Using an Unmodded GBA as a Music Synth

The style and sound of older video games is unique enough that they’re still copied in relatively modern games like Undertale, Celeste, or Shovel Knight. There’s also a vibrant chiptune community making music …. Using an Unmodded GBA as a Music Synth.

Often this involves hardware modding or otherwise finding chips from older gaming systems to replicate that unique retro gaming sound authentically. But disassembling older systems is not always necessary. Take a look at this Game Boy Advance synthesizer which uses the GBA hardware with no modifications at all.

The key to making this work is the GBA’s multiboot feature, which allowed these systems to send executable code over a link cable to other consoles which didn’t have cartridges. This meant that friends could play multiplayer games without each one needing their own cartridge, but it also means that nowadays people can send their own custom software directly to the console’s RAM without much extra effort. To run the synthesizer software, the GBA is connected to a computer, the software is started, and then when the GBA is powered on the snythesizer is automatically loaded into its RAM.