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GB300

The Sup+ GB300 (short for Game Box) is a cheap handheld that emulates video game consoles. You can find it on AliExpress and other sites. In general, the GB300 is a few dollars more than the cheapest game consoles on AliExpress often dubbed the Famiclones, but the GB300 offers more than ten classic consoles (instead of just the Famicom), comes with way more games (even on the Famicom), does not have repeats, does not consist of mostly Chinese homebrew and hacks, you can add your own games, and you can save (states and sometimes standard GBA battery saves). It also has a modding community. So do yourself the favor and don't buy anything cheaper than the GB300.

There are two quite different firmwares, called the GB300 v1 and GB300 v2. You can simply upgrade and downgrade by copying a few files to your TF card.

Where to get: The cheapest way to get it (around 9 dollars with taxes if you're in the EU) is via AliExpress's "Pick 3 and Save" (aka "Bundle Deals") if it's available there. This isn't always the case. As you need at least 3 items there, we suggest you buy a case (or a TF reader if you don't own one) and a bigger TF card (e.g. ALUNX 64 GB), as the stock card is known and prone to fail. (You could also buy three GB300...)

Is this a vertical SF2000? Somewhat. Compared to the Data Frog SF2000, the GB300 not only has a different form factor, but some other differences:

Things the GB300 does better than the SF2000 Things the GB300 does worse than the SF2000
Price (especially in Europe)
Audio quality
Support for PC-Engine (Turbografx-16)
Support for Famicom Disk System, V.R. Technology VT02 and VT03 (all three are disabled by default and not currently accessible on GB300 v2)
Slightly improved firmware
Lighter (133 vs. 165 grams, partially attributed to the smaller battery)
Screen (especially viewing angle from left/right)
No wireless gamepad connectivity
Smaller stock battery
Smaller stock TF card (you therefore have some GBA and arcade games less on the GB300 v2)
No "digital analog stick"

GB300 v1 does not have the arcade.

This document is work in progress but mostly finished now for the v1 version of the firmware. Large parts target developers and anyone willing to mod the device, but the page has an FAQ for Players as well. Feel free to contact me, numma_cway, on Discord or Reddit. You can also create a fork and pull request, or open an issue on Github. If you have any questions, join the #data_frog_sf2000 channel on the Retro Handhelds Discord (choose SF2000 during onboarding). There is also a Gb300 dev thread on that Discord, but that's for developers and not really for end users. You can also visit r/GB300 on reddit.

Table of Contents

User topics:

In-depth technical analysis:

Developer and modding topics:

Appendix:

FAQ for Players

tl;dr:

Don't's:

  • Do not use a quick charger (anything that can potentially deliver more than 5 volts). Otherwise, you will destroy your GB300.
  • Do not insert the battery with reversed polarity. Otherwise, you will destroy your GB300.
  • (GB300 v1 only) Do not use Tadpole (a tool made solely for the SF2000). Otherwise, you will break your GB300 (except for GBA).

Do's:

