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Published August 21, 2015 By Joe SavageI spent a lot of time as a kid playing (generally, pretty terrible) games on my Game Boy. Having never written code for anything other than 'regular' general purpose computers before, I've been wondering recently: how easy is it to write a Game Boy (Advance) game?For those unfamiliar, the Game Boy Advance (GBA) was a popular handheld games console produced by Nintendo (pictured below). This thing is kitted out with a 240x160 (3:2) 15-bit colour LCD display, along with six face buttons and a directional pad for input. The Game Boy AdvanceOn the inside, the GBA's CPU contains a 32-bit ARM7tdmi ARMv4T RISC core (operating at 16.78 MHz). Along with regular 32-bit ARM instructions, this chip can execute 16-bit instructions.
![Boy Boy](http://images.nintendolife.com/news/2016/03/heres_why_snes_vc_games_can_only_be_played_on_a_new_3ds/attachment/0/900x.jpg)
For those unfamiliar, the Thumb instruction set is a 16-bit encoding for some of the most common 32-bit ARM instructions, and can be used to increase code density.In terms of memory, the device has 130 KB of embedded memory within the CPU (96 KB of which is used for VRAM, 32 KB of which is for general usage, and 2 KB of which are used elsewhere), and 256 KB of RAM external to the CPU. The system also has 16 KB of System ROM, which is used to store the BIOS.
The Game Boy is a handheld game console created by Nintendo. The original version, featuring a monochrome screen, was released in 1989. The Game Boy Color, which was fully backwards-compatible with the original, was released worldwide in 1998. There are 151 games in this category. Change view: ☰ Text Icon ⋮☰ List #. Rip Game Boy Sprites For Scratch. Systems » GBA Ripping with VisualBoyAdvance The Game Boy Advance is a great system for sprite rippers,.
![Rip game boy sprites for scratch online Rip game boy sprites for scratch online](/uploads/1/2/6/9/126915519/168636264.jpg)
There are also some additional details in all this regarding backwards compatibility of the Game Boy Advance with the Game Boy Colour, but we're not going to discuss them here.Along with all this internal memory, the GBA is typically loaded with some form of game cartridge. These typically consist of some ROM (to store instructions, read-only data, etc.), and some form of mutable storage (typically SRAM, Flash Memory, or EEPROM). As the Game Pak ROM is connected via a 16-bit wide bus, it makes sense to use 16-bit Thumb instructions rather than 32-bit ARM instructions most of the time in game code.
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