# visualboyadvance-m/visualboyadvance-m

The continuing development of the legendary VBA gameboy advance emulator.

Repository: https://github.com/visualboyadvance-m/visualboyadvance-m
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/visualboyadvance-m
Homepage: https://visualboyadvance-m.org
Language: C++
License: GPL-2.0
License Family: copyleft
Last push: 2026-08-26T17:16:04+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 83/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 99, release rhythm 53, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 4102, "days_push": 7, "days_rel": 312, "gap_med": 11, "n_releases_24m": 6}
- flags: none
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 3903, forks 374 (observed 2026-08-28T04:08:28.643448+00:00)

## What it is
VisualBoyAdvance-M is a Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance emulator continuing the classic VBA project. It ships as a desktop application with builds for Windows, macOS, Linux, and newly Android.

## Use cases
- play gameboy advance games on pc
- emulate game boy color roms
- run gba games on android
- upscale retro game graphics with xbrz filters
- play old nintendo handheld games on mac or linux

## When to choose
- you want a mature, actively maintained GBA/GBC/GB emulator with cross-platform builds
- you need high-quality upscaling filters and nightly builds
- you want Android support for arm64 devices

## When to avoid
- you need cycle-accurate, high-fidelity emulation for speedrunning or research (consider mGBA or dedicated cores)
- you only target mobile and prefer a touch-first emulator UI

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: active
- function: gui, simulation
- domain: gaming-tools, cross-platform, desktop-applications
- platform: windows, cross-platform
- tags: emulator, gameboy-advance, gameboy, retro-gaming, save-states, upscaling-filters, macos, linux, android, desktop

## Member repositories
- visualboyadvance-m/visualboyadvance-m (main) score 83

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:28.643448+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-29T18:25:10.050109+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/visualboyadvance-m/visualboyadvance-m (fetched 2026-08-28T04:08:28.643448+00:00, sha b191af01a0d7)
  - homepage: https://visualboyadvance-m.org (fetched 2026-08-29T09:19:18.258270+00:00, sha 7520836a91f9)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.