Emulators

SuperFW supports certain console emulators for the GBA. In fact, it ships a built-in copy of Jagoomba Color so that it can load and play GameBoy and GameBoy Color ROMs out of the box.

For other emulators it is necessary to download and install them in the SD card.

Platform Emulator ROM file Website
Nintendo NES PocketNES .nes dwedit.org/gba/pocketnes.php
Sega Master System SMS Advance .sms archive.org/details/smsadvance-25-bin
Game Gear SMS Advance .gg
SG-1000 SMS Advance .sg
NeoGeo Pocket Color NGPGBA .ngc github.com/FluBBaOfWard/NGPGBA
Watara Supervision WasabiGBA .sv github.com/FluBBaOfWard/WasabiGBA
Game Boy (Color) Goomba(Color) .gb/gbc dwedit.org/gba/goombacolor.php

Installing the emulators is as simple as downloading the release binary (a .gba ROM file) and copying it to the .superfw/emulators/ directory. The files must have the right name so they can be found by SuperFW, namely:

Emulator File Download link
PocketNES pocketnes.gba https://www.dwedit.org/gba/pocketnes.php
SMS Advance smsadvance.gba https://archive.org/download/smsadvance-25-bin
NGPGBA ngpgba.gba https://github.com/FluBBaOfWard/NGPGBA/releases
WasabiGBA wasabigba.gba https://github.com/FluBBaOfWard/WasabiGBA/releases
Goomba gbc-emu.gba https://www.dwedit.org/gba/goombacolor.php

If the emulator binary is not properly installed you might see an error message when launching a ROM.

Error message caused by a missing emulator binary

Note that there’s no need to install Goomba (or any fork, GoombaColor, JagoombaColor …) to play GB/GBC games, SuperFW has a built-in JagoombaColor copy. However you are free to install your favourite emulator/fork and it will take preference over the built-in emulator.

To use any of the emulators, simply browse the desired ROM (as you do with GBA ROMs) and press A to load it. SuperFW will load the emulator binary as well as the ROM and launch it.

Most GBA emulators assume that the cartridge has SRAM storage, for the purposes of storing savegames as well as savestates (if/whenever they are supported). SuperFW will write the SRAM contents to a .sav file on reboot, to preserve its contents.