Nintendo · Handheld · 2001 Experimental

GBA emulator for PC

Game Boy Advance games run on the mGBA core. No BIOS file is required; mGBA uses gba_bios.bin from data/system/ only if you add it.

Written by vivusk, Nostyra maintainer Last reviewed 29 October 2026 Based on the Nostyra README and release notes

Game files

.gba files are listed when they start with the ARM branch instruction every GBA cartridge has.

Saves

Saves go to saves/gba/<ROM name> [<ID>]/save.srm.
mGBA reports 128 KiB of save memory until a game first touches its save chip. A shorter existing save loads as is; a longer one is kept as save.srm.bak before it is trimmed.

Controls

The editor shows B, A, L, R, Select, Start and the D-pad.
Default keyboard: arrow keys = D-pad, Z = B, X = A, A = Y, S = X, Q / W = L / R, Enter = Start, Right Shift = Select.

Known limits

Marked Experimental: manual testing on real games is still in progress.

Game Boy Advance at a glance
Emulator core	mGBA
Status	Experimental
File types	`.gba`
BIOS	Not needed (optional `gba_bios.bin` in `data/system/`)
RetroAchievements	Yes (softcore)
Graphics	DirectX 12 or Vulkan (any recent GPU)
Platform	Windows 10 / 11, 64-bit

Core project: mGBA. The core is downloaded from the libretro buildbot on first play and is never bundled with Nostyra.

Same core also plays: Game Boy , Game Boy Color .

Before you start

Nostyra does not include, download or link to Game Boy Advance games or BIOS files. Use games you own, dumped from your own cartridges or discs. See the disclaimer.

Features for Game Boy Advance games

Save states A save state stores the whole emulated machine at one moment, so you can continue from any point, not only where the game lets you save. Rewind Rewind keeps a short history of the game in memory. Holding the rewind key plays it backwards at 2× speed. CRT and LCD shaders Shaders change how the picture is drawn, for example to imitate the scanlines of a CRT TV or the pixel grid of a handheld screen. Soft patching Translations, bug fixes and hacks are often shared as patch files. Nostyra applies them in memory when the game starts; the ROM file is never changed. RetroAchievements RetroAchievements is a community service that adds achievements to classic games. Nostyra supports it on 14 systems using rcheevos, the same library RetroArch uses.

Play Game Boy Advance games with Nostyra

Free and open source. Portable zip, no installer, no account.

Download for Windows

macOS (planned) Linux (planned) iOS (planned) Android (planned)

Version 0.1.0 · 25.9 MB zip · Windows 10 / 11, 64-bit

Hosted on GitHub Releases. First time? Read the install guide.