mGBA Integration Demonstration - Take GBA/GCN Connectivity Games Online!

Dolphin now as its own GBA core integrated directly into the emulator. Powered by mGBA, Dolphin's Integrated GBA can be set to any GameCube controller port and will automatically boot alongside Dolphin. Everything you need for it can be configured directly in Dolphin's GUI, including BIOS, controls, default ROM, and more! Best of all? The Integrated GBA works on netplay, movie recordings (TASes) and supports savestates! And to top it all off? Performance is higher than the current TCP GBA protocol.
For those that don't know, mGBA is an actively developed GB/C/A emulator that is most known for being highly accurate, very performant and extremely compatible among GBA titles. If you're interested in GBA emulation, be sure to checkout mgba.io/ ! If you're feeling generous and would like to help support the project, mGBA also accepts donations through / mgba !
Thumbnail and article header art courtesy of Devicho! For more information on this feature, check out our feature article at dolphin-emu.or...
Note: There were some annoying hitches in recorded footage. This is especially frustrating because these hitches aren't from Dolphin; they're from encoding overload in OBS. I lowered the quality and rerecorded some of the footage to try to alleviate this, but it's still not perfect. Because netplay was used in some instances, I had to cut around some of the biggest issues, especially in the Four Swords Adventures footage. Some other encoding overload issues can be seen throughout. I apologize for the inconsistencies in quality.

[@SpunkMcKullins]

Emulated Crystal Chronicles is a better port than the official one lmao. Outstanding work.

[@tashaxe]

Right?! I was so excited when they announced the remaster only to play it and realize that they ripped the heart and soul from the game. This is it. This is what I needed ♥ I didn't think FFCC would ever receive the tlc it deserves, but the mad lads did it. ♥

[@yoso378]

Definitely. Not having your party in the same town and just being by yourself while traveling and in cutscenes is just awful and basically killed it for me. Can't wait to try this out.

[@parknich081]

Erm actually it’s not a port

[@mario4everd]

Sadly it really isnt, the mgba implimentation still has some pretty noticable input lag and dropped inputs, as awful as the modern port is its still more consistent if you have someone who lives in the same country. Theres just too many factors of having 4 instances of mgba connecting with dolphin thats going to cause problems especially when taking online into consideration

[@Tizye]

I HAVE BEEN WAITING A DECADE FOR THIS I am literally tearing up, this is so cool

[@dolphinemuorg]

We all are. We all are.

[@ScotsmanGamer]

I'VE BEEN WATINIG ON KIDS TO STP OVER USUING CAPS MY WHOLE LIFE!

[@dolphinemuorg]

@@ScotsmanGamer YOU'LL HAVE TO KEEP WAITING FOR THAT. WE CAN ONLY DO SO MUCH.

[@Retroholic]

@@ScotsmanGamer DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDE YOU LIKE GOT PRANKED BY THE GUYS THAT LIKE MADE THE THING FOR BEIN A JERK WOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAH AND YOU'RE LIKE KINDA FAMOUS NOW!!!!~!~!~!!~! OMG ROFL JK JK ILY !

[@TheErlend87]

Me too, have been wanting to play 4 swords adventures for so long

[@almendraman]

If there was an update you could call 6.0 it's this one

[@Kurisu545]

Now I'm gonna be able to play four swords with my homies again, but this time without risking agglomerations, you guys are allowing people to connect once more by reviving these old games.

[@soulsolis3096]

You did it, you absolute mad lad! You did the impossible! You're the best!!

[@buizelmeme6288]

Now next task is to add gameboy player support. And since the main dolphin team don’t even bother to do it anyway. Good luck to anyone out there trying to implement it!

[@dolphinemuorg]

@@buizelmeme6288 Did you not see the teaser at the end of the article?

[@buizelmeme6288]

@@dolphinemuorg I saw after I watched the video but I forgot to edit my comment here. I hope you’re not joshing with me...

[@highestsettings]

@@buizelmeme6288 That's right, they made it up specifically to josh you.

[@buizelmeme6288]

@@highestsettings bruh, that's sad... :(

[@deadlydoofy7675]

The support for this emulator is beyond astonishing. I'll never be able to fathom how much work was put into this. The teaser for Gameboy player support was even crazier. I cannot thank the team and everyone else involved enough!

[@dolphinemuorg]

We thought we were the only ones who cared about the GBPlayer, but it seems everyone wants it.

