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Retro Handhelds

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Retro Handhelds

By Anomz

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Play your own GBA games inside Minecraft. Put a cartridge in a console block or a handheld, and play on a full-screen view, on the block itself, or in your hands while you walk around.

Mod Loaders
Minecraft
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About

Description

Retro Handhelds

Play your own GBA games inside Minecraft.

Put a cartridge in a Retro Console and the game plays live on the block's screen. Build a wall of Retro TVs next to it for a giant screen. Carry a Retro Handheld and play it in your hands while you walk around. Or just go full screen.

No games or BIOS files are included, and the mod never downloads any: you bring your own.

Features

  • Retro Console block: the game plays on its screen, with sound that fades with distance
  • Retro TV block: TVs touching a console show its game; TVs in a rectangle join into one seamless screen, up to 16x16. Play by right-clicking the screen
  • Retro Handheld item: hold it to see the game in your hands; other players see it too
  • Retro Remote: link it to a console and play from across the room
  • Play full screen, or in the world (the HUD hides so nothing covers the game)
  • Cartridges remember their game and keep their own saves; automatic in-game saves plus save states
  • Keyboard and gamepad (Xbox, PlayStation and more), all rebindable
  • Fast-forward up to 4x, optional GBA color correction and LCD ghosting
  • Also plays Game Boy and Game Boy Color games

Multiplayer

Players near a console, TV or handheld see and hear the game being played, live. Every game runs on the player's own computer, never on the server; the server only relays a compressed picture and sound, within limits the server owner sets. Each player who wants to play a game needs it in their own roms folder: the mod never sends games between players.

How to start

  1. Launch once, then put your own .gba, .gb or .gbc files in retro_handhelds/roms/ in your Minecraft folder.
  2. Craft a Cartridge, right-click it and pick a game.
  3. Right-click a Retro Console with the cartridge, then right-click the console with an empty hand. Or right-click the cartridge onto a Retro Handheld in your inventory, then use the handheld.

Full guide, recipes, controls and config: README on GitHub

Credits and legal

Emulation by mGBA (MPL 2.0). The jar contains the unmodified mGBA libretro core for Windows, Linux and macOS; exact version and source: THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo. Only play games you own.