  • Patch the bootloader (either with GB300 Tool or manually) before making any other changes to the TF card, including getting a new one. Otherwise, you will break your GB300 (sooner or later). This has to be done once per device, not per TF card.
  • Optional: Get GB300 Tool.
  • Optional: Get multicore.
  • Optional: Read this document.
Topic What you should know What you can/should do
Device Giant step from any cheaper handheld (the so-called Famiclones). 918 MHz MIPS CPU with 128 MB of high-latency DDR2. No networking whatsoever. Buy one. Or spend a few dollars more on the Data Frog SF2000 which has the same performance but a better screen.
Screen 2.8" 320Ă—240px LCD screen. Viewing angle from the sides is extremely bad, up/down is alright. Very bright black in dark environments. Cannot adjust brightness. It is possible to take the screen from a SF2000 or buy this spare screen. Screen swaps on v1 require a different firmware.
Buttons D-pad isn't very accurate. You might want to add some tape (requires opening the console).
TV Out Comes with a 70 cm cable from 3-pin 2.5 mm audio to two RCA (cinch) jacks. Can be used with most older TVs. If you are in Europe, your TV might instead have SCART, for which there are adapters. Some TVs don't like the signal in general. If possible, use NTSC to prevent unnecessary vertical scaling. Do not plug in the cable before the device has fully booted.
Sound Mono speaker (left channel). No phone plug. Audio quality is far superior to SF2000. —
Battery Standard 800 mAh 18650-type battery. Play and charge time both are around 2 hours (power consumption: 1 W). Device has overcharge protection but not undercharge. Do not use a quick charger. Cannot be charged with a USB-C-to-USB-C cable. Playing while charging is not recommended. Do not leave the device turned on or undercharge will kill the battery. You can change the battery to a better one as 800 mAh really small. By default only ones with "tips" connect, while flat ones do not. You can buy them online and in e-cigarettes stores. Mind the polarity when replacing the battery or you will destroy the device.
TF Card
(=microSD)
8 GB card, 1.75 GiB (GB300 v2: 0.78 GiB) free. Device is picky about the cards it takes at all, and cheap ones are more likely to work. Included card works with any standard TF reader or SD reader via any TF-SD adapter. You could use a phone to access the TF card, but that's not convenient. SDXC is supported (SDHC and SDXC hardware are exactly the same), but you will have to use FAT32 which is non-standard for SDXC for unknown reasons (FAT32 supports 16 TiB, but SDXC is limited to 2 TB). Yet some AliExpress microSDXC cards come preformatted to FAT32 so you can use those right away. We don't know the maximum TF capacity, but 64 GB works. Get a larger TF card and make sure it's formatted in FAT32 (Rufus has been suggested for SDXC, as Windows won't let you format SDXC in FAT32). Then just copy the content from your old card (you might want to copy the bios folder first, just in case). Before you copy any stuff to the new TF Card, patch the bootloader with your current card. The latter and general device management are greatly simplified by using GB300 Tool.
Firmware
General
Closed-source OS that uses libretro cores (see the list of stock emulators). Also supports Sega Master System and Kids Computer Pico ROMs but doesn't come with ROMs for these. Could play FDS and VT02/03 ROMs, but these features are disabled. Some SNES and many GBA games are slow. Access pause menu by pressing Start+Select. Patch the bootloader to spare yourself of a bug in its FAT32 implementation. Copy gba_bios.bin where the firmware expects it to slightly improve compatibility. (GB300 Tool can do both for you. It can also enable FDS and VT02/03 support.) Install fan project multicore on your TF card to add loads of new platforms and greatly improve GBA performance. It can be a bit tricky to add ROMs and configure it, but GB300 Tool can ease that once multicore is installed.
ROMs Comes with 6267 ROMs. Expecially the NES ROMs are often modified (hacks) according to No-Intro. There are seven hardcoded lists that you can edit with GB300 Tool and a modded version of Frogtool. Create the folder ROMS and put your own ROMs there. Also create a subfolder save there so you can save. You can patch Game Gear ROMs into SMS ROMs.
Saving Stock GBA does not reliably battery-save (battery is the correct term for an in-game save), Pokémon mini (on multicore) can save as well, and all other emulators (including multicore) cannot battery-save at all. (Soft resets can load a battery if it was saved without leaving the emulator in the meantime, so you can complete Pokémon.) States work alright but you cannot (usually) use them in other emulators. m2k on multicore does not support states. Use only save states. Import GBA battery saves (.sav) by placing them in both, ROMS and GBA, and Pokémon mini saves (.eep) in ROMS\save.
Interface There are 55 image files and a text file that you can modify. You can also modify sounds or replace the font file. Use GB300 Tool to edit the image files since the file names and file format are both very odd. It can also edit the text file. Sounds can be converted using Kerokero - SF2000 BGM Tool. The font file is a standard TTF font.
Button
Mapping
You can reassign buttons for each console, but the editor is seriously bugged. GB300 Tool can tell you what you actually bind.
Accessories Supports connecting a very rare type of wired gamepad for the second player. A likely source has been discovered only recently. Wireless gamepads are not supported. It is believed that this is the only way to buy one. This listing has a bundle. Both don't ship worldwide. For the first listing, make sure to buy the wired version. Note that they sell them in pairs, but you can only connect one. More listings, some of them shipping worldwide, appeared in late summer 2024.
Support There is no known way to contact the manufacturer because we don't know who that is. Ask on Retro Handhelds Discord (choose SF2000 during onboarding) or reddit.

What is the GB300 v2?

GB300 v1 GB300 v2
GB300 v1 GB300 v2

The GB300 v2 is basically the SF2000's firmware with two more emulators, Mednafen PCE Fast and – for whatever reason – wiseemu/libvrt. Another thing that got SF2000 owners jealous were the game list items scrolling horizontally if the ROM name is too long, and that ROMs also start when you press A.