[@thomasvogel4340]

​@@dolphinemuorg I can indeed say, there are many of us

[@Kambyday]

​@@dolphinemuorg is it available on android or PC only? If it's PC only do you have any plans to make it available on android?

[@Nightcaat]

@@Kambyday Late reply but Dolphin is fully supported on Android :)

[@HollowRick]

​@@dolphinemuorgI can't wait

[@pacomatic9833]

Oh. My. God. This. Is. INSANE I HAVE UNDERESTIMATED THE POWER OF DOLPHIN

[@Chosen2axe]

huge shoutout to the developers behind these projects that work their hardest to preserve what the big corporations left to die.

[@Chosen2axe]

@@lol-ih1tl ?

[@Chosen2axe]

@@lol-ih1tl ohhh ok

[@junosoft]

@@lol-ih1tl Really? I thought it was all of them

[@giuliano8031]

@@lol-ih1tl Yeah but at that speed they're not gonna accomplish shit. Especially with OG Xbox where everything they have is like SSX tricky and Star Wars.

[@buttertoast7747]

Dolphin and mGBA are both equally amazing! I just want to thank all the people who put their heart and soul into these emulators, it's because of their hard work and dedication that I can finally play FFCC with my fiancee once again. Also now I can finally play Four Swords, the one Zelda I never got to experience, so thanks for that as well!

[@deldante]

This is beautiful. I bugged so many friends and strangers from online groups to play four swords with me but all the setup wasn't worth it for most of them. The 2 people that did wanna try were cool but it wouldn't work properly so we never got to play

[@agaifi]

The absolute madmen. They went ahead and did it. This is amazing on so many levels for the preservation of videogames. Thank you so much.

[@bageltoo]

This is incredible. Never thought the gba connection would be automated like this.

[@glitchedblood]

this is the best Nintendo emulator in my opinion

[@sgx6215]

The best emulator ever

[@unknownwill4th549]

@@lol-ih1tl yeah. I have retro arch on xbox and i hope to there can be improvements to sonic colors since it stutters alot lol

[@GreenSwede]

@@lol-ih1tl an emulator that focuses on 2D games is more accurate? damn

[@Valery0p5]

@@GreenSwede yes and if it wasn't for some scummy assholes it would be even better, but thanks to those we can't never have nice things...

[@hyperhighdrosis]

@mohamed elsayed Yea thats 100% a configuration issue on your end. Dolphin is buttery smooth on all recent hardware. Cemu just doesnt have that many settings to tinker with so games tend to just work out of the gate. Where as with dolphin you actually have to make sure you have the correct settings for optimal performance.

[@Dracogame]

This makes me feel so nostalgic. You guys are amazing, Dolphin is such a good emulator.

[@OnewingseraphimOfficial]

FINAL FANTASY YESSS THANK YOU!! I hope the word on this gets spread FAR AND WIDE this is amazing! I LOVED FFCC growing up with gameboys and friends and now we're older it's too hard to do that again and now we can! I used the older method with parsec and it was fun and okay but this is just amazing and perfect thank you!!

[@gaildot3482]

How did you get this to work? Did you do everything via Dolphin?

[@OnewingseraphimOfficial]

@@gaildot3482 uh yeah we used the internal dolphin multiplayer with FFCC had to change a few settings to get it to work had some issues with the first cutscene always freezing up at the beginning I think we used vulkan renderer and changed a couple of other settings but tbh I don't remember what those were. it was a little choppy but I think that was mostly due to my internet at the time if you have decent internet should work just fine.

[@TheGeekPunkGamer]

Amazing! The amount of progress that has been made in emulation has been astounding!

[@JuniorBlitz]

Amazing! Hope you get around with adding Triforce support in the future.

[@SirVG]

Absolutely AMAZING. Fantastic job to the Dolphin team. Thanks for your hard work!

[@megak678]

I've been attempting to play four swords online on and off using dolphin for years and today was the day we finally were able to do it on my birthday no less haha thanks for the sick update

[@bloodytears3434]

Absolute legends

[@anshagrawal254]

Good Job , this is one of the biggest strides in wii/gamecube emulation in quite a while

[@runterranger7398]

This is gonna make it so much easier to setup with friends.

[@Retroholic]

ngl i never had a gameboy or any attachments for my gamecube or wii but the Dolphin has given me some great memories over the years along with the ability to keep playing my childhood games even if the physical games didn't outlive my youth. nice to see it's still being worked on and supported~

[@thinkabout42]

Another absolutely awestrucking achievement, holy crystals... xD You guys never cease to amaze.

