[Other] Im trying to figure out the best emulator for gba files

plz help i want to try to use gba stuff

I'm assuming you're on PC.

I personally love mGBA, but it can be very difficult to get away from VBA. Many hacks rely on VBA-specific quirks (or, less charitably, bugs); for example, some of the RTC implementations for Fire Red will only work in VBA (or its descendants) and are totally broken on actual hardware (via flash cards) or more accurate emulators (such as mGBA).

Whatever you do though, avoid classic VBA, because it has myriad easily exploited security vulnerabilities. I would generally recommend using VBA-M to play hacks and mGBA to play unmodified games.

However, if you are making a ROM hack, I highly suggest you do the bulk of your play-testing on mGBA. mGBA's emulation of the GBA hardware is far more accurate; if it works in mGBA chances are very high that it will work on actual hardware /and/ VBA-M.

Avoid old VBA. mGBA is the best option, or if you're definitely in love with VBA use VBA-M. For android phones myBoy/John GBA is a good choice, or Retroarch for Linux.

For PC, VBA-M, or mGBA are both amazing emulators. but I prefer VBA-M. For mobile, MyBoy is really just one of, if not the best GBA emulator out there, no question. But I use RetroArch because I like everything in one place, as it has DS, GBA, and others. Your choice.

Avoid VBA? I use VBA to test out my games :D

For Mobile, I'd say John-GBA, it works the best out of them all for me.

I don't prefer RetroArch because it is extremely laggy, even on a brand new Apple iPhone 11.

...But not just because it's laggy, it gets extremely glitchy when too many ROM saves have been loaded.

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Though, if I am wanting to play DS-Roms, I can use RetroArch


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Also, tiny question: Who else thinks Desmume is the worst DS emulator? :D

I use VBA-Link because it supports old hacks that otherwise don't run on mGBA, and it has trading.