mGBA vs RustBoyAdvance-NG

mGBA is a free, open-source emulator for Game Boy Advance games, designed to run on lower-end hardware while maintaining accuracy and portability. It also emulates Game Boy and Game Boy Color; most GBA games boot, while the FAQ notes bugs in Game Boy and Game Boy Color support. Nintendo DS support is very early, limited to the medusa branch, and has poor compatibility. Desktop downloads cover Windows, macOS, Linux, and Ubuntu, with homebrew builds for Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo Switch, Wii, and PlayStation Vita. Supported GBA peripherals include rumble, rotation and tilt sensors, a solar sensor, realtime clock, partial link cable support, and BattleChip Gate. Game Boy features include rumble, tilt, realtime clock, Game Boy Printer, and partial Game Boy Camera and Super Game Boy support. The Wireless Adapter, IR Adapter, and Soul Adapter are not supported. Built-in Lua scripting can access emulator memory, registers, save states, buttons, game information, screenshots, callbacks, and frame or instruction advancement. The project began in April 2013 and uses the Mozilla Public License 2.0.

RustBoyAdvance-NG is a free Nintendo Game Boy Advance emulator and debugger written in Rust. Its WebAssembly demo accepts ROM files by drag and drop, while the desktop emulator loads ROM files or ZIP archives containing .gba files. Desktop use requires a GBA BIOS binary; the project says an open-source BIOS is supported. The repository lists SDL2 and minifb desktop frontends, with minifb marked as unmaintained, plus Java JNI bindings and a terminal frontend. A proof-of-concept Android application can be opened in Android Studio and requires Rust Android targets with the NDK. The custom debugger and experimental GDB server are gated behind build features. Desktop key commands include saving and loading snapshot files, but controls cannot currently be reconfigured. Desktop builds require Rust 1.51 or later and SDL2 dependencies on Linux and macOS. The project identifies CGB audio, including four wave-generator channels, as remaining emulation work. It is distributed under the MIT License and lists Linux, macOS, Windows, web, and Android platforms.