3DS:Playing GBA Games

The 3DS supports a very little used feature — the ability to run Game Boy Advance (GBA) games natively. In the first few months of the Nintendo 3DS being available, owners of the system who either performed a system update or visited the Nintendo eShop prior to 11:59pm Eastern Time on August 11, 2011 were granted access to the Ambassador Program and were able to download 10 free SNES games and 10 free GBA games. However, the GBA games actually run natively under the Nintendo DS mode. It even supports a pixel perfect mode by holding Start while booting the games.

These GBA games on the 3DS were never made available outside of the Ambassador Program. However, through modding your console, you can either use open_agb_firm to load these games or you can inject any GBA ROM you want into a game that appears on your homescreen. Both options allow you to play any GBA ROM natively.

open_agb_firm

open_agb_firm is a bare metal app that will allow you to run GBA ROMs natively without having to do any game injecting. It also adds extra features such as the ability to live-patch IPS patches, remap buttons, change save slots, and change screen brightness. Full usage instructions can be found on the GitHub.

Setup instructions:

1. Download the latest release from the GitHub and extract it.
2. Copy the open_agb_firm.firm file to /luma/payloads of your 3DS SD card (if using Luma3DS) or elsewhere if you're using fastboot3DS.
3. Copy the 3ds folder to the root of your SD card. Merge folders if asked.
4. Launch open_agb_firm using Luma3DS by holding START while booting your 3DS or assign it to a slot if you're using fastboot3DS.
5. After open_agb_firm launches, use the file browser to navigate to a .gba ROM to run.

Game Injection

You can inject any ROM into an existing 3DS GBA game by using Ultimate GBA VC Injector for 3DS. Please note that, like the original 10 games, the games will have a long bootup and shutdown time.

1. Download Ultimate GBA VC Injector for 3DS (mirror).
2. Choose "Open GBA File" and choose your GBA ROM file. This may populate some settings or you may need to fill them out manually.
3. Proceed through the steps, adding images and descriptions as you go. For Step 4, you have the option to choose extra settings.
   • Ghosting Adjustment: 0xFF for sharp scaling.
   • Color Config: Original will be how the game should look; the other two options use the Virtual Console's dark filter over them.
   • Sleep patch: Adds the ability to put games in sleep mode, which consumes less battery.
   • SRAM patch: Allows you to force games to save to SRAM.
   • IPS patch: Allows you to provide an IPS game patch to the ROM.
4. Select Finish to generate the game to be installed using CIA.