mGBA vs VisualBoyAdvance-M

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.

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.