9 of the Best GBA Emulator Android Apps 2023

Chances are if you’re searching for the best GBA emulator Android options, you’re looking to relive some Game Boy Advance nostalgia on your Android phone or tablet! There are numbers Android based GBA emulators options available and it can be hard to know which to choose, especially considering some offer other system support as well, like Game Boy emulators.

This article will guide you through all the best choices for emulator apps so that you can skip straight to playing some classic GBA games. Here’s our picks for best GBA emulator Android apps.

The emulator apps on this list all have solid performance and compatibility with GBA ROMs. We’ll also be covering the different types of emulation formats, save states, and cheat codes as well as audio and graphics improvements.

Short Summary

• This article is a list of the best GBA emulators for Android.
• Learn more about using GBA ROMs, hardware controller options, and customizing emulation settings to get the best experience with your GBA emulator.
• Cheat codes can also be used for further gameplay customization options.

What Are The Best GBA Emulators for Android?

The best GBA emulator to download is going to be depend on the Android device that you own. Really, you need to take into account a few different things like game performance and compatibility, your preferred user interface, and any additional features that are must haves.

Our list below has Game Boy Advance emulator apps like as My Boy!, Pizza BoyGBA, RetroArch, John GBAC, and also some additional game boy color emulators that support playing GBA games.

1. My Boy!

• Price: Free version available (My Boy! Lite), with paid version costing $4.99
• Platform: Android
• 10M+ installs
• 4.3/5 ⭐ average star rating from over 55K user reviews

My Boy is a very popular Game Boy Advance emulator and it is one of the best GBA emulators for Android phones and has been installed by over 1 million gamers looking to play GBA ROMs on android devices. My Boy has both a free version and a paid version available on the Google Play Store with the paid version costing $4.99 and coming with some additional features.

My Boy! free version features:

• Fast emulation – doesn’t drain your phones battery as much as other GBA emulators for android
• High game compatibility – works well with a lot of different GBA ROMs
• Link cable emulation – both same device and cross device over Bluetooth and Wi-Fi
• Rumble emulation
• GameShark cheat code support
• No BIOS file needed to run
• OpenGL rendering
• Video filter support
• Fast forward gameplay and cutscenes
• Custom external hardware support – use additional custom controllers

My Boy’s paid version has local and network play and can even sync with Google Drive storage.

Overall My Boy is a solid emulator and with the free version of the app having over 10M+ installs and still maintaining a 4.3 star average with over 581K reviews, it’s clear why this emulator takes the top spot on our list. You can’t go wrong with My Boy!

2. Pizza Boy GBA

• Price: Free version available (Pizza Boy GBA Basic), with paid version costing $4.99 (Pizza Boy GBA Pro)
• Platform: Android
• 500K+ installs
• 4.8/5 ⭐ average star rating from over 13K user reviews

The Pizza Boy GBA emulator also has both a free and paid version available. The free version has over 500K installs and with 13K user reviews has managed to maintain a very high rating of 4.8/5 stars on the Google Play Store.

Pizza Boy GBA Basic version features:

• Zero ads in the app!
• Solid performance and low battery consumption for your phone or tablet
• Uses OpenGL and OpenSL native libraries for video and audio performance to achieve up to 60 FPS even on older Android devices
• Save states available
• Slow down and fast forward gameplay and cutscenes
• Adjust UI button sizes and reposition them to your liking
• Custom controller, hardware, and joypad support
• Shader available
• Take gameplay screenshots

As mentioned above, the app has both a Basic version which is free to install and use and also a Pro version which offers extra features like custom emulator skins.

3. RetroArch and the mGBA Core

• Price: Free
• Platform: Android
• 5M+ installs
• 3.9/5 ⭐ average star rating from over 44K user reviews

RetroArch is an emulation frontend that is captable of emulating many different retro systems, including the Game Boy Advance. With the mGBA Core, RetroArch becomes a solid GBA emulator with cross platform support and comes with plenty of additional custom configuration options. It’s a solid solution for gamers looking to play Game Boy Advance games on Android devices.