[@unknownwill4th549]

Congrats to the dolphin team

[@4ndr3w]

It's amazing how very niche features that devs wouldn't really port over are being preserved.

[@mspeter97]

You've built in the GBA core? That's insane Quck question here: does it work with e-reader stuff?

[@Gestersmek]

From what I read in the article, the core in Dolphin still has e-Reader support, but it's not accessible from Dolphin's GUI. Since mGBA itself has the e-Reader functions available from its GUI and most of the stuff you can get from it is only usable on one of the systems, they're keeping TCP Link support so mGBA and VBA-M users can get something that needs both a GameCube link and an e-Reader without having to set up everything again in Dolphin.

[@dolphinemuorg]

Yes, e-reader does work. You just need to know to drag and drop the ereader files onto it. You can also use ereader with standalone, where it has a full GUI to help make the process easier to understand.

[@gundum1o1]

@@dolphinemuorg So any controller can be used as a GBA link? Also can this feature be used fullscreen without mgba on the right?

[@josephwilson3180]

@@gundum1o1 By default it seems to actually open the GBA in its own window.

[@gundum1o1]

@@josephwilson3180 and any controller can be used to emulate the link cables???

[@nicho8]

You are fantastic people

[@theantgre]

Finally, but my dream is still the same, to connect 4 android phones to Dolphin and use them as gba for Four Swords Adventures

[@jimppajamppa2563]

You never fail to amaze me

[@sonicsnake44]

Truly amazing work. I'll stand in the corner and cry for the day we get VR integration on a new build.

[@FlameLFH]

I might play the GameCube version of Wind Waker again just for the GBA features. I never got to try that as a kid.

[@dolphinemuorg]

Just be warned that Tingle asked you to do some pretty messed up stuff, like blow up the jail on Windfall Island.

[@FlameLFH]

@@dolphinemuorg Sounds awesome, actually, haha

[@keiyakins]

@@dolphinemuorg But that's where the tasty mushrooms grow!

[@MilkmanYeti]

In another ten years someone will find a way to put block on a shoulder button for crystal chronicles and the game will truly be perfect

[@DarkLink1996.]

Dolphin supports per game controls. Just change it yourself.

[@MilkmanYeti]

@@DarkLink1996. That isn't how the game works. In order to block you have to go through a menu to change your input from attack to block.

[@DarkLink1996.]

@@MilkmanYeti Ah. In that case yeah, it would need a hack

[@greob]

Amazing. Netplay sounds very exciting too.

[@nobyra]

This is beyond magical!

[@jasevendor6939]

This is a huge step in Game Cube emulation! soon people will speedrun titles like wind waker with a GBA now, i think, jokes aside the team did superb on this good on you guys and girls for making games more accessible!

[@dustL00P]

That is phenomenal work! I can't wait to use this feature when I eventually get my gpu

[@TheManWithNoName005]

Damn, does this mean 4 player multiplayer is a go go baby?

[@electronicbudder6047]

YES!

[@FaustY2K]

the Dolphin team is full of mad lads, cheers

[@saadiqwebster2588]

truly doing gods work!!! 🙏🙏🙏

[@CarlosRmsx]

This is awesome , great work!

[@profanegunman7586]

Impressive. Probably the most impressive thing pertaining to emulation I've seen yet.

[@BigBrosFilms]

Is that Carl kamina lmao

[@JoshuaDoesTech]

Haven't seen that Pac-Man game in years, but thanks to dad I got to experience it with my Game Boy at the time. Amazing thing to be able to remember, so thank you.

[@aisback1990]

Thank you for all the hard work. Love you guys over at Dolphin

[@hovernyansquad3377]

This is a great feature and I’m glad to hear it went in its way to becoming for dolphin

[@AdmiralRamirez7]

Final fantasy crystal Chronicles and 4 swords adventures was fun to play like this I miss these days

[@nexu9019]

Damn guys, you suprise me everytime, y'all are amazing as always

[@ls190v2]

The mGBA team must be honoured to have their emulator used here!

[@Kurisu545]

You guys are amazing holy shit.

[@IcyyDicy]

God tier emulator

[@sapphirebulletbill]

Just a little more and we'll be able to use the Game Boy Player

[@yarmannen]

Game Boy Player?

