Today I got Pokemon Emerald running on my Samsung Mesmerize running Android 2.2. It wasn’t as straightforward as the market authors would like you to believe, so here’s a quick tutorial on how to get it running, fast.
1. Install GBA Player Lite
This is the free version of GBA Player, and is available in the market.
2. Download a Gameboy Advance BIOS file
For the non-tech-savvy, this file is what controls the Gameboy Advance: the loading screen, booting up games, etc. You’ll find this file by searching Google for gba_bios.bin and downloading from one of the many download sources available. When you’ve downloaded it, you’ll want to put it on your SD card in /roms/gba/ (create folders if they don’t exist). The full path if you mount USB storage will be /sdcard/roms/gba/.
3. Download the GBA games (ROMs) you want to play
These are going to be .gba files that you can easily find by searching Google for things like pokemon emerald rom or pokemon fire red rom and downloading from the many sources available. When the game(s) you want to play are downloaded, you must put them in the same folder as the BIOS file you downloaded earlier: /roms/gba.
4. Run GBA Player Lite
I think the whole process would be a lot easier if the steps were clearly explained in the application, but I don’t think the author’s first language is English. As such, when you load the application, you’ll need to press Yes on the dialog to get to the Download ROMs screen, and then press Back to get to the main screen. When you’re there, press the Menu button and select Find ROMs.
5. Play games!
From here on out, you should be taken directly to a list of your games whenever you load GBA Player Lite. You can select a game and play. While in-game, you can press Back to Save & Exit any game and resume to the exact moment you left off.
Enjoy!