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NINTENDO GAME BOY

How to run Game Boy, Game Boy Color & Game Boy Advance games on your computer - In 3 Easy Steps

Nintendo's original 2-color Game Boy handheld was released (in the USA) on July 31, 1989. After several iterations of the Game Boy, the Game Boy Color was released in 1998, which could play the original games as well as colorizing many of them. The 32-bit Game Boy Advance was released in 2001 and continued Nintendo's domination of the handheld market for 7 more years with some amazing games as well as being backward compatible with the 2 previous systems' games. This tutorial show you how to run games from all 3 systems on your computer with a free emulator called Visual Boy Advance. This tutorial and the emulator described are intended for Windows PCs. The Mac version is found here.

Game Boy, Game Boy Color & Game Boy Advance

(Would you rather play games from these 3 systems in your browser with no downloads? Click here.)

STEP #1: Download the emulator to your computer:

Go to https://sourceforge.net/projects/vba/ and download Visual Boy Advance.
Save the file "VisualBoyAdvance-****.zip" anywhere.
Open the ZIP file and extract the contents to a folder of your choosing.
- (Can't open ZIP files? Get 7-zip. It's FREE.)
Inside the new folder, create another new folder called "Roms", where you can put your games.
You may also want to Right-Click the VisualBoyAdvance.exe file and send a link to your desktop by selecting "Send To>Desktop (create shortcut)".

STEP #2: Download a game ROM for your emulator:

There were 733 games made for the Game Boy, 469 for Game Boy Color and over 1,000 for Game Boy Advance, for a grand total of around 2,200 unique games. Each of these games are available at ROM sites around the internet, but most of those game ROMs are protected by copyright law and illegal to download or store. Although any pirate could query a search engine with "GBA", "ROMS" and "game title", this tutorial will use one of many homebrew game that are royalty-free, and legal for public domain downloading (see below for more games).

DISCLAIMER: It is not legal to download or store copyright-protected video game ROMs you don't own in most countries. Check your local laws for details on storing backup copies of software like video games. This tutorial is intended for use with legally-obtained video game ROMs.

Go to the gbadev.org ROM download page for: Motocross Challenge
Save the file: "MotocrossChallenge.zip" to the "Roms" folder in your VisualBoyAdvance folder.

STEP #3: Setup controls & play your game:

Double-Click the VisualBoyAdvance Desktop icon to start the emulator.
Set your controls with: "Options>Joypad>Configure>1..."

With controls set to your preference, click "OK" to save.
Click "File>Open" and your file browser should start in your VisualBoyAdvance folder.
Open your "Roms" folder and open your new game.