RetroArch also made our list of the best GBA emulator iOS apps as well.

The recommended Game Boy Advance cores to use with RetroArch are either mGBA or VBA-M, both of which have solid performance and emulation accuracy. You can also fast forward gameplay and cutscenes in either core.

4. John GBAC

• Price: Free with in-app purchases
• Platform: Android
• 1M+ installs
• 3.8/5 ⭐ average star rating from over 15K user reviews

John GBAC is the successor emulation app to both John GBA (a Game Boy Advance emulator) and John GBC (a Game Boy Color emulator) and allows gamers to play Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance games on their Android phones and tablets.

It has external custom gamepad support and can even load ROM files in zip format. Users can upload their game’s save data to Dropbox to pick up where they left off on other devices if they wish. It’s design is a bit basic and layout isn’t the best, but it functions decently enough and gets the job done.

5. Nostalgia.GBA

• Price: Free version available along with Pro version
• Platform: Android
• 500K+ installs
• 4.6/5 ⭐ average star rating from over 6K user reviews

Nostalgia.GBA is a solid Game Boy Advance emulator that is based on the very popular GBA emulator mGBA. Some features this app has are save states, the ability to connect and use custom external controllers including Bluetooth gamepad controllers, ability to rewind gameplay, and custom cheat codes.

Players can even share save files easily across different devices and the emulator supports .zip and .GBA file formats for ROM files.

The app’s Lite version has is pretty much what you’d get if you paid for the Pro version except that it comes with ads. Obviously, ads are removed in the Pro version, so if you don’t mind ads then you might as well just stick with the free version.

6. VGBAnext

• Price: $4.99
• Platform: Android
• 10K+ installs
• 4.3/5 ⭐ average star rating from over 1.5K user reviews

VGBAnext is a Game Boy Advance emulator that also plays Game Boy, Game Boy Color and NES games. This emulation app supports rumble packs and NES light guns as well. You can even connect more modern game controllers like the Nyko PlayPad or PS3 SixAxis controller if you wish.

You can rewind games and go back up to 16 seconds worth of gameplay. It support full screen gaming, works with AndroidTV, ShieldTV, the Nexus Player, and the ADT-1. Save states are a feature as well and the emulator even comes with a nifty save state exchange feature for sharing your game’s current progress. You can also play with friends over Wi-Fi using the network play feature.

7. GBA.emu

• Price: $4.99
• Platform: Android
• 50K+ installs
• 4.5/5 ⭐ average star rating from over 1.6K user reviews

GBA.em is an Android GBA emulator based on the popular GBA emulator core VBA-M. This GBA emulation app is performant and features a relatively simplistic user interface. It delivers both low latency video/audio output and also has cheat code support. It too allows users to connect custom hardware controllers or simply use the onscreen buttons instead.

While this emulator is paid, it has solid reviews and seems to run pretty well from our experience with it. If you take a look through the user reviews, you’ll see lots of users praising GBA.emu for its clean and robust user interface especially in comparison to some of the competition out there.

8. Lemuroid

• Price: Free
• Platform: Android
• 1M+ installs
• 4.2/5 ⭐ average star rating from over 12.9K user reviews

Lemuroid is an emulator that can run multiple different systems including the Gameboy Advance. It can work on a ton of different devices from phones to TVs and it is a pretty awesome little emulation tool for Android systems. Lemuroid is entirely free and doesn’t have any ads at all.

Lemuroid features:

• Save states
• Scan directories for ROMs and index them
• Touch controls available
• Can load ROMs in ZIP format – no need to unzip them
• Fast forward gameplay
• Custom Gamepad controller support
• Cloud saves
• Local multiplayer – connect multiple controllers to one Android device

Lemuroid is very simple to use and doesn’t take much time at all to get setup and start playing games. As mentioned before, Lemuroid is completely free and has zero ads. It’s a good user experience overall and can emulate GBA games well.