To be completely clear: The GB300 v2 is a firmware and therefore software. The hardware is the same.

Upgrading to v2

If you have a compatible 16 GB or larger TF card at hand:

  1. Patch the bootloader with your existing TF (we are serious about this!) - you can use GB300 Tool v1.0b for that
  2. Backup your ROMS folder and save subfolders. Also backup the entire PCE folder!
  3. Upgrade SF2000 firmware - this will format (wipe) the TF card
  4. Extract this on your TF
  5. If it doesn't work (black screen), put this in bios (you can skip this step if you want to install multicore (step 8))
  6. Recommended: Copy your PCE folder back on
  7. Optional: Copy your save and ROMS backup back on
  8. Optional: Get Multicore 0.10 v0.3.1 (you cannot use multicore released after 0.10 v0.2.1 to directly up- or downgrade!)
  9. Optional: Enter GB300 Tool v2 and click Check All in the 2nd to 9th tab each to enable ROMs removed from the GB300 v2 but shipped with the SF2000

If you do not have a compatible 16 GB TF card at hand:

  1. Patch the bootloader with your existing TF (we are serious about this!) - you can use GB300 Tool v1.0b for that
  2. Extract this on your TF
  3. If it doesn't work (black screen), put this in bios (you can skip this step if you want to install multicore (step 5))
  4. Optional: Copy your save and ROMS backup back on
  5. Optional: Get Multicore 0.10 v0.3.1 (you cannot use multicore released after 0.10 v0.2.1 to directly up- or downgrade!)
  6. Enter GB300 Tool v2 and click Uncheck All in the ARCADE tab to remove the games you do not have

After upgrading to v2, you can add FBAlpha sets (support list) and FBNeo sets (support list) with GB300 Tool v2. You can only add FBA Arcade ROMs to the seventh static list, called ARCADE by default.

Downgrading to v1

  1. Patch the bootloader (we are serious about this!) - you can use GB300+SF2000 Tool v2.0 series for that
  2. Install multicore 0.10 v0.2.1 or older.
  3. Recommended: Enter GB300 Tool v1 and click Check All in the 1st to 7th tab each to disable ROMs (primarily GBA) removed from the GB300 v2 but present in the GB300 v1's menu

Tools

Most tools designed for the SF2000 don't work, especially for the GB300 v1. Tools are often incompatible because not only is the BIOS different, but also the Resources have different names. (GB300 v1 only) This is especially true for Tadpole. Just starting it already patches your ROM lists and will break all default ROMs. It will only leave the GBA (because the files used for the GBA on the GB300 are used for the arcade on the SF2000, but there is no ARCADE folder for Tadpole to scan). If you did use Tadpole, look for the files in the Resources folder with the current date and restore the backups Tadpole put there.

(GB300 v1 only) The following tools were made specifically for the GB300 v1:

(GB300 v2 only) The following tools were made specifically for the GB300 v2:

  • multicore for GB300 by osaka, Prosty, Karl Ellis, Mutandone and the creators of the original multicore for SF2000 (mostly kobil). Use v0.3.1 or newer.
  • GB300+SF2000 Tool v2 by me (numma_cway), also increases number of supported Neo Geo games on stock
  • You can probably use tadpole, but it won't be able to manage PCE ROMs and does not support multicore. madpole does support multicore, but doesn't not support PCE either.

Tools for the SF2000 that work for the GB300:

  • BIOS CRC-32 Patcher by Von Millhausen, required after manual changes to the bisrv.asd file
  • Generic Image Tool by Von Millhausen, converts to and from RGB565 and BGRA8888 images
  • Kerokero - SF2000 BGM Tool by Dteyn
  • Save State Tool by Von Millhausen – Due to the strange CPU architecture, people don't think that converting save states makes any sense. But you can use it to extract screenshots. This tool is incompatible with multicore and NES ROMs with an .nfc extension (that includes file names inside ZIP, obfuscated ZIP and thumbnailed files).
  • Silent menu music by Von Millhausen
  • Silent Sounds Pack by Dteyn

Other links:

multicore

Fan project multicore gives you access many more emulators and enjoy way better GBA performance. It is hard to manage without tools, but one tool exists for this.

Important: Starting with multicore 0.10 v.0.3.0, multicore releases must match the firmware version that is currently installed on your TF card. You cannot directly upgrade or downgrade your firmware. Read more.