[@alvallac2171]

@@yarmannen The Game Boy Player was an accessory that attached to the bottom of a GameCube and let you play Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance games on a TV. It was not emulation; it contained an actual GBA circuit board. It also required the use of a particular GameCube disc. kzbin.info/www/bejne/jqLGdmp6Z8tlfKs

[@LightSilver7]

this is amazing

[@Cookberg]

KZbin! You did well recommending me this

[@danpatrick7176]

Oh I love that its self contained!

[@IronSmasher1024]

Great Job, looks awesome

[@junoeclipse7715]

You guys are really doing the lord's work, this is some phenomenal shit

[@chopsmccartney6786]

I'm just imagining how an external device could be used to truly emulate the feeling of the GBA-GCN connectivity. I wonder if it'd be possible to use a smartphone/portable emulation device to act as a GBA to send and receive data from. Or if it'd be possible to do that with a homebrewed Switch running mGBA via RetroArch. I can only wonder, but it'd be sick to actually play GBA-compatible games using smartphones in lieu of GBAs for a fuller experience!

[@dolphinemuorg]

Unfortunately, in order to defeat the latency problem of GBA GCN communication, you must be running Dolphin on the same device as the GBA. Netplay works in this case because we can run Dolphin and the GBAs on every device and instead push the latency onto inputs instead of GBA GCN communication.

[@3lH4ck3rC0mf0r7]

You can use the TCP GBA protocol that's still supported, but you'll be subject to the jank that entails.

[@SuperfieldCrUn]

I have many memories of having Four Swords Adventures nights crammed into my one friend's miniscule basement, using an eclectic collection of original GBA's and SP's, having to plug in adapters and swap batteries, and the strange mix of official and knock-off GCN -> GBA cables we used. We could spend a half-hour on a single screen because my one friend got off on being an asshole and never cooperating with proceeding to the next screen. This was even years and years after the Wii was a thing, yet we still got a kick out of each person having their own view on their controller that was an entirely separate console from the one connected to the TV. And now I can do it with them online. This is gonna be great.

[@Levitrips]

One of the sexiest updates as off yet

[@mileswoodley8751]

Goated emulator and dev team

[@Lettendo]

Thank you JMC!

[@fixedfunshow]

If you combine this with Parsec in your mobile device you could have the closest to a real GBA/GameCube experience (notice the small size of the screen in a phone as you compare with a GBA, similarities are obviously there)

[@fixedfunshow]

Oh you might need a virtual second screen mobile Parsec can connect to

[@pacomatic9833]

Oh yeah, this is big brain time

[@NekosukiTTV]

I actually started crying once i saw sonic adventure 2 gba connect, my childhood i spent 2001 to 2009 playing one that game

[@WIImotionmasher]

This is fucking amazing

[@Aperez]

GBA Netplay is seriously impressive to have!

[@CheezItMuncherZack]

Blue & Red: PURPLE! PURPLE! PURPLE! **gets blown up** Purple: your money will be so great!

[@calcium8347]

thank goodness it makes separate windows for the gba, literally perfect

[@marsdouze]

Question. Can we now use Dolphin to play *just* gba games with online connectivity? Does this mean I can use Dolphin to play the *original* Four Swords gba game with friends through Netplay, for example? Or something like Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland?

[@nesskoma2336]

No it doesn't work

[@marsdouze]

Oh, ok. It would be an awesome addition but not gonna complain. This is already a really cool project! Can't wait to see what'll happen next!

[@pacmanweeee]

@@marsdouze the gba core dolphin is using will eventually support online multiplayer so just use standalone mGBA

[@leftyfourguns]

I just realized the Tingle Tuner was basically a prototype for the Wii U gamepad and Wink Waker HD doesn't function much differently with the GamePad. Kind of amazing

[@DJRMTheMusician]

This is simply awesome!

[@gandisu]

Such an amazing feat! Congrats to everyone involved. Is there any magic setting you activated in the Crystal Chronicles footage? The chalice radius is barely visible for me unless I force disable scaled EFB copies, which doesn't seem to be activated in your footage?

[@dolphinemuorg]

It was run under the default settings at 3x internal resolution. Nothing special.

[@gandisu]

@@dolphinemuorg Thanks for clarifying! After digging a bit deeper it seems this dungeon specifically shows the radius properly, when others do not. Oh well, it's not that big of an issue in the end.

