[APP] MoonGBA - the fastest gba emulator

GuestD0829 · May 14, 2011

MoonGBA - probably the fastest Game Boy Advance emulator for Windows Mobile platform made by Xiangpeng Chen. Freeware. I can't believe that there is no topic about this great app. Without sound enabled it works almost perfectly on my BenQ E72 with 230MHz omap processor and ~20MB of RAM. On my Blue Angel - what can I say - amazing! Unfortunately it doesn't work on my HTC Kaiser. But I'm sure it is the one of uncommon cases.

Advantages:

really fast rom emulation
runs on slower PDAs/smartphones
portrait, landscape left/right + fullscreen, fit to screen, vga screen view modes + "antialiasing"
frameskip + frame speed settings
*.sav files support
touch controlled pad (activated in settings)

Disadvantages:

only 3 save/load slots
not quite good sound emulation comparing to other emulators
noticed that it doesnt work on HTC Kaiser

Requirements:

Windows Mobile 5.0 >= based device
~200MHz processor for comfortable playing without sound (depends on processor model)
about 15MB RAM for loading 4/8MB roms; 20+ for loading 16MB roms

Download:

english translated 2.4.0 version - HERE (just run .exe file on your PPC/SM, config files will be created in the same directory)
author's website with newest chinese versions - HERE (up to 2.4.2)

Regards...

zyphuris55 · May 14, 2011

Not working :-/

I tried running Pokemon Sapphire (.gba), Pokemon Yellow (.gbc), and Pokemon Blue (.gb). The gba file was the only one which didn't close the program. None of them were able to run though, I only only saw a white box when loading the gba file.

My device is the ATT Tilt2 (HTC Rhodium), WVGA, 528 MHZ. Free ram when loading the 16 MB rom, about 30-40 MB

xxviii · May 15, 2011

nice!

nice app.. a way faster than pocketgba and morphgear.. it also saves in .sav format so you can use your save files from desktop gba emulators.. it also supports clock base events which pocketgba dont.. but it would be better if we can edit the virtual pads just like in morphgear because its own virtual pads are annoying cause it touches the screen..

brewhoxs · May 15, 2011

Nice share, thanks!

GuestD0829 · May 15, 2011

@zyphuris55, MoonGBA is an Game Boy Advance emulator so it's able to open only *.gba roms. Shame that it doesn't work on Rhodium

I see there is same problem as with Kaiser - white box after rom loading. I can suggest you to try the newest 2.4.2 version from developer's website. I didn't try and I don't know if it will work on Kaiser or Rhodium. Unfortunately 2.4.0 is the only one which is english translated.

@xxviii, yep, some time ago I tried to play Pokemon (

) on PocketGBA but there were problems with ingame time settings. With MoonGBA there are no such problems. And about touch controlled pad question - Xiangpeng is working on it and there are fixes and improvements in newer versions, unfortunately in chinese language.

In general, it has some defects but MoonGBA is a great GBA emulator which works surprisingly fast, especially that its freeware and practically it isn't popular.

Tscherno Bill · May 21, 2011

works great! just the sound could be improved. i´ll test the chinese 2.4.2 version...

will9895 · May 24, 2011

Could be great

based on a very vey quick test, this is good.

Very fast on HD2, and the built in control pad is good. I'm just checking how LMT controller works wth it. GBA was one of the things i was booting android off SD for, so I'm really pleased to see this, thanks for starting this thread

stonyhawk · May 25, 2011

with me it works on the rhodium with pokemon, but it isnt stable sometimes some random crashes...

Wolfas · May 26, 2011

thank you very much, it is the first GBA emulator that works perfectly on my touch pro. No HW button delay, speed is perfect everything is great

muro18 · May 26, 2011

Great app,I'm searching for it.It works fine on my xperia x1.This is the first emulator for wm with support for 32mb rom,but the speed is low with full screen enabled.The virtual pad is very good.Great app

einsteinecker · Jun 3, 2011

Wolfas said:
thank you very much, it is the first GBA emulator that works perfectly on my touch pro. No HW button delay, speed is perfect everything is great

It works smooth on your Touch Pro? What ROM? It lags (Pokemon Emerald) quite much while using the 2x VGA mode, and that's with sound off. It performs similarly to my Treo, which is a good 230mhz slower than the TP. I do like how the hardware keyboard can be used, with some great wasd action

By comparison, MoonGBA runs too fast on my ancient HP iPAQ hx2495b (with sound off), and practically full speed with sound on. I suspect the Touch Pro's poor 2D performance is what makes it lag.