9. ClassicBoy

• Price: Free and paid version available
• Platform: Android
• 1M+ installs
• 3.5/5 ⭐ average star rating from over 44.8K user reviews

Both the ClassicBoy Lite and Pro are multi-system emulators that let gamers play games from multiple different systems like the GBA and GBC on their Android devices. Not only do these versions have custom controller support but they also have support for cheat codes with certain games.

The Pro version features auto-saves and saves slots so you can pick right back up where you left off at any time. It has has gesture controls if you want to try it out.

Our recommendation is just to go with ClassicBoy Lite. While the Pro version does have some extra bells and whistles, the Lite version should work for most basic use cases.

Tips for Using GBA Emulators on Android

Now we’ll look at ways to optimize ROMs and setup custom external controllers as well as how you might be able customize some emulator settings.

Managing ROMs

To play GBA games on your Android device, you’ll need to be sure you first have your Game Boy Advance ROMs ready that you want to play. Do keep in mind that technically, downloading ROMs offline is illegal and it is always recommended that you dump your ROMs from physical copies of the games that you actually own. We don’t condone piracy here.

After you have your ROMs, some emulators require that you first unzip them (others are able to use zipped ROM files). You may need an external file manager app in order to unzip your ROM files.

Once you’re all setup and have your ROM files ready, you can then launch up your chosen GBA Android emulator and load in your ROM file you want to play.

Custom Controller Options

Let’s be real, using onscreen touch controls for GBA games isn’t always the best experience. It can detract from the overall fun when you feel like you’re missing inputs because of the setup. We can’t recommend enough investing in a solid external controller to play your games with.

GBA emulation on Android can be taken up a notch significantly just by using an actual external controller. Many of the GBA emulators we have listed on this page allow users to easily configure them for a more authentic feeling while playing GBA games from your phone or tablet.

Customizing Settings

Depending on the GBA emulator that you go with, you’ll have a variety of settings that you can change. Some might include options like audio/video adjustments, custom controller setup, and certain game options.

Summary

As you can see from this article, there are a ton of GBA emulators available for Android devices. Regardless of which you choose, as long as you go with one of the ones listed on this page, you’ll be enjoying your favorite classic GBA games in no time.

If you’re also interested in emulating GBA games on your PC, be sure to check out our guide on how to setup mGBA cheat codes for the emulator.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to play GameBoy games on Android?

You can easily start playing your favorite Gameboy games on an Android device. First, install one of the 9 different Android GBA emulators that we have listed on this page, next grab your GBA ROMs and get them onto your Android device, then open up the GBA emulation app you installed and load up your ROMs to start playing!

What is the best GBA emulator for Android?

The best GBA emulator for Android has got to be the My Boy! Game Boy Advance emulator. The free version of the emulator has over 10M+ installs and has managed to maintain a rating of 4.3 stars with over 580K reviews. That in and of itself is a testament to just how good this emulator is. If you take a look through all the features that the free and pro versions have available and at some of the user reviews, you’ll see why it’s ranked number one on our list for GBA Android emulators.

How do I download and manage ROMs for GBA emulators on Android?

Downloading ROMs from the internet is technically illegal and it is always recommended to dump your ROM files directly from your physical game cartridges. That being said, clearly not everyone follows this rule of thumb and many people still choose to download ROMs from the internet. There are plenty of sites online that offer GBA ROMs to download for free. We won’t be linking to any of those sites in this article, but figured we should mention it!

Managing your ROM files is simple. You can use a cloud storage service like Google Drive to upload your ROM files to on your computer and then access those same files from the Google Drive app on your Android phone or tablet. You can then download those ROM files onto your Android device and open them up in your emulator of choice.

Are controllers necessary for using GBA emulators on Android?

External controllers are not necessary for using GBA emulators. While it is highly recommended because it undoubtedly is a much better user experience, most if not all Android emulators come with on-screen touch controls that you can use by default. It really comes down to user preference and your budget.

Can I customize settings on GBA emulators?

Nearly all GBA emulators give users the ability to customize their gaming experience. Some options include adjusting audio and video settings, connecting custom controllers, as well as game specific options like cheat codes and save states.