What's the best way to play Game Boy Advance games today?

[Tanooki]

At least is right, other stuff like point and click of any style works too, but if it can take a bluetooth controller anything is fair game. But is that the best one? I thought usually the .emu guy Broglia kind of had a lock on quality but I don't even know if he did one of those for GBA.

[Exhuminator]

But is that the best one?

Best one I've tried anyway.

[Sarge]

Yeah, he's got one for GBA. I've got the GBC, NES, Genesis, and SNES ones. The SNES one is free, I'm assuming the authors have said he can't sell 'em. I don't use them that much, though. I probably would if I'd get those little decals that you can put on the joypads that give at least a little tactile feedback.

[casterofdreams]

I have an old one on android that was taken down years ago. Its called Gameboid.

RPGs that operate on 4 directions (Pokemon for example), strategy games & card games are the only things I was able to play on without the touch controls being an issue.

[Tanooki]

I'm without a tablet anyway so I can't bother until next week when my replacement shield tablet arrives. The last one decided to eat my damned microsd card (wrecked a 64GB I have) and the original model cracks popped up blowing a small hole into the side right of the stylus slot so I got boxed up and put out to pasture.

When I get it back I may be willing to throw a few bucks at it, but at the same time unlike Neo.EMU (Neo Geo short of the X which only is good hacked anyway) that's arcade, GB is portable so it kinda sucks adding bulk. The best avenue still unless you just want to prattle with RPGs and other tappable stuff would be the krikzz everdrive GBa then use emulators to throw whatever 8bit at it (and 16bit since PCE Advance is wicked good.)

[Sarge]

Don't forget that RetroArch is on mobile as well. Not the greatest UI, but it'll emulate a ton.

[Tanooki]

That thing made me feel stupid. I downloaded it for computer some months ago, tried to throw a few systems ROMS at it to see how it would work and I could barely even get it to fire up a game. It kept being bitchy about not wanting to list roms in a directory, it wouldn't let me setup and then save my controller configuration, and I can't remember if i ever located the graphics and audio. It's horribly set up. I've never seen a generic emulator package so badly setup to where it's purely borderline hostile to a new user trying to set it up and I've been dicking with computer emulators since 1996 and have used all sorts of weird stuff (including stuff in Japanese I was able to figure out far easier.)

[retrosportsgamer]

Another option if your drive is busted:

I'll nominate - get another GameCube. They're cheap!

I have a backup system that I think I paid $12 for that sits on top of one of my shelves.

I did have a Game Boy Advance question - for those that enjoy the GBA games on the WiiU VC (which by all accounts are emulated very well), do you turn on the smoothing in the graphical options?

[CRTGAMER]

Burned discs put more strain on the laser and shorten their lifespan, do they not? Or is that just a Dreamcast issue?

This reference needs to be placed in any Burn Guide
Burned discs will make a laser work harder eventually shortening its life. How quickly is not clear, just imagine how the pits are formed on a commercial pressing vs a home disc burner.

1. The factory pressed disc will definitely have closer tolerance placed pits.

2. The pit reflective properties of a pressed disc are superior to the dye of a burned disc.

[Ziggy]

Burned discs will make a laser work harder eventually shortening its life. How quickly is not clear

I'd like to know more about the technology of older drives versus newer drives. If you tell me a Sega CD or something of that era need to work harder, supply more power to the laser, etc, to read burns versus pressed discs, I wont disagree. But by the time the Dreamcast and PS2 came out, burning music CDs was a very popular thing to do. Optical disc based consoles make a thing out of "Look, you can play audio CD's too!" So you'd have to wonder if they took into account that people would be playing CD-Rs, and the drive technology can accommodate that.

Just look at dedicated audio CD players. Older CD players, ones that were made before CD burners were common place, can have a hard time reading CD-Rs. Some older units can't read burns at all. Even those that are in mint condition, it's the drive itself. Newer CD players can read CD-Rs no problem, in fact the manufactures expect you to use them. They often advertise the drive being able to play mp3 CDs, and a mixed CD-R became the new mixed tape.

My point is, I'm not sure how valid this argument is on newer drives. Of course, the Gamecube is kind of an oddity in that it used mini DVDs. The console doesn't even have a built in CD player. You can argue that Nintendo never intended the drive to read burned discs.