Dolphin Emulator - mGBA Integration: Introducing the Integrated GBA
Your eyes are not deceiving you. As of 5.0-14690, Dolphin now has mGBA directly built into it as a new way to handle Game Boy Advance connectivity with GameCube titles. For those who don't know, mGBA is the most renowned and accurate GBA emulator of this era and has been rapidly improving since its inception. Recently, we wrote about mGBA adding support for our TCP GBA protocol, but this is something completely new. With integration and synchronization work done by bonta, connecting your favorite GameCube titles with a Game Boy Advance for multiplayer and other bonus features is now greatly simplified. Dubbed the Integrated GBA, a stripped down version of mGBA will boot up alongside Dolphin when set to one or more controller ports. These mGBA instances are clock synced to GameCube emulation for impeccable connection stability. By bringing these two emulators together in one package, GBA connectivity features now work with popular features like savestates, input recordings, and netplay! All of this comes with the added bonus of improved performance and compatibility. If you don't believe us, check it out yourself!
Getting to this point has been a trial that spans generations of developers and emulators. If we're going to tell the full story behind emulating GBA to GCN communication, we have to start from the very beginning.