[@dolphinemuorg]

@@gandisu If there is a bug with rendering, be sure to report it somewhere so we can look into it.

[@gandisu]

​@@dolphinemuorg Sorry my reply was a bit vague. The issue only occurs with higher than native IR, causing the single pixel width radius line to turn sub-pixel sized. I'm not sure this is a rendering bug per se but only a by product? I can look into submitting a bug report if my assumption is wrong, but I don't have the hardware available right now to verify against.

[@buizelmeme6288]

2:35 Swampet my boi!

[@oriname9657]

i was trying to setup this for a few hours. but all i can see is a black screens on gba. i tried to launch gba bios but still nothing. can someone explain how to setup it. Edit: you need to put gba bios to Documents\Doplphin Emulator\GBA

[@TurtleSauceGaming]

yes thank you! god why can't the link to an official quick guide or something! there's nothing on this feature outside this video and a blog post that's insanely long and may or may not have this mentioned. Do a quick how to somewhere! Great work but only goes so far when I can't figure out how to do it.

[@GigaMario86]

1:37 The PAC-MAN annoucer sounds just like Mario.

[@keiyakins]

Because it is

[@eunaoseibrother467]

You guys really are the CHADs of emulation

[@EtheRenard]

FSA Online. My heart... can't take it! It's so beautiful!

[@ericamaya2467]

This is gonna be fantastic for the steam deck! 😈 Although I question how im gonna somehow have enough controls on the machine for both consoles?

[@JellyMyst]

This changes *_everything_*

[@omoliemi]

YESSS

[@horikatanifuji5038]

Thank you Dolphin Emulator!

[@jack_loare]

This is cool

[@MagicMaster667]

Dude. 6.0 is gonna be a friggin beast.

[@lucimo3616]

the madmen actually did it

[@TruExtentChannel]

Sweet! This might be too soon to ask but if GBA integration is possible, is DS integration on the cards next for Wii games that supported it like Pokemon Battle Revolution, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time, Geometry Wars Galaxies, WarioWare DIY Showcase, etc?

[@dolphinemuorg]

Dolphin's emulation of IOS DS connectivity features is very limited at this time. A few months ago, we added very, very, very, very basic support for DS broadcasting in order to make Driver: San Francisco not crash, since it broadcasts without asking and crashes if we don't do the bare minimum. However, it's not hooked up to anything that a DS emulator could listen to. It's also just not very well researched. While we of course want to emulate DS connectivity as well, to say it's in the early stages of consideration might be too ambitious, unfortunately.

[@MrChocodemon]

Most amazing

[@frankmoolah]

What the? You Dolphin devs must've been teacher pets while in grade school b/c you're freaking overachievers, lol. All jokes aside, this is an awesome development/update.

[@suntolosa21]

Thanks 🌟🔥🌟

[@H-Man2000]

The work you all put into this has been astounding! I can't thank you enough for giving us all an outlet to relive our childhoods, especially to this extent! And pardon me for asking but do you think it's plausible to perform link cable functionality with smartphone emulators like MyBoy! and Pizza Boy on Android or GBA4iOS?

[@perseveruz3960]

to simply put it, thank you!

[@jadetealaaron2003]

Holy Snap

[@Raylightsen]

Wow, a built-in gba? now, that looks pretty cool.

[@why3994]

How do you get this screen layout where the GBA is in the top right next to the dolphin emu in one single window? (btw I tried OBS but the GBA instances are just black screens)

[@chrononinja]

this

[@why3994]

@@chrononinja THIS.

[@KicksPregnantWomen]

thank you so much for doing this stuff holy shit

[@LordBadenRulez]

My momma always said, in life, if something is too good to be true, then it probably is. I think my momma was wrong.

[@diegoegarciarodriguez5211]

This is the future to preservation

[@riceshaddow]

this is amazing!!!!

[@GambinoTheGoat]

pogger, when you have a broke gamebaby and your crush has the chad wii is gaming

[@TheCreator919]

You should reach out to the mgba dev. He keeps complaining that mgba is too much work for one developer to work on. I think it'd be best if you combined your efforts and merged both emulators in one.

[@Jermeister06]

when i saw a friend post this in a discord i thought it was meaning support for a real GBA connectivity using the GBA controller adapter :( sadly skimming over the blog post it seems only improvements to the GBA emulator connectivity

[@dewydgaming8471]

I was making this work before to play four swords and it was jank and barely ran i cant wait to try this i hope it runs better