Discord users osaka (bnister) and Prosty (_prosty) brought multicore to GB300 v1 on April 27th, 2024. These two also ported it to GB300 v2 on October 5th, 2024, with contributions from Karl Ellis and Mutandone.

Installing and Using multicore with GB300 Tool

The easiest way to use multicore is probably via GB300 Tool. Download the ZIP file (the one with the cube icon) and start the tool. Enter your TF reader's drive letter and follow these steps:

  1. Check the first checkbox on the BIOS/Device page that comes up right after entering your drive letter and hitting 'Start'.
  2. Put the TF card in your GB300 and boot. It will display some progress indicator during boot for a few seconds.
  3. Turn off the GB300 and put the card in your TF reader again.
  4. Put bios and cores folders from the 7-Zip file on your existing TF card (so the bios folder overwrites (merges with) the existing folder). If you are on the GB300 v2, make sure to not use 0.10 v0.3.0, because it is incomplete.
  5. Restart GB300 Tool to make it notice that you now have multicore.
  6. Select one of the first nine (eight in v1) tabs in GB300 Tool and either click "Add..." or drop your ROMs on the tool. It will ask you for the multicore core, but will have recommendations for you. If GB300 Tool tells you that you need a BIOS, you will normally need to put it the bios folder on your TF card. Here's a list of cores. Most cores link to libretro's docs with more information on BIOS.

You only have to do steps 1 to 5 once.

Installing and Using multicore Manually

  1. Before you do anything else: Patch the bootloader. Really! Spare yourself the possible trouble with the device not booting because of a buggy FAT-32 implementation.
  2. Put bios and cores folders from the 7-Zip file on your existing TF card (so the bios folder overwrites (merges with) the existing folder). If you are on the GB300 v2, make sure to not use 0.10 v0.3.0, because it is incomplete.
  3. For each "core" (the term means emulator – the GB300 CPU is single-core) you want, create a subfolder with its name in ROMS and put your ROMs for that core in its subfolder. Here's a list of cores.
  4. Run make-romlist found in the root directory of your TF card now. It does not actually make a ROM list but creates so-called stubs. These are zero-byte (empty) .gba files passed to the GBA emulator. However, the GBA emulator was given a hook that will run multicore if the file name conforms to a certain file name pattern.
    • If you don't want to run the script, you can create the stubs yourself. The pattern is CORENAME;FILENAME.gba. Example: Zero Wing.MD is placed in ROMS\sega to be launched with the sega core. Then you need to create ROMS\sega;Zero Wing.MD.gba, ROMS\sega;Zero Wing.MD.agb or ROMS\sega;Zero Wing.MD.gbz.
  5. Many of the emulators added by multicore require one or more BIOS files. In the Google Spreadsheet linked above, there is one link to libretro docs per core. That linked page will explain what BIOS files you need (the section is missing if an emulator does not use BIOS files). BIOS files must be placed in the bios folder of your TF card.

Thumbnailed Stubs

Users are adviced to use GB300 Tool for this. Below is the technical documentation on how the tool does this.

(GB300 v2 only) On the GB300 v2, you can use the ZFB method: Just have your ZFB point to a file name conforming to the above pattern. That file does not have to exist. Your .zfb stub can have any name. This method does not work in user ROMs, so multicore stubs in user ROMs cannot have an arbitrary name either.

The second way to add thumbnails (and the only one that works on GB300 v1) is super weird: The filename (without the extension) of the .zfc, .zsf, .zpc, .zmd or .zgb file must conform to the multicore pattern, however, the extension is pulled from the contained file. So the file name inside the ZIP file does not matter, but must end on .gba, .zgb or .agb. Basically you could take any stock GBA file, and for example name it sega;Zero Wing.md.zsf to make it launch ROMS\sega\Zero Wing.md with the sega core.

Converting ROMs and Save States to multicore

Multicore saves in ROMS\save. The thumbnail (screenshot) is named and formatted like always, but with no payload other than the image, as the state is in another file. This file isn't compressed.

(GB300 v2 only) GB300+SF2000 Tool v2.0-beta3 and up can directly convert stock ROMs to multicore. Just right-click any stock list. If you are moving to TGB Dual, DoublecherryGB, Picodrive or Mednafen PCE Fast, you can even keep your save states. Note that multicore needs uncompressed ROMs, so this process will use a lot of space on your TF card.