GuestD0829 · Jun 4, 2011

tried "fullscreen" mode instead of "2x vga"?

appleiinc · Jun 4, 2011

it works great!

einsteinecker · Jun 5, 2011

#LG# said:
tried "fullscreen" mode instead of "2x vga"?

It's actually worse at fullscreen. I've even tried version 2.4.2, which seems to do better on portrait mode, a bit laggy on landscape. I guess it's fine, but it doesn't explain how this modern device gets smoked by my hx2495b :/

xfexx · Jun 14, 2011

i have a dual sim phone with wm 6.5 and moongba runs nearly perfect, BUT if i run moongba in fullscreen my second sim disappears... i can use it and everything, but i cannot see the reception field... and when someone calls me the call from sim 1 and the call from sim 2 layers are both displayed....
does somebody knows a trick or a fix for this? i mean my phone and this app are from china why do they not support each other^^

GuestD0829 · Jun 15, 2011

maybe try newer version from developer's website
http://www.yueyuesoft.com/moongba/moongba2.0.html

einsteinecker · Jun 15, 2011

xfexx said:
i have a dual sim phone with wm 6.5 and moongba runs nearly perfect, BUT if i run moongba in fullscreen my second sim disappears... i can use it and everything, but i cannot see the reception field... and when someone calls me the call from sim 1 and the call from sim 2 layers are both displayed....
does somebody knows a trick or a fix for this? i mean my phone and this app are from china why do they not support each other^^

Wow you have one of those Dual-sim WM phones

It might simply be because you have a little bit resources available, such as RAM and CPU. For example, in my Touch Pro, when I left the radio on, the emulator was okay, but when I tried to turn it off, it took awhile to actually get to my comm manager. The Verizon TP has less RAM than the regular TP, so I'm not surprised.

I was using Moon 2.4.2.

GuestD0829 · Jun 15, 2011

well, I don't know how is MoonGBA working, which display method it uses, GDI, DirectDraw or something, there is no information about that. It's not well optimized for newer devices. Maybe it is the producers fault which are making some 3D flashing blinking scrolling things, leaving support for 2D... I hope there will be newer versions, maybe rewritten and optimized, who knows.

xfexx · Jun 15, 2011

#LG# said:
well, I don't know how is MoonGBA working, which display method it uses, GDI, DirectDraw or something, there is no information about that. It's not well optimized for newer devices. Maybe it is the producers fault which are making some 3D flashing blinking scrolling things, leaving support for 2D... I hope there will be newer versions, maybe rewritten and optimized, who knows.

jep that is the same thing i thought... maybe he made the fullscreen with some 3d super mega stuff und this overrides the layer of the second sim... really crappy -.-
maybe someone can get the source code from the developer and rewrites it... i think he writes on his site, that he will continue with a android version and not with updates on the wm version... or does someone can speak chinese and could mail him my problem?^^

einsteinecker · Jun 16, 2011

I honestly believe MoonGBA uses the 2D GDI processing of WM, or DirectDraw. Reason why I can tell is that my iPAQ has a SKTools benchmark of 1200+, while my Touch Pro is right there with my Treo at 700+. For example, the Game Atomic Cannon, it is super fast on my iPAQ, while it lags on my Touch Pro. The same thing with video playback, TCPMP in DirectDraw mode is horrible on my Touch Pro, and ok in my iPAQ.

So my conclusion is, since the Windows Mobile UI depends on the 2D processing of your device, there won't be enough CPU to process anything related to the screen because MoonGBA uses up 100% CPU. I have confirmed this with Wakutask (taskbar manager) running as well as BatteryClock (Taskbar indicators), where those programs were being displayed poorly or not updating in time (respectively).

[APP] MoonGBA - the fastest gba emulator

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