New GBA ROM Written – Splat!

Second post in the month. Nice.

I’ve written an interactive visual/music ROM for the Gameboy Advance. I’ve called it Splat! It consists of a piece of music you can directly affect by pressing the buttons and the image on screen is also directly controlled by the users decisions. It’s interactive art!

Below is a picture of what it looks like, but to truly understand what it does, you really ought to download and play it 🙂

Download and play!

Such pretty colours

Moving using UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT across the screen triggers new sounds and pressing certain buttons will also cause different sounds to play. I tried to make it as interactive as possible in that respect but still keep a central theme playing.

As ever, here are the controls:

Controls for VisualBoy Advance

As with my last post/ROM, WordPress won’t allow me to directly attach the game to my page so I’ve created a URL that will give you the ability to download and view Splat! Remember, you need the VisualBoy Advance application to open Splat! if you don’t already have it installed.

https://www.box.com/s/udtm7gxe398d7ucvc7vb

This took quite a lot of man-hours to create, I hope you like it. My second ROM for the GBA. Let me know what you think, feedback is always welcome.

Music on GBA

It took a long time. A lot of searching through the internet, a lot of lies for well meaning people, dead ends and restricted websites but I got it. A decent book on GBA Programming! It has helped me understand the Gameboy a lot more in terms of CPU usage and registers used. I’ve also gained a new appreciation for the games written specifically on hardware like the GBA. It’s not easy!

I’ve written a Gameboy Advance game where you can listen to the instrumental track and the track with vocals of the first song I uploaded to SoundCloud, Old Mistakes. Below is what it looks like when you download it. Not the prettiest music player around but it gets the job done.

Instrumental Music and Vocal Version of Old Mistakes

In order for you to download and listen you need to have a Gameboy Emulator, like VisualBoy Advance. WordPress doesn’t allow you to upload file types it isn’t familiar with so I’ve had to get a box account and provide a public link for you to download and try it. You need to download both files and open the ROM file I created with VisualBoy Advance.

https://www.box.com/s/flurg7va9mh9lv4nf03k

The controls are below for the VisualBoy Advance emulator.

Controls for VisualBoy Advance

Any issues using the ROM let me know. This is definitely something I am proud of. I’ve written a game (sort of) for a retro hand-held console I adore. Brilliant! Let me know what you think.