If you're on the GB300 v1, you will have to do this manually:

  1. Start GB300 Tool and navigate to the ROM in question.
  2. Export ROM.
  3. Rightclick the state to Export State Data.
  4. Add the exported ROM again and pick the core that matches stock: TGB Dual or DoublecherryGB for GB/GBC, Picodrive for MD/SMS, or Mednafen PCE Fast for PCE.
  5. Rightclick the empty area where the states would be and select Create State with Data. Now choose your experted state data.

The state thumbnail might glitch on your device, but that does not prevent the state from loading properly.

Hardware

General: The hardware is very similar to the SF2000. The processor is the same 918 MHz MIPS processor (HiChip/HCSEMI B210, overclocked from 810 MHz) with 128 MB of high-latency DDR2 RAM, originally designed to be used in DVD players and DTV set-top boxes. The most important difference is the vertical form factor which makes the GB300 look a bit like the much heavier Game Boy Color (209 vs. 133 grams). The GB300 lacks the SF2000's "digital analog stick" and the buttons feel somewhat cheap.

Screen: The screen is a cheap LCD screen compared to the SF2000’s IPS screen. The horizontal viewing angle (left/right) is extremely small, but vertical is alright. Especially when playing dark games in a dark room, the very bright black is an issue, as neither device has a brightness control. People who love the GB300 for its form factor, audio and straight-forward interface have bought an SF2000 just to swap its screen into the GB300, so the rest of the device can't be that bad, hmm? You can buy a spare screen, too. The GB300's default screen has diagonal(!) screen tearing. It isn't really noticeable unless there's flashing or fading. Scrolling is alright.

TF Card: The device ships with only a 8 GB TF/microSDHC card (42 MB of which aren't allocated to a partition), formatted FAT32. It includes the firmware and the default set of 6267 ROMs (less but slightly better ones on the GB300 v2). This leaves around 1.75 GB (0.78 GiB on the GB300 v2) for your own ROMs. Actually, there's more space if you follow the manual: All the ROMs are just for demonstration and you are supposed to delete them right when you receive the console, even though the menus are hardcoded to exactly these files. The GB300 is picky in terms of which TF cards it will accept. Rule of thumb: The cheaper, the more compatible. We suggest you do not exceed 64 GB for the same reason. If you are moving to a new card, make sure to patch the bootloader first (with your old card). Then make sure your new card is FAT32 and copy all files to it.

TV Out: The device comes with a 70 cm (28") cable from a 2.5mm male audio plug to two male RCA (cinch) plugs. The yellow RCA plug is for composite video and the red one for sound. You can plug them into older TVs either directly or via a SCART adapter. If you plug the cable in the GB300, its own screen and sound will be turned off. The TV output has a better resolution (640x480) than the internal screen's 320x240 (display the bottom-right pixel of each 2×2 pixel block). If your TV doesn't care, use NTSC 480i to avoid unnecessary vertical scaling to 576i. NTSC outputs a vertically pixel-perfect result of the user interface. Unlike the SF2000, the TV signal will be fine while charging the GB300. (GB300 v1 only) Do not plug in the AV cable until the device has completely booted (that includes not plugging in the cable before switching the device on, meaning that the full-size bootlogo is never used).

Peripherals: The GB300 works with the wired gamepads that sometimes ship with some other cheap(er) consoles. You cannot normally buy them individually and the GB300 wasn't sold bundled with them either until this listing appeared in mid/late June 2024. These devices work for solely the second player in games that support that. Wireless gamepads don't work on the GB300, e.g. the gamepad bundled with the SF900 TV stick that works with the SF2000. Note that neither of these complies with industry standards like USB or BT, so they don't have any use with computers, laptops or mainstream consoles. If your gamepad connects to any of these, it's definitely not compatible with the GB300. There are two types of the wired gamepads for consoles like the GB300, the common 5-wire used by all the cheaper Famiclones and the super-rare 4-wire. The GB300 only supports the latter. A source for these has been discovered in early June 2024. This comes despite the fact that "external gamepad double against" is even promoted on the front of the GB300's box... To be completely clear: Wired gamepads, a TV and 5V of USB power are the only things you can connect to your GB300. There is no internet or any other type of linking available.

