Gameboy Advance ruled the world of handheld gaming consoles for years, after its initial launch in the year 2001, and was finally discontinued in the year 2010. If you are from that era and a video game lover, chances are that you must have played and loved GBA games, and for sure, would feel nostalgic even now, thinking about those games.
The good news is that there are many GBA emulators out there in the wild that let you play Gameboy advance games on your android phones and tablets.
Mobile gaming has risen in popularity drastically over the years. As the graphics and performance capabilities of mobile phones increased, more and more sophisticated games started to appear on mobiles. What then, we still love old time classic games we were crazy about in our childhood, and for that reason, evolution of emulators for discontinued devices happened.
Which Gameboy Emulator Android Devices Need?
Talking further about Emulators, if you have ROMS of your favorite GBA games, just install the emulator on your devices, load the ROMs and you are all set. The problem is there are too many GBA emulators out there in the wild and selecting one can be a time-consuming task. Specifically, since every emulator doesn’t give great performance on all devices and for all games.
To make it easier for you, our team has analyzed every GBA emulator android devices can run and listed below is a summary of the 10 best emulators for android that you can get hold of.
1. My Boy
My Boy is undoubtedly one of the most popular and highly rated GBA emulator for Android. My Boy emulator offers an array of features and lets you enjoy your favorite games on Android devices for hours. It offers excellent combability and supports for most of the popular GBA games.
The features of My Boy include save and resume state instantly, fast forward and slow down, hardware controller support, BIOS emulation, IPS/UPS ROM patching, Use of device hardware for Gyroscope/tilt/solar sensors and much more. My Boy also supports use of cheat codes, and for sure, we all love cheat codes since the beginning of time.
On Google play store, you will find both free as well as paid versions of My Boy emulator, both versions are getting continuous upgrades to support more and more games and for seamless performance. Paid version gets any bug fixes etc. much faster and has an average rating of around 4.6, with around a million installs.
In for GBA games on Android? My Boy! – GBA emulator is the perfect option.
Grab it here at – Download My Boy
2. John GBA Free and Paid
John GBA is another good GBA emulator available out there in the wild. John GBA Lite (free version) is a lightweight emulator that works fine on all android devices. It has been received quite well by GBA gamers and has an overall rating of 4.2 on Play Store, with downloads ranging anywhere between 10 to 50 million, big number. Huh!
Like My Boy, John GBA also has a paid version available, and again, being paid, it gets bug fixes faster, offers more features, and the ratings also are better with an average of 4.5.
Talking about the key features of John GBA, it supports cheat codes, lets you save and load states. Supports multiple file types including compressed ROMs in .zip or .rar file formats.
Interestingly, this emulator also supports external controllers and provides virtual onscreen keypad. The emulator allows good graphics because of high-quality rendering and allows you to fast forward or slow down the game speed.
It doesn’t ship with any ROMs, so, you need to have your own game files to play games on John GBA, and for sure, must try out John GBA Lite before shedding out a dollar or so for the paid version.
Play Store Link – Download John GBA
3. GBA.emu
Developed by Robert Broglia, a well-known name in the world of Android Emulators, GBA.emu is the high end paid emulator for Gameboy advance. There is another free version on the Play Store, with the same name – GBA.emu, but developed by different company named V Android.
The free version lacks quite a few features, you can download and try it out, but for the real fun, go for GBA.emu of Robert Broglia only, it should be couple of dollars or so at the max, check out for the latest price tag.
GBA.emu provides most of the features that paid versions of My Boy and John GBA also have. What I like the most of GBA.emu is the freedom to choose screen orientation as per convenience, and it works perfect and smooth.
Talking a bit more about features, GBA.emu emulator supports ROMs in 7z, .rar, .zip files etc. apart from the. gba format, supports high level BIOS emulation, and for that reason, no BIOS file is needed, multi touch controls configuration is also possible. Talking about external controls, it supports Wii controllers for select Android versions, USB gamepad, keyboards and HID Bluetooth.
Motocross Challenge ROM is supplied free of cost along with this emulator, and more public domain games can be downloaded from www.pdroms.de website, and of course, you can supply your own ROMS.
4. Emulator for GBA GBC 2018
Looks like developers of this emulator couldn’t find a better name, but the emulator for sure is top class. Emulator for GBA GBC 2018 is the recent entrant in the market, and for that reason, it is quite up to date and ranks much higher in my list here. It supports Gameboy advance as well as Game boy color games with super combability and lets you play most of the games without any issue.
