Eclipse vs VisualBoyAdvance-M

Eclipse is a web-based emulator for playing games from classic systems: Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, NES, SNES, Sega Master System, and Sega Game Gear. It is available on Android, iOS, and web, with a free plan. Games can be added from Google Drive, Dropbox, or the Homebrew selection, or loaded from local files. The interface supports touch, keyboard, and controllers, with editable default bindings; controller compatibility depends on the JavaScript Gamepad API and the operating system. Once the site is cached, uploaded local games can be played offline, although some features, including the Library, are disabled. Save behavior differs by system: NES games do not save, SNES and GB/GBC games should save, and GBA games have some incompatibilities. The GBA core lacks Real Time Clock support, and most GBA games with auto-save functionality are unsupported. Eclipse has no multiplayer features, including Pokémon trading. User data is stored locally on the device.

VisualBoyAdvance-M is a free, open-source emulator for Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance. Builds are listed for Windows, macOS, Linux, and Android, with Android nightlies for arm, arm64, riscv, and x86_64. The project lists Windows XP and later, macOS, and Linux among desktop requirements; Linux distributions may package it under visualboyadvance-m or vbam. Game Boy and Game Boy Advance linking is enabled by default. Build options also include Vulkan video output, Windows Direct3D support, and FFmpeg audio and video recording. A debugger is enabled by default, and Lua scripting is available for the wxWidgets port. The project provides a Libretro core option and nightly builds for Libretro. Graphics upscaling is supported, but the project cautions that xBRZ and ScaleFX may not run on older or weaker systems. The license is GPL-2.0. For support, the project points users to Discord and suggests trying Help → Factory Reset when issues occur.