PocketSNES - GBA SNES ROMs Emulator

Latest news!

PocketSNES Super Nintendo rom emulator for Gameboy Advance & SP flash cards has been released! You can download it here:
(SNES Advance emulator works on all modern GBA Flash Cards. The ones that are not compatible are QBus QBoy flash cards, and SuperCard users have to remember to write roms to CF or SD card using the SuperCard software otherwise SNES emu will not work.)

Download PocketSNES v0.1

Hell has frozen over - so all the unbelievers can now go to hell ;).This is the first release of a working SNES emulator for the GBA. You must understand that this is a WORK IN PROGRESS - that means lots of things are still broken, buggy, or don't work. A lot of SNES functionality
has not been emulated yet. Most commercial games are still unplayable or have distorted graphics. You have been warned.

Now the good news - there are some SNES ROMS that can already be emulated at FULL speed!

The SuperNES controls on GBA are:

Select + Start brings up the emulator control menu where you can choose
the brightness level / return to game menu or restart the rom.

The games that I would suggest you to try out are:

- Super Mario World snes rom (.smc)
- Batman Returns snes rom (.smc)

Also I sugest adding these to the snes emulatr (PocketSNES) Raiden Trad, Donkey Kong Country 3 (E), Akumajou Dracula XX (J), Mickey Mouse - Magical Quest, Alien vs. Predator, Alien Vs Predator, Final Fantasy, Smash TV, Earthworm Jim, R-Type, Ys 3 - Wanderers from Ys (U), Super Ghouls N Ghosts, Super SWIV (J), Zelda III - A Link to the Past, Super R-Type, Mario Kart, SSTARWAR, Super Mario World, Castlevania IV, Super Turrican, Bomberman 2, Gradius 3, animaniacs, super metroid, Act Raiser, Bust-a-Move.
Looking for where to downoad snes roms? - Try our friends at Romnation

And here are some actual game screenshots from PocketSNES running on VisualBoy Advance emulator. Notice that the screen is stll unscaled and you can not see the top and bottom part but that i ssomething that will be fixed later - similar to PocketNES.

More technical details about this emulator and Snes roms compatibility lists can be found at PocketSNES website.

OLD STUFF:

Super Nintendo Entertaiment System (SNES)

I have heard of at least two projects people have started with a goal of making a working emulator of SuperNES roms for GBA. It would most likely be called SNES2GBA or SNESonGBA. So far we have not seen any success in this area, (Update: Look above - EMU released!) but you never know. As soon as I will hear something I will sure post it here. Nintendo has ported a number of SNES games to Gameboy Advance: Super Mario World, Yoshis Island, Zelda: Link to the Past (Four Swords), but we are jet to see Chrono Trigger for GBA!

Lets compare SNES vs GBA Technical Specs:

CPU	16-Bit CPU - 3.58mhz	32-Bit ARM - 16.7 mhz with embedded memory RISC
MEMORY	Work RAM for CPU: 128 Kb Video RAM for CPU: 16Kb	256 Kbyte WRAM (external of CPU) 32 Kbyte + 96 Kbyte VRAM (in CPU),
COLOR	Max colors on one screen: 256 Total colors available: 32,678 Colors in bitmap mode:  256	32,768 possible colors 511 simultaneous in character mode; 32,768 simultaneous in bitmap mode
RESOLUTION	Maximum screen resolution: 256 X 224 (512x448)	240x160 resolution 2.9" TFT reflective screen 40.8mm x 61.2mm screen size
SPRITES	128 Max size 64x64	128 Max size 64x64
SCROLLING	Horizontal, Vertical, Diagonal	Horizontal, Vertical, Diagonal
SOUND	8-bit 8 channel Sony	8-bit 2 channel + GBC sound
SOFTWARE RAM	available Max cart size 48mbit (6MB)	available Max cart size 256mbit (32MB) orriginal 1Gig Flash Cards!

So let's see, the GBA wins in the CPU department. The SNES had a weak CPU, based only on clock speed (there are undoubtedly other factors at work) the GBA CPU is nearly 5 times as fast. It also has 50% more VRAM and more than twice as much WRAM. The SNES of course wins in resolution, it is capable of the much higher resolution of 512 X 448, however nearly all SNES games use the lower res. of 256 X 224, only marginallly higher than GBA. Also, GBA
games are developed for the small screen, so it is almost a non issue. The GBA can display twice as many colours on screen at once, so it wins there. Also, GBA games have the potential to be 5 times as big as SNES games, as large as Ocarina of Time.....

The GBA's only downfall is inferior sound hardware. Only two channels compared to eight (plus the GBC's generated sound). This may seem hugely dispointing, but keep in mind that sound can be mixed with software, apparently only using 20 to 30% of the CPU time. This would allow SNES quality sound to be achieved on the GBA. Naturally there would be a performance hit, but the GBA's processor is fast, in genres that really benefit from great sound, speed is not essential, RPG's for instance. Even in other genres, platformers, puzzle games, it won't matter at all. The other advantage the GBA has is that it can pull samples right from the cart,
no need to load them into ram first. The GBA has 8 bit stereo sound capability. Unlike the Game Boy, a good part of the sounds on the GBA are sampled. The SNES has 8 bit sound as
well, but it also has tons and tons of filtering.

OK so to wrap it up - Emulation is SNES on GBA is possible!

Homepage N/A Download N/A

Possible names for the emulator SNES2gba :: SNESonGBA :: SNES Advance

Related links

PocketSNES - Super Nintendo / Super Famicom emulator for the Pocket PC
ARM = Release for Pocket PC's using a StrongARM processor (iPaq 36xx/37xx/38xx, Toshiba Genio, Casio E-200, Jornada 56x)
MIPS = Release for Pocket PC's using a MIPS processor (Casio E-115/125/500/7xx/8xx)
SH3 = Release for Pocket PC's using a SH3 processor (Jornada 525/54x)
SRC = Source code for each release (all processor types)

PocketSNES official home page

SNES9xGP - SNES emulator for GP32

Super NES Final Fantasy Emulator for PC / Windows

For playing SNES game roms on Nintendo DS and DSi you can use a snesDS emulator and one of the R4DS flash cards, but if you will want to run Homebrew emulators like lolSNES on the new Nintendo 3DS you will need to buy Gateway 3DS flash kit that is the first one to support 3DS roms. GW3DS comes with 2 cartridges - blue one for NDS backward compatibility and hacking the console and the Red GW3DS cart for playing 3DS roms from a microSD flash card.