There are very impressive features on offer like high-quality rendering, game shark, code breaker and raw cheat codes support, easy file search option is also available so that you can find ROMs easily on your SD card. Virtual onscreen keyboard for easier controls, turbo buttons, save states with previews, and screenshots are few other useful features.
Although this emulator is new, it has gained great popularity within a very short span. It’s rated 4.5 on play store. The downloads are building up and is increasing in numbers day after day.
Download Emulator for GBA GBC 2018
5. Emulator for GBA Pro Plus
This is a powerful, fast and smooth GBA emulator available for free on play store. It offers many of the features that other competing emulators mentioned above in the paid category offer, and the performance too is great. The only downside is that you would see a bit of ads in there, not that bad though, I have tried it.
Talking more about the features, it supports BIOS emulation, device orientation, multiple formats for ROMs, support for Bluetooth controller, frame skipping for seamless graphics and custom layout for buttons.
The excellent performance, and no price tag makes this emulator stand out, it has much better rating then most of the GBA emulators out there – 4.7 average.
Download Emulator for GBA Pro Plus
6. Emulator for GBA 2
Emulator for GBA 2 is another handy emulator available on Google play store and comes without any price tag. It doesn’t offer all the jazzy features that My Boy, John GBA or GBA.EMU guys offer but still is decent one in the free category.
Sprites can be flickry in case of graphics intensive games like Advance Wars 2 etc., download and give it a try!! Its free anyways.
Some of the key features include external device support, easy to use virtual keypad, option for loading and saving the games, variety of file formats and use of cheat codes.
7. VinaBoy Advance
VinaBoy is another free emulator out there in the wild that lets you play GBA games on Android devices. It has features to quickly find and load your game files. The emulator has also capabilities to speeds up /slow down the speed of gameplay.
This emulator provides incredible sound support while allowing users to mute the music when necessary. Like most other GBA emulators on Android, VinaBoy also allows the use of cheat codes.
8. GBA Emulator
There are many emulators with this name on Play Store, we are talking about the one from the developer named Deimos Applications. This emulator is no less from its competitors and offers options such as fast forward/ slow down. Its performance is worth a mention because it provides 100% speed emulation even on old Android devices.
Like most of the other emulators, GBA Emulator also supports many file types including compressed files. External physical controllers are also well supported here.
9. ClassicBoy
ClassicBoy supports multiple gaming consoles and comes with cool gesture controller. Depending on the hardware you are running the emulator on, accelerometer sensor can also be used. Gesture controls make playing fighting games an absolute breeze and you get a brand-new gaming experience.
Apart from GBA console, it also supports handhelds and consoles like Play Station 1, Sega Genesis, NES and N63. Looking at the stats on Google play store, It also happens to be one of the most stable, regularly updated and users’ favorite emulator with over 1 million downloads.
Download ClassicBoy – GBA Emulator Android
10. MyGBA – Gameboid Emulator
MyGBA – Gameboid emulator is based on the open source project named Gameboid and comes with few modifications that include additions of button A, Button B, edit D-ad controller and more. It is one of the most stable emulators and offers smooth and high-quality graphics and rendering. The UI makes it stand out from the rest, very intuitive and looks good.
MyGBA is free of cost and quite popular with more than million installs till date. The recent release features lesser ads, provides option to edit control layout, and L-R buttons addition.
Download MyGBA Gameboid Emulator
10+1. My OldBoy
Another emulator from the makers of My Boy, this emulator offers incredible compatibility and provides accurate emulation just like the original machine. The emulation is also impressively fast with a framerate of 60 FPS. It also has a color pallet for monochrome games so that you can play in the same color.
This is one of the most rated GBA emulators for Android available in Google Play store with a rating of 4.6 stars. The downloads are not bad either with over 1,00000 downloads.
Conclusion
Game Boy Advance (GBA) is a legendary console which won the hearts of gamers. If you ask anyone who has played GBA games in that era, they will undoubtedly say that GBA is just irreplaceable! Now, there are provisions to bring back those nostalgic games on your Android devices.
All the GBA emulators mentioned above are above are good in performance, games support, graphics and other features. You can try them out and find which works best for your preferences.
