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RetroBIOS

Beetle GBA (Mednafen)

Beetle GBA (Mednafen) emulates Nintendo Game Boy Advance. It reads 1 file, none of them required: it starts games without them.

About this profile
Detail Value
Type libretro
Classification Frozen snapshot
Source https://github.com/libretro/beetle-gba-libretro
Upstream https://mednafen.github.io/
Version v0.9.36, stated in libretro.cpp
Revision libretro/beetle-gba-libretro@b158166237b1
Profiled 2026-03-24
Profile YAML, JSON
Cores beetle_gba, mednafen_gba
Systems Nintendo Game Boy Advance
Install this emulator's files

The installer finds your setup and its BIOS folder, then downloads only the files this emulator reads there and checks each one.

Open the Start menu. Type PowerShell and open it. Paste the line. Press Enter.

PowerShell
&([scriptblock]::Create((irm https://abdess.github.io/retrobios/i.ps1))) --emulator beetle_gba
Technical notes

Mednafen v0.9.36 GBA module (libretro.cpp:73), whose GBA code derives from VisualBoyAdvance (mednafen/gba/GBA.cpp:1-3). The built-in HLE BIOS is used by default.

Files

Section titled “Files”

1 file: 0 required, 1 optional. 1 has an HLE fallback.

In this collection: 1 in repo and 0 missing.

Optional

Section titled “Optional”

gba_bios.bin optional in repo HLE fallback

Game Boy Advance BIOS

  • System: Nintendo Game Boy Advance
  • Read only when the gba_hle core option is disabled, a setting read at startup only. It is enabled by default and the core then uses its built-in HLE BIOS. A file of any size other than 16384 bytes is ignored and the core falls back to HLE.
Validation and source

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”
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Maintained by Abdess on GitHub. Report a problem.

Packs from release v2026.10.10, .

MIT for the tooling and metadata. BIOS and firmware files are third-party system software, preserved for personal backup, archival and interoperability.