binaries

Retr0spectrum2• 11 years ago

Technically yes, but unlikely. The worst I can imagine happening is some kind of DMCA request.

task_queue3• 11 years ago

Why put yourself in that position publicly? Modify the code base and exclude the copyrighted content.

scrabble2• 11 years ago

I don't know about this. Nintendo is now selling these games on the WiiU virtual console.

task_queue3• 11 years ago

Are the titles being sold by their holders on different platforms? Most likely.

The Wii had library of GBA games that were available for purchase.

ROM sites are taken down all the time.

dma3• 11 years ago

I think it's important to credit the actual emulator this runs on: https://github.com/taisel/IodineGBA

arcatek3• 11 years ago

ggalitz (the OP) is GrantGalitz, who is Taisel (I think he/she renamed his github account recently).

TazeTSchnitzel• 11 years ago

Yeah, one day it's ggalitz/IodineGBA and the next, taisel/IodineGBA.

Stephn_R• 11 years ago

Damn...how does anyone begin to reinvent the wheel like that? Was there any documentation on how it was done?

mburns• 11 years ago

There was a detailed writeup of a different Gameyboy Emulator in Javascript:

http://imrannazar.com/GameBoy-Emulation-in-JavaScript

asddubs• 11 years ago

I've been hacking away on a game boy (not advance) emulator myself lately. It's actually all pretty well documented, even if you don't look at other emulator source codes, and the hardware isn't too complicated.

moron4hire• 11 years ago

This is pretty awesome. Mind if I hack in gamepad support?

travjones• 11 years ago

This is tight as fuck! Wow. Nice work!

keehun• 11 years ago

This is amazing. Apart from the distorted sound (pitch), the games loaded instantly on Firefox and could play real-time games (Bomberman) without any lag! JS has come a long way (and browser support).

nickysielicki• 11 years ago

the real source: https://github.com/taisel/IodineGBA

Raphmedia• 11 years ago

Wait, so what does OP's site does if the HTML5 emulator already exists?

maaaats• 11 years ago

Just adding the binaries, by the looks of it.

nacs• 11 years ago

OP is the one who made that emulator apparently (another comment in this thread has details).

MisterWebz• 11 years ago

No save functionality?

andrepd• 11 years ago

Where does it download the games from? The fact that the games are included throws this project into very very legally murky waters.

scrabble2• 11 years ago

Looks like they're stored in a GitHub repo.

task_queue3• 11 years ago

A DMCA takedown notice will take care of that.

fcambus2• 11 years ago

For an (hopefully) complete list of emulators written in JavaScript, you can check : https://github.com/fcambus/jsemu

s-macke2• 11 years ago

At least you forgot one: Angel

http://riscv.org/angel/

https://github.com/riscv/riscv-angel

fcambus2• 11 years ago

Nice, I was hoping someone would find something missing :) Thanks for mentioning this, just updated the list.

PS: Great work on jor1k!

thatcat• 11 years ago

I wonder if you can you run these locally, offline?

arcatek3• 11 years ago

If I may, I'd like to also link my site (http://start9.io) which does this and also work with GB/GBC, and persist your saves online (on top of quite a few other features). The only drawback is that we actually require users to upload their games, for legal reasons.

We're still in beta, and it will probably improve quite a lot in the upcoming months, but I use it myself on a daily basis.

For the record, the emulators are currently based on Emscripten versions of the libretro cores (rather than being a full-JS emulator implementation, like IodineGBA). I'm looking to add more consoles, and the SNES will probably be come soon.

Should you try it, I'd love to hear your feedbacks (my contact is on my HN profile) :)

Touche2• 11 years ago

Awesome, I've been wanting something like this for a while.

Touche2• 11 years ago

So I tried it out and it's a nice start. My suggestions would be:

1. Needs way more documentation. It's not clear how to do anything. Doesn't explain how to upload games, even what platforms are supported (I guess it's just gameboy), doesn't explain what the controls are anywhere, has a feature to use your smartphone as a controller but doesn't explain anywhere how to do it.

2. For Super Mario Land the volume didn't work.

So I would start by further documenting what you have. And I would add a way to customize the controls and support the gamepad api. Nice start though. I'd use a service like this that let me upload any arbitrary gameboy, nes, and supernes games and not just specific ones.

arcatek3• 11 years ago

Thanks ! Yes, I have a great deal to do as far as documentation is concerned (however, there is some doc about the smartphone-as-a-controller feature[1]). My plan was to focus on this before implementing more features.

The sound isn't yet enabled, I have to resolve some issues with Chrome. Shouldn't be long tho (once the documentation is improved :)

[1] http://start9.io/howto/remote-control

camhenlin2• 11 years ago

Very cool, I actually run an extremely similar service (https://pocketga.me/) for NES, SNES, game boy, GBA, and master system. I hacked up many of the emulators myself to support state saving. It was a fun project to work on but I found that most of my users were not interested in paying for the service due to their young age group, so I'm only able to basically break even off the ads

detaro• 11 years ago

What age range/distribution are your users? I'd expect something centered around late twenties?

Sephr• 11 years ago

Definitely not legal https://github.com/jsemu/gba/tree/gh-pages/Binaries

The repo owner seems to have cleared the commit history because this exact repo was hosting these binaries back on 5/28/14. It's amazing that Nintendo hasn't DMCA'ed this repo for over a year.

atmosx2• 11 years ago

Why? Have you looked at todays games? Most of these are only good for us, the kids of the 90s (born in the early 80s)... Today's kids have PS,xbox,etc. Way more advanced game consoles...

dtech• 11 years ago

There is still copyright on them, and there will be for several decades after release.

bottled_poe2• 11 years ago

This is a ridiculous assumption. These games were never loved for their realism.

EvenThisAcronym• 11 years ago

I highly recommend http://jsemu.github.io/gba/launcher.html#fire_emblem

sgt• 11 years ago

Very cool - love it!

I started playing Tetris Worlds though, and about 5 minutes in it started slowing down considerably, eating battery on my Macbook Pro Retina, and the fans came on. It improved after a while but slowed down a bit later.

Is this sort of thing a JavaScript problem i.e. emulating is just hard to do using JS? Or is it a bug in this emulator?

Narishma• 11 years ago

It's probably a Javascript thing as other emulators written in JS are the same. It's using 100% CPU on my laptop while a native emulator only uses about 10%.

marktangotango• 11 years ago

Writng gbc games in smallc and z80 assembler was one of the funnest, most formative things i did in my early years. Would be ultra cool to have rom hacking tools on the page with the emu, big fat load and go button.

benbristow• 11 years ago

Since this will be probably taken down pretty quickly, mirrored:

http://directmirror.com/y4u1gpod4iot/gba-gh-pages.zip

http://www.mirrorupload.net/file/YTSR6UEU/#!gba-gh-pages.zip

Might take a while to finish processing as I've only just sent the archive (straight from GitHub's 'download from ZIP' functionality) to the mirror distribution sites.

bottled_poe2• 11 years ago

Now, if only it was mobile friendly... that would be amazing.

fibo• 11 years ago

I would like to use a gamepad, which method you recommend?

JavaScript GameBoy Advance Emulator

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