I'd like to share some information to people who enjoy emulating GBA games, especially on android. So here's the thing, I've been itchy to do online linking/multiplayer on GBA emulation, especially Pokemon games, and already spend quite some time to find both ways and people who are interested in it. Then I found an old thread in pokecommunity website saying this:
"Long story short, I have zero friends in real life, and I haven't been able to find a community for users of the GBA Emulator "MyBoy" to gather and link up. So, I figured I'd see if anyone here was interested. The purpose of this thread is to gather anyone interested in linking up on MyBoy and Trading or Battling on Gen 3. Post in here to find some partners willing to link up and have some fun :3."
Well that pretty much describes my intention almost perfectly. But that thread was years ago and already locked for comments. As far as I know, MyBoy has never be able to link you online with other people far away, at least not with the emulator alone. Simply put it can't. But there are other emulators, specifically on Android, that have their own/built-in online multiplayer for GBA games.
The main emulator I used to do online multiplayer is called Multigba S. I'm sure some or even many people here already heard about this emulator. Despite still not yet giving a really good experience in online multiplayer, I can say it's still the best way to do online multiplayer on GBA.
To simplify the reading, here's the main features of Multigba S that you need to know:
- Free/ No paywall features
- Offline/ Singleplayer mode
- LAN mode (for connecting 2 nearby devices to play multiplayer)
- Netplay/ Online Multiplayer mode (for connecting 2 devices via internet to play multiplayer, world wide, cross countries)
- Easy Netplay setup (just need to login via google, no IP address sharing)
- Build with mGBA core, the best and most compatible GBA emulator
- Player 2/guest doesn't need to have the ROM to join the host server
- Can connect 2 different games (Like Pokemon FireRed with Emerald)
- Build-in text chat when playing multiplayer
- Supports both hardware controllers and virtual/on-screen/touch based controller
- Capable to link the emulator from android to windows (with BlueStack)
The image you see is the emulator's Public Server where people find each other and available servers online. I found most Multigba S users are Spanish(?) that play Pokemon Quetzal and barely see other people that speak English that play other GBA games. From what I read and experienced, the online multiplayer requires a pretty stable connection and high-end/flagship phone specifications from player 1/host side to get a smooth/stable gameplay. You can do the online multiplayer on low-end/budget phone, it works, but the disadvantage will be felt by player 2/guest as they'll likely get lags. But alas I can finally fulfill my Pokedex and play games like Zelda 4 Swords with foreigners. I have some more interesting GBA games with multiplayer mode that I can host, both vanilla GBA games and Pokemon romhacks like Unbound and some Emerald hacks.
There is also a Discord server to gather GBA players to find each other to play multiplayer online together, also for technical supports like save file transfer, multiplayer set up and such.
Check out the GBA Multiplayer Online community on Discord – hang out with 74 other members and enjoy free voice and text chat.
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