Console Setups

Aside from pointing a camera at your Gameboy, it is pretty trick to record footage of your GBA Speedruns. This article will try to sum up common solutions to record your runs, but due to the ever-evolving state of GBA recording methods (new products and methods), it should only be viewed as a starting point for you to do further research.

Gameboy Player for Nintendo Gamecube

The most common solution is to use the Gameboy Player attachment on a Gamecube. It allows you to play GBA, GBC and GB games on your Gamecube, so you can play on your TV or monitor. It also allows you to hook up a GBA as a controller, which is the closest to the original playing experience.

There are two main ways to use the Gameboy Player: 1. You purchase the official Gameboy Player Disc and use it to run the official software made by Nintendo.

It is easy, just works without any issues, but the visual quality is rather bad and the software adds noticable lag. The official disc also has become rather expensive, which is why option 2 might be very interesting for you, too.

2. You can use "Gameboy Interface" (GBI). This is a Homebrew Application that allows you to use your Gameboy Player without the original Gameboy Player Disc, which means you need to software or hardware mod your Gamecube to run Homebrew applications. There is a variety of ways to get Homebrew applications running on your Gamecube, such as the "SD Media Launcher" by Datel with the "Action Replay" Disc or the "Save Game Exploit". The most common way is to use the application "Swiss", which will act as a menu to boot all your Homebrew applications from, including Gameboy Interface.

Setting up GBI can be rather tricky and will take some fiddeling with the settings to get your preferred, perfect look, but if you have finally set it up, the improved video quality of GBI over the original Gameboy Player software and the reduced input lag will make up that difference.

More information about Gamecube Homebrewing and how to get it running for cheap: https://www.gc-forever.com/wiki/index.php?title=Booting_homebrew https://gchomebrew.com/ultimate/

More information about Gameboy Interface and Swiss: https://www.gc-forever.com/wiki/index.php?title=Game_Boy_Interface https://www.gc-forever.com/wiki/index.php?title=Swiss https://www.speedrun.com/fusion/guides/wf5aa

Another way to get GBI running is to copy it into a regular Gamecube Memory Card along with a game save exploit that tricks a regular Gamecube game into loading GBI. To do this, you will need a Wii that has homebrew installed, and I've had success following the guide in this video https://youtu.be/Y3jq8dVe2ug. Once your Wii has homebrew, use it to install Gamecube Memory Manager, a.k.a. GCMM, found here: http://wiibrew.org/wiki/GCMM. Now that you have GCMM, use it to copy over your game save exploit and GBI from an SD card over to a regular Gamecube Memory Card, and now that Memory Card can be used to trick whichever game you chose to boot into GBI.

If you're starting completely fresh, the Action Replay is very likely the easiest way to get going. In my situation I already had a Wii and extra memory cards and a gamecube game that has a save exploit for it, so it was cheaper for me to use everything I had instead of buying an Action Replay. Whichever option you choose should get you running on a console and ready to speedrun with recorded footage.