12 October 2006

Virtual GameBoy Advance (VGBA) 3.1
for S60 3rd ed phones

Another interesting 3rd edition release. This time it is Virtual GameBoy Advance 3.1; freeware emulator for Nintendo's GameBoy Advance games and as far as I know this is the first GBA emulator that works on 3rd ed phones.

This is the early beta version, I’ve just test it and I have to admit that emulator is pretty buggy, pretty slow, it lacks sound but it works and the most important thing author (Marat Fayzullin) claims that we can expect an optimized version later.

VGBA is actually application that emulates Nintendo's GameBoy Advance on your “sufficiently fast” phone. It is only legal to play games you actually own on VGBA. You will first need to read a game from its cartridge into a file. This can be done with an inexpensive gadget such as Flash Advance Linker.

VGBA supports Nintendo GameBoy Advance cartridges from .gba and .gba.gz files. Place your files in E:\Others\VGBA although for me it works just fine from E:\VGBA\ folder.

VGBA isn’t compatible with 1st or 2nd edition phones and will work only on Nokia Series 60 3rd Edition devices, such as 3250, 5500, N71, N72, N73, N80, N93, E60, E61, E70, and others.

*click to enlarge

1. Your phone has to run SymbianOS 9 and the 3rd Edition of Nokia Series 60 software. Older S60 editions will not work.
2. You must have a memory card where games and other software will be stored.
3. The following Nokia phones should work: 3250, 5500, N71, N72, N73, N80, N93, E60, E61, E70. Others may work as well.

1. Make sure your phone is enabled to install applications from providers other than Nokia affiliates. To enable, go to Tools | Application Manager | Options | Settings and set "Software Installation" setting to "All".
2. Download application (with .sis extension) from this page and install it to your phone. You may need to click through several warning messages always shown when installing application from a non-affiliated source.
3. Find software for the emulated platform (such as ZX Spectrum or ColecoVision). Due to copyright reasons, I cannot provide you with such software, so please do not ask. Use Google instead. I do suggest that you buy the original copy for each piece of software you use. It is the ethical thing to do.
4. Copy found software to the \Others\<EmulatorName> directory on your memory card. For example, ColEm games will go into E:\Others\ColEm.
5. Run the application and have fun.

Use softkeys as fire buttons. Press [END] to quit the emulator or [SEND] to go into the options menu. To suspend the program and go into the phone menu, press key labeled with a little Symbian logo.
Some applications, such as Speccy, may require the use of full keyboard found in such phones as Nokia E61 and E70. If your phone has no keyboard, some emulated programs may still work though. Just make sure you always choose the joystick option when given a choice.

.:[ VGBA 3.1 ]:.

Home page:
http://fms.komkon.org/EmuSymbian/