How to make GBA games look better in RetroArch (mGBA)

Hey all! In this video I quickly go over a tip to help make your GBA games look a lot better in RetroArch using the mGBA core! It's all done by one simple setting - pretty easy and straightforward. Let me know your thoughts!

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#RetroArch #Emulation #Emulator

[MrSujano]

Quick, easy and to the point. What did you like better? - Credit to YassQ0-1 on Reddit for the tip!!

[bousch]

1 year later and you are STILL the man! Thx this actually make it a little better

[martianmanhunter]

Can you make an extensive tutorial about the shaders, overlays and bezels of retroarch.. because it's always been convoluted

[CaptainScarLeg]

Great little video. For me I sometimes tweak these sorts of things on a game-by-game basis as some games benefit from the "authentic" look of the original hardware/screen and others just end up looking less vibrant. I'm also a big fan of how GBA games look on the DS Lite which also has vibrant screens, so for GBA games I generally prefer the raw output, but it looks like the game you used as an example here particularly benefits from the colour correction so I'm guessing the devs took special care to tailor the colour palettes for GBA screens.

For Game Boy Colour games I use colour correction because those more simple colours can look really harsh without it. I don't use the emulator colour correction though, I use the Game Boy shaders that have it built in. Which is something worth pointing out - anyone using shaders may want to turn off colour correction in core settings to avoid double-correcting the colours. Depends on the shader though, some do and some don't.

The Game Boy shaders are awesome, especially with the borders. They get rid of that razor sharp emulator look and make it look like you're playing on an actual Game Boy. The original Game Boy and Game Boy Pocket shaders are the most impressive to me as they even emulate the pixel response time/ghosting and that weird shadow effect those screens had, looks extra authentic.

I understand so people prefer the sharp emulator look though and that's fine too. That's one of the things I love so much about RetroArch, you can tailor the experience an insane amount to match your personal preferences.

[nerb]

Definitely a quick and easy way, personally I use shaders for color correction, and I also like to add crt lines / or lcd grid for that old pixilated look. Thanks for the video Mr. Sugano!

[PlayerZeroStart]

I used to not care about this sort of thing, but after getting a GBA SP, I don't think I'll ever be able to go back to the oversaturation look. Thank you very much.

[nelliocalypse]

Iv watched your videos on set up for Raspberry pi 4, Just the other day I finally decided to subscribe and I'm glad I did. Keep up the great content!

[acetroubleshooter]

Nice video. I also like to mention that I saw a gameplay of Castlevania AoS which in that case the guy was using shaders in the game the illumination had a different contrast and looked more HD. Many ppl asked him which emulator was using and never respond.

[ericbloodsmith]

Thank you, I've been playing Metroid Zero Mission recently and this has helped quite a bit!

[vdfritzz]

the same goes for many gameboy color games, they were over saturated because of the type of screen they used, this is great

[brendens]

I had a GBA but never used it much I guess I lost my enjoyment in tiny screens. Now with emulation I'm enjoying them so much more on a big screen that is backlit.

[LiquidTurbo]

this was such a great tip. Didn't know it existed. Thank you!

[rangerricky]

All killer no filler was a superb Sum 41 album. Going to listen to it while playing some mgba with correct colors. Thanks for the tip buddy, made a world of difference!

[Cuchullaan]

One of the best, more subscribers please.

[garr]

Can also use the LCD color correction shader to get the LCD hatch, which helps with anti-aliasing and shading on sprites similar to how a CRT does.

[CrocoDylianVT]

there's also programs to patch each rom individually one by one so they have the correct colors in any emulator without the need to apply filters, specially useful if you plan to use it on modded consoles, or even an unmodded backlighting SP through an SD card cartridge, I personally find it handy to play them on my 2DS

[sedasauce]

the fact that i was literally just looking on how to do this and you upload this that’s scary lmao

[WigWoo]

People actually like color correction… why? It makes the colors look so muted and de saturated. Yeah it looks like a fat unbacklit GBA but for those of us who played on the AG101 SP with the back light we got the full color palette and not this corrected awful picture

[christianrosado]

So theres no hi res scaling on the retroarch core of mGBA?

[josh]

I have a mGBA core for my SNES Classic but I don’t have a color correction option.