Battery: The GB300 is powered by a standard 18650 battery that you can easily change. The device has overcharge protection (the charging current will drop when the battery is full), yet the green charging light will not turn off. If the battery is very low (crashes and glitches), it will take a little under 4 VAh until it stops charging. This suggests that the capacity is lower than the SF2000's 1750 mAh. This is supported by the manual and box listing 800 mAh, and people reporting that the (light pink and completely unlabeled) battery of the GB300 is lighter than the SF2000's. More recently, people have reported receiving labelled batteries, confirming the 800 mAh. Neither device has undercharge protection, so leaving the device on with a low battery can kill the battery. One person reported that their GB300 came with the power switch in the 'ON' position and therefore a dead battery. Buying a new battery worked. If you buy a new battery, buy one with tips (not flat) and consider both, over- and undercharge protection. Although the SF2000 takes flat batteries, the GB300 requires some manipulation to its contact springs due to the console's case design. Mind the polarity when replacing the battery, or you will destroy the console. The GB300 initially charges with around 2.5 to 2.9 W, which decreases as it charges.

Related Devices: Another similar device (other than the SF2000) is the 8 Bit King, but that's an HDMI stick with wireless gamepads. It's usually around one dollar cheaper than the GB300 and lacks support for SNES, GBA and MD/SMS because it has less/worse RAM. There is a hack for limited MD/SMS support though. The 8 Bit King too plays your own ROMs and can save.

Better Devices: If you want to spend a bit more, you can buy the SF2000 for primarily a better screen but much worse audio. If you're in Europe, the SF2000 is usually completely overpriced and you should buy the R36s when it's on sale, but that's a way different device.

Worse Devices: Do yourself the favor and don't buy anything cheaper than the GB300. Read the first paragraph on this page. If you need more reasons, search 400-in-1 game console (or 500, 600, or 800-in-1) on YouTube.

General Firmware Features

The GB300's stock firmware emulates the following devices:

  • Nintendo Entertainment System (Famicom)
  • Famicom Disk System (disabled, but can be enabled on GB300 v1)
  • V.R. Technology VT02/VT03 (disabled, but can be enabled on GB300 v1)
  • NEC PC Engine (Turbografx-16)
  • Super Nintendo Entertainment System (Super Famicom)
  • SEGA Master System (SEGA Mark III)
  • SEGA Mega Drive (SEGA Genesis)
  • SEGA PICO (Kids Computer Pico) – debatable if this is different from the Mega Drive
  • Game Boy
  • Game Boy Color
  • Game Boy Advance
  • (GB300 v2 only) 1431 Arcade games, 949 of which could be considered working according to madcock
    • GB300 Tool v2 increases this number by another ca. 300 working ones by doing some sort of "conversion"

Fan project multicore adds dozens of new platforms, for example:

  • Atari 2600, 5200, 7800
  • Atari Lynx
  • Bandai Wonderswan, Wonderswan Color and Benesse Pocket Challenge v2
  • Connecticut Leather Company Colecovision
  • Commodore 64
  • Mattel Intellivision
  • NEC PCE-CD
  • Nintendo PokĂ©mon mini
  • SEGA SG-1000
  • SEGA Game Gear
  • SEGA Mega-CD
  • SEGA 32x (performance isn't good, but playable)
  • SNK Neo Geo Pocket and Neo Geo Pocket Color
  • Watara SuperVision
  • 2241 Arcade games, all but 6 could be considered working
    • My mod adds 62 new ones
  • A few fantasy consoles, e.g. CHIP-8, Pico-8
  • A few game engines, e.g. DOOM
  • A few other home computers

Compared to the SF2000's stock firmware, the GB300 adds the PCE and (theoretically) the VTxx. However, GB300 v1 does not have the arcade. PCE and arcade can be added using multicore. While multicore's Mednafen PCE Fast works well, multicore has MAME 2000 instead of Final Burn Alpha (a MAME fork), because multicore team couldn't get FBA or newer versions of MAME to run properly. Performance and compatibility with larger-filesize games are both worse on multicore MAME 2000 than on SF2000's FBA, e.g. m2k can only load 34 of the 228 ROMs that ship with the SF2000, and Wildfang is the only one of these that runs at full speed. The ROMs that ship with the SF2000 are generally more graphically challenging. Two rules of thumb: You can espect multicore's MAME 2000 to have performance issues with ROMs that are bigger than around 1 MB (compressed) or look better than your usual Mega Drive games. MAME fails to load ROMs larger than around 60 MB uncompressed due to a lack of available memory. This affects six games, for two of them I managed to make a patch.

