Gameboy Advance Roms - GBA ROMs

Everybody knows what Gameboy is, but do you really know what GBA ROMS are?
In cartridges produced by Nintendo games are stored in a memory that can only be read and cannot be erased or rewritten. ROM – Read Only Memory. That’s where the name Gameboy Advance Roms comes from!

Now what you must be wondering about is what good is this information to you?

» First of all if you want to make GBA roms you have to have a way for connecting gameboy cartridge to PC. For that you can use one of the Flash Advance Linkers (GBA X-ROM, EZ-Flash, EZFA, Flash Advance, PRO / Turbo / Extreme, Flash2Advance, F2A Ultra, XG-Flash, XG2 Turbo or EZ2 PowerStar).

» Second and even more important – Nintendo Gameboy and DS cartridges cannot be rewritten, BUT if you had a cartridge that could be rewritten you could write your own games (gba roms) on to that cart! Well GBA Flash Advance Cards are created just for this purpose.

Instead of ROM memory they are equipped with ReWritable flash memory similar to the one used in memory cards for MP3 players and digital cameras (SD, MMC, Smart Media, Compact Flash cards) Just like any other flash memory card Gameboy Advance X-ROM Flash Cards can be written / erased / rewritten infinite numbers of times. On one such card you can store from 8 to 32 gameboy advance roms games.

So if you have one of the Flash Advance Linkers and Flash Cards you can backup the games from your Nintendo Gameboy Cartridges on PC as GBA ROMs, and write gba roms that you have on PC to GBA F2A, SuperCard Mico SD, XG or EZ-Flash2 card for playing them on GAMEBOY ADVANCE / GBASP!

Actually most of the roms that you can download from the Internet were made using Flash Advance Linker of some kind. Freeware, Public Domain and gba Demo roms are made exclusively for gba flash linkers / carts because besides using gba emulator that is the only way you can play them on Game Boy Advanced / GBA SP.

GBA ROMs ( Gameboy Advance Games backuped to PC) are not the only ones that can be played on GBA. Gameboy Advance has such a powerful processor that it is possible to emulate other older consoles and computers using GBA. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities.. There thousands of classic games that now can be played on Gameboy Hardware. NES roms , ZX Spectrum, SEGA Game Gear, Atari 2600, Chip8 roms all can be put on a flash advance card and played (emulated) on GBA read more at GBAnet »
With a GBA / DS Flash Card you can play NDS ROMs on Nintendo DS Lite and classic consoles. For playing DS games an additional PassCard is necessary or you have to get a DS game card shaped [slot-1] nds flash card.

PSP ROMs & ISOs - PlayStation Portable game backups are much larger than Gameboy roms because they are originally stored on UMD discs that can contain up to 1.8 GB of memory.

DS GTA - Grand Theft Auto for DS called Chinatown Wars. Estimated release date November 2008 in time for Christmas shopping boom. GTA DS Will feature WiFi multiplayer support and as usual for NDS 3D shooter titles a superior control scheme.

Nintendo DSi released in Japan on Nov1 2008 in EU spring '09 and in USA even later. It is the 3rd version of the DS and it will play most NDS roms but there will also be special games designed only fort DSi that will take advantage of the built in cameras and SD card slot. Bad news are that DSi roms will be region locked so you will have to hack your DSi to play games from another part of the world. But looking at how NDS & DS Lite had multiple versions of custom firmware / hacks and mods I don't think it will be long before we will be able to play roms from the SD card slot :)  DSi Multi Game »