NO$GBA

NO$GBA (Nocash Game Boy Advance) is a Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS emulator for Microsoft Windows and MS-DOS. It supports most Nintendo DS homebrew, and a majority of commercial ROMs. NO$GBA includes a variety of options for emulation, including multiple save types, and multiple cartridge reading. It is able to load multiple GBA/NDS ROM files for the purpose of multiplayer functions.

History

Martin Korth began programming a Game Boy emulator for DOS in 1997, called no$gmb. It was written fully in x86 ASM and ran even on AT/XT machines. This program was upgraded with Game Boy Color support in 1999, this capability required the user to donate some money, in range of about $10, to the author to receive a key which allowed the use of "color functions" for more than five minutes. Since the protection was cracked not long after the release, the author discontinued the program after the release of version 2.5. A special Windows version was also available up from 2.4.

In 2001 Martin Korth started with a new emulator of the Nintendo Game Boy Advance. The emulator featured the same rich debugging interface of no$gmb (and other emulators under the label nocash) and was released for DOS and Windows in 2002. Support for the Nintendo DS hardware was added with version 2.2 in 2006. To avoid further piracy problems the author released a free version without the debugging interface for the general public. A basic debugging version is available for US$15, targeted at homebrew developers.

Recently the author has started to ask for a small donation fee of US$2.50 for the latest update of the free version. The previous update is always available to download for free.

Limitations

The emulator is considered one of the most accurate emulators for the NDS and GBA around, however, it does have some compatibility issues. These include that the emulator is fairly CPU intensive to run with full 3D support; some games, such as Orcs & Elves and Duck Amuck do not run due to problems with video codecs; multiplayer functions may not work for all players, depending on NO$GBA's ability to install the nocashio driver; and there is currently no known support for Nintendo WFC or using GBA games in the second slot while running an NDS ROM.