One of the best-handled video game consoles in history is the Nintendo Game Boy Advance or GBA for short. To this day, the device still has a loyal fanbase that continues to play its massive catalog of games. Now, seeing as the Game Boy Advance is no longer in circulation by Nintendo, the games are hard to come by.
How to use mGBA for Windows 11/10
But worry not, because there are ways to play GBA games on your Windows computer. The best option is to use a quality emulator, and there are quite a few of them out there. However, we think it would make more sense to focus on one particular tool that goes by the name mGBA.
Unlike most GBA emulators, mGBA supports multiple platforms. If you have a Windows 11/10 computer, a Mac, or Ubuntu Linux, then you should have little to no problems.
Let us talk about this from a more detailed perspective.
1] Download and Install mGBA
The first thing you will want to accomplish here is to download and install mGBA to your computer. To get this done, visit the official website at mGBA.io, then select click on the Download button. When it loads, you should see a list of options to choose from.
Select the operating system that works best for you, then save the file to your hard drive. Now, during the installation, you can choose whether or not to associate all GBA files with mGBA; the choice is yours.
2] Load a GBA ROM
When it comes down to playing GBA games, you must add a game ROM before you can begin. However, it must be noted that if you do not have legal ownership of the ROMs, then you could put yourself at risk. Yes, multiple websites allow anyone to download GBA ROMs for free, but we won’t link to them.
Load your ROMs by clicking on File > Load ROM, and that’s it. Once the legal ROM is loaded, the game should begin, and you should have little problems enjoying some game time.
3] Play recently added games
In the old days, if someone wanted to play a game, they would have to go through the process of loading the ROM each time. But this is no longer the case with modern emulators, and the same goes for mGBA.
Simply click on File > Recent and select the ROM from the list.
4] Sync to video or audio
You may want to determine how synchronization works when playing video games. You can either synchronize to video, audio, or both. Do this by clicking on Emulation, then from the dropdown menu, select either Video, Audio, or both.
5] Choose your preferred FPS
It is possible to select which frames per second to use when your game is running. By default, that number is set to 60FPS, but if you go to Audio/Video > FPS Target, you can choose between 15-240FPS.
6] Play around with the Settings
Like most emulators for Windows 10, a Settings area is present with the ability for the user to make broad changes. In order to make the most of it, please click on Tools, then select Settings from the dropdown menu.
Once that is done, you can make changes to how audio/video works. The same goes for the interface, emulation, keyboard, controller, and more.
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