TamagotchiTamaHero24 TamagotchiTamaHero24
The Little Fella in your CD-ROM Drive
The Little Fella in your CD-ROM Drive
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Being an ARM device, low power to run, and releasing at a time when emulation’s first boom was happening, the GameBoy Advance is the system I find most synonymous with emulation. Not the GAMES I find to be most synonymous, as that honor goes to niche fighting games and bullet hells, but the system as a whole is what I associate with emulation the most. Visual Boy Advance is the emulator I remember downloading as a child, long before I knew anything about anything when it came to computers and games.
For my particular memories regarding the scene, while very focused, I remember attempting to create a rom hack of Emerald as a kid. I would’ve been in the third grade or so? The idea of being able to make my own Pokémon game was a powerful dream to have as a child, and I was having this fantasy around 2012, so many fan games had already been demoed or completed, so it felt very possible to a young me. Little did I know how out of my depth I was lmao
But, thanks to this, I learned about tile mapping, sprite palletes, map data, warp points, and other bits of terminology that would help me understand the make up of the medium I love so much. All at an age where I was still young enough to find it all so magical!
And, of course, without the hard work of people in cracking and dumping GBA games to be played and pi- *ahem*… sailed the high seas for, we wouldn’t have classic sprite sheets like these!
Or incredible sprite animations like this!
Emulating the GBA has, frankly, kept the games in its library alive. Not just in the traditional ways that emulation keeps all games alive, but in the sense that a select few of its games maintain relevance even two decades on. For games like Pokémon Emerald, Sonic Advance 2, Sonic Battle, Wario Land 4, Golden Sun, Mega Man Battle Network’s entire series, and Mario & Luigi - SuperStar Saga… they’re less games and more a lifestyle at this point, no?
P.S. I feel as though we should treat emulating the GBA like running Doom. Every device, no matter what it is, deserves to run GBA games. It’s just common sense!
For my particular memories regarding the scene, while very focused, I remember attempting to create a rom hack of Emerald as a kid. I would’ve been in the third grade or so? The idea of being able to make my own Pokémon game was a powerful dream to have as a child, and I was having this fantasy around 2012, so many fan games had already been demoed or completed, so it felt very possible to a young me. Little did I know how out of my depth I was lmao
But, thanks to this, I learned about tile mapping, sprite palletes, map data, warp points, and other bits of terminology that would help me understand the make up of the medium I love so much. All at an age where I was still young enough to find it all so magical!
And, of course, without the hard work of people in cracking and dumping GBA games to be played and pi- *ahem*… sailed the high seas for, we wouldn’t have classic sprite sheets like these!
Or incredible sprite animations like this!
Emulating the GBA has, frankly, kept the games in its library alive. Not just in the traditional ways that emulation keeps all games alive, but in the sense that a select few of its games maintain relevance even two decades on. For games like Pokémon Emerald, Sonic Advance 2, Sonic Battle, Wario Land 4, Golden Sun, Mega Man Battle Network’s entire series, and Mario & Luigi - SuperStar Saga… they’re less games and more a lifestyle at this point, no?
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P.S. I feel as though we should treat emulating the GBA like running Doom. Every device, no matter what it is, deserves to run GBA games. It’s just common sense!