There is no chance you could enable VTxx on the SF2000. If you don't mind the weird colors, you could also play Game Gear games that do not make use of the Start button. Change the .gg extension to .sms to make them show up. smspower.org has color patches ("GG2SMS") for around 200 GG games (they list 185 different games, for which there are 225 versions on No-Intro, but not all versions are supported). There's a list of GG2SMS patches that work on the GB300 in this document.

There's actually two things called "firmware" on the GB300: There is a small bootloader (512KiB) that loads the firmware from the TF card. You should patch that bootloader to prevent issues when tampering with files in the BIOS folder on the TF card. Really. This patch works for the GB300 as well and takes only a few seconds. With the bootloader separated from the rest of the firmware and the firmware on a TF card, any modding attempts are relatively safe.

The SF2000 firmware does not work on the GB300. There is no known way to retrieve an updated official firmware because the manufacturer is unknown. See multicore below for a modified firmware for the GB300 made by the users. A port of GB300's firmware to SF2000 has been made so people can enjoy the easier interface and use GB300 Tool. There is also a version with multicore.

(GB300 v1 only) The default BIOS dates to the 15th of December, 2023. There might be an older version dating back to the 26th of October, 2023, but the only evidence of that one was corrupted before we could examine it.

(GB300 v2 only) There seem to be two v2 BIOS versions. One dates to 3rd of July, 2024, the other to the 2nd of August, 2024. The latter is a bit smaller but seems to be more compatible with different screen revisions. Beside the different BIOS, the earlier of the two versions also comes with two savesgames, for Pokemon - Emerald Version and Sonic Advance (both are GBA games). See What is the GB300 v2? for more details on the GB300 v2 and how to upgrade your GB300 v1. Fans usually call the two v2 variants by the name of the first user who posted them: The smaller one is called VinĂ­cius, the bigger one wearenumber421.

Saving

Savestates: The device features four save states per game which allow saving at any point (press Start+Select). However, they are usually incompatible between different emulators. If you want to try anyway, you first need to extract them from their zlib-based format (same as on the SF2000). There is a tool for that. .nfc ROMs (including those in compressed files) use uncompressed save states which are not supported by that tool, but GB300 Tool. Tests with VBA-M's GBA save states (after extracting the gzip file that is VBA-M's save state format) didn't work (black screen on the GB300). See above for details on migrating stock states to multicore.

Battery Saves: Normally, you would be able to exchange battery files between emulators. These are the files that store the savegames created by the games' save feature (should one exist). Until around the year 2000, you needed a battery to store these, hence the name, but nowadays, you use flash memory. However, there's an issue with battery saves on the GB300:

  • GBA: If you want to load a battery file from another emulator, place it in the ROMS folder (not the save subfolder). For stock ROMs, it sometimes uses the (user) ROMS folder and sometimes the GBA folder, so put your saves in both folders. Saving is a bit more complicated. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. And even if you can load a battery before turning off the device, this does not guarantee that you will still be able to load it after turning off the device. Saving and loading without switching off the GB300 in the meantime works for GBA games. Should you need to get your battery file from the device, load your state and save in-game. Repeat until you can load your battery after restarting the GB300. Then you should have a working battery file.
  • GB/GBC: Many people are concerned about PokĂ©mon games which force a soft reset after beating the Champ. Luckily, this is no issue at all for the stock GB/GBC emulator, if you saved in-game after you last loaded a state (or started a new game). This will normally be the case if you make sure that you do not save a state before you're back in the game. In other words: Do not save and load a state during the intro. How can you quickly test this with any GB/GBC/GBA emulator in the world? Save a game, press A+B+Start+Select and you should be able to load the battery. This is not an emulator feature but implemented by nearly all ROMs.
  • Need to do more research on the other emulators.

Multicore generally cannot battery-save if the core conforms to libretro's standards (battery save API). However, pokem for example does not conform to libretro's standards, so it can battery-save (.eep). It can also create/load states (.state0 to .state3) from the PC version of PokeMini. Note that all pokem games create a .eep, even those without a save feature like Zany Cards. m2k cannot even state-save. A patch implementing libretro's new battery save API was made by Discord user leonardo024624, adding battery support to all cores. However, no build for GB300 exists yet. Because it is statically linked, it would also require recompiling all cores. Even if it was available, Leonardo's patch currently only works if you gracefully exit the game (in contrast to turning of the device or having it freeze for whatever reason).

