Review

Visual Boy Advance is an emulator of Game Boy and Game Boy Advance video consoles.

Nintendo is a video game company that has been characterized by the quality of their game consoles, both desktop and handheld.
Handheld video consoles of Nintendo have always been a big success of sales, and one of the decisive factors for this success has been the big video games catalogue.Thanks to emulators we will be able to revive the experience of playing the classic video game of Nintendo handheld video game consoles.

Visual Boy Advance allows the emulation of the Game Boy (1989), Super Game Boy (1994), Game Boy Color (1998) and Game Boy Advanced (2001). We only need to have the appropriate ROMs for each system.

To play games on Game Boy Advance, we need to click on “File->Open”, and if we want to play games on the Game Boy, Game Boy Color, or Super Game Boy, we need to click on “File->Open Gameboy”.

In addition to being able to play old games of these video game consoles, we will also have a series of advantages that leverage the power of the PC to have an enhanced gaming experience. We will be able to:

• Improve video games image by applying filters. The emulator respects the original game consoles and video games graphics, but if we want, we can apply filters that improve the original image.
• Save game at any point in the game. We will be able to save the game at the time we want, without having to wait for the video game save screen. This option changes the difficulty of the game making it easier, but it is very convenient for those games that take a long time between the save screens.
• Pause game at any time, including those screens on which the game can't be paused originally.Use any joystick that we use on the PC, we can configure buttons at our needs.Fast-forward the game. This is very useful for passing quickly cinematics, introductions, and dialogue scenes that we don't want to see. To make use of this function, we have to keep pressed the space bar on the keyboard.
• Cheating games. With this option we can apply cheats to games and get extra lives, infinite ammo, invulnerability, etc.
• Debug video games. That is to say, view, and modify the processes that are happening in the computer's memory while running the game.
• GamePlays Recording. We can record the game that we are playing in AVI format, or if we prefer we can only record the sound that of the video game while playing.
• Capture game screens. Pressing F12 key, we can take a video game screenshot. This is useful if we want to capture some curious situation of the game, or save an high score that we have achieved.

Default keys to play emulated video games are:

• D-Pad (Directional Pad) -> Arrow Keys
• A Button -> Z
• B Button -> X
• L Button -> A
• R Button -> S
• Start -> Enter
• Select -> Backspace

These keys can be changed in the menu options.

The emulator is free and open source. The last official update was in the year 2004. The high degree of compatibility, and the almost perfect emulation of video games, make Visual Boy Advance the ideal software to emulate old Nintendo handheld video game consoles.