GBA Gets Unofficial Sierra Adventure Game Emulator

Thanks to ShackNews for pointing out the Game Boy Advance Adventure Game Interpreter (GBAGI) webpage, which features an "interpreter/emulator/software that runs... Sierra's original animated adventure games on the Nintendo Game Boy Advance." The software's maker flew down to meet with Sierra owner Vivendi regarding official GBA releases, but mentions: "VUG(Vivendi Universal Games), who are affiliated with Blizzard Entertainment, had just released two classic ports to the Game Boy Advance, The Lost Vikings and Blackthorne, which both did not do too well. This is why they were now a bit standoff-ish about [official GBA carts]." Therefore, the downloads page includes "GBAGI ROMs packed in with demos that are freely available", as well as instructions on how to "to build GBA ROMs with AGI games [that you own]."

Comments

Fun but frustrating

[Randar the Lava Liza]

I just gave this a whirl on my GBA SP (I have a flash cart & linker at home). While it was great to see Space Quest again, I forgot just how annoying some of these games can be. While you're presented with a visual of the layout of the room, you have to walk up to each item you want to mess around with, then find the right text combination to activate it, search it, etc.

Don't get me wrong, I loved these back in the day, and this is an amazing emulator, kudos to all. It's just reminding me of how nice it is these days to not have to find the exact phrasing of "turn on computer" to get the in game computer to work (in this case, "look screen").

The emulator does a great job though, and presents a popup menu that you can use to insert words into the game automatically, built from the vocabulary lists for that particular room.

Still, if you want to play these games again, this is a fantastic way to do it. I was able to fit 4 space quest games (space quest 1 & 2 and the two homebrew spacequest games) plus my NES roms all on a 128M cart.

The Lost Vikings

[ArmorFiend]

had just released two classic ports to the Game Boy Advance, The Lost Vikings and Blackthorne, which both did not do too well

Hey, I've got a good idea! Lets release a ten year old game at full price! But wait, there's less! Lets remove all the cooperative multi-player that made the game actually worth playing! No wonder The Lost Vikings bombed. It was decent as a 1-player game, but only truly great as a 2-player game.