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Frequently Asked Questions


What is SNES Advance, anyway?

SNES Advance is a program written for the Gameboy Advance which emulates the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is coded almost entirely in ARM assembly and is heavily optimized to be as fast as possible; however, some games may run slowly or not at all. This is because of the limitations of the Gameboy Advance and unemulated features respectively.

Some games won't run/have messed up graphics/run slowly!

The GBA isn't powerful enough to run all SNES games at full speed. Additionally, SNES Advance is still being developed; there are many features of the SNES that are not emulated, not the least of which are the SPC (sound chip) and several graphics modes. It is possible to fix and improve the graphics/speed of games by patching the ROM - see the SuperDAT and the tutorials.

Help! 'This game was not designed for your Super Famicom/Super NES'!?!

Your ROM is either copy or region protected, and requires a crack. See the cracking tutorial, it's easy.

What games work well?

Check out the compatibility list - it has games that are considered very playable although it is incomplete.

What is the SuperDAT?

The SuperDAT is a file containing fixes and speed hacks for many SNES roms, which allow more games to run and improve speed. Just because a ROM is listed in the SuperDAT does not neccesarily mean it will work. See the tutorials for more information about speed hacks, fixes, and graphics fixes.

How do I make a ROM?

You must download the SNES Advance builder, the latest SuperDAT, and the newest binary file; all of these can be found in the Files Section on the main page. Extract (unzip) the SNESAdvance builder and the most recent binary to any directory; then extract the latest SuperDAT to the same directory, overwriting snesadvance.dat. Run snesadvance.exe, import the SNES roms you want included, and click "Save". The file you choose to save as is your SNESAdvance GBA ROM.

How do I use the ROM I've made?

If you want to run SNES Advance on actual hardware (ie a real GBA), you will need to purchase a Flash Cart and a linker (a rewritable GBA cartridge with a PC connection); I recommend our affiliate Linker4U.
If you just want to test it out, you can download a GBA emulator and load your ROM in that; I recommend VisualBoy Advance.

What is the "(Even) More Settings" textbox in the builder for?

It is used to apply graphical fixes; see the gfx fixing tutorial for more information.

Where can I download SNES ROMs, can you send them to me?

Google, and no.

The Nintendo DS is out, what does this mean for SNES Advance?

At the moment, not very much. There is no way to develop or test homebrew software for the DS yet (there are no DS flash carts). It isn't possible for GBA programs to access the DS hardware, other than to find out whether or not they are running on one. If a workaround is discovered for this obstacle, you'll hear about it on the main page, don't get your hopes up though.


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