ROMs and Gameplay

* * * This entire section is about the stock firmware. It does not apply to multicore which cannot run zipped ROMs and therefore none of the stock ROMs either. Multicore does not take away any functionality, so installing multicore will still allow you to use the stock emulators with stock ROMs and any custom ROMs (unless the filename contains a semicolon and ends on any GBA extension). * * *

To play your own games, create the folder ROMS (case-insensitive like all filenames on FAT-32) on the TF card and put your ROMs there. You can also use single-file ZIP files to save memory. Also create a save subfolder (ROMS\save), because the GB300 will not create one for you and fail saving if that subfolder is missing.

Stock ROMs however come in their own format. The first 0xEA00 bytes are a 144x208 pixel RGB565 image with no header whatsoever. (You can technically change the size of the image, see the Foldername.ini section of this document.) After that comes a ZIP file, obfuscated with five differences to keep you from opening it:

  • The magic numbers are different as they bear the initials of CubeTac's Wang QunWei, or Wise Wang. There are three magic numbers in a standard ZIP file with one contained file:
    • The local header magic number is 0x57515703 instead of the standard 0x504B0304.
    • The central directory header magic number is 0x57515702 instead of the standard 0x504B0102.
    • The end of central directory header magic number is 0x57515701 instead of the standard 0x504B0506.
  • Both occurences of the file name in these headers had their bytes xor 0xE5'd.

Changing the things above will give you a standard ZIP file. At least 7-Zip is already fine if you just fix the local header's magic number, even though the file inside will have a strange filename then. The obfuscation is purely optional, but found in all stock ROMs.

Emulator Version Git Commit File Extensions Bitmask
XZip-XUnZip unknown unknown .bkp, .zip 0x00000100
(thumbnailed file) .zfc, .zsf, .zpc, .zmd, .zgb 0x00000300
XZip-XUnZip unknown unknown .zfb* 0x00000300
Snes9x 2005 v1.36 unknown .smc, .fig, .sfc, .gd3, .gd7, .dx2, .bsx, .swc 0x08000000
FCEUmm none 7cdfc7e .nes, .fds, .unf, .unif 0x01000000
wiseemu/libvrt unknown unknown .nfc 0x02000000
TGB Dual v0.8.3 9be31d3 .gbc, .gb, .sgb 0x20000000
gpSP v0.91 261b2db .gba, .bin, .agb, .gbz 0x10000000
PicoDrive 1.91 cbc93b6 .bin, .md, .smd, .gen, .32x, .cue, .iso, .sms 0x04000000
Mednafen PCE Fast v0.9.38.7 unknown .pce, .cue, .ccd, .chd 0x80000000
Final Burn Alpha v0.2.96.86 a324b2d .zfb*

* = (GB300 v1 only) .zfb does have the bitmask 0x00000300 used for thumbnailed files, but the GB300 can only show thumbnails for the third to seventh file extension in its list (which is identical to the one above). .zfb is the eighth in that internal list so there is no thumbnail. The lack of a thumbnail for .zfb is funny because on the SF2000, the sole use of .zfb is to provide the thumbnail for a file in another directory. ZFB is short for ZIP Final Burn (an arcade emulator), despite not containing zipped content on the SF2000. See above for more information on creating a multicore thumbnail.

* = (GB300 v2 only) Final Burn Alpha is only available in GB300 v2, where .zfb acts like a thumbnailed shortcut. The (onfuscated) ZIP after the thumbnail is replaced with the following content: One 32-bit number (usually 0, but there are cases where it is 1 (LE) for an unknown reason), file name relative to a bin subfolder and a 16-bit number that is 0.

wiseemu or libvrt is the name of this emulator on platforms where it is a separate file. It was created by Wise Wang. The other emulators are from libretro. If they were used in that context, they'd report all the given extensions to libretro, but the GB300 does not display the stroke-out ones. .bin files are associated with PicoDrive, not gpSP, so they are stroke-out for the latter.

ZIP and thumbnailed files are both allowed to be optionally obfuscated. And yes, even a .zip file is allowed to be obfuscated.

The bitmask is located in the BIOS where it comes after the extension. The block with this data is close to the end of the BIOS file. Open it a hex editor and search for NFC because that string does not occur anywhere else. .nfc is associated with a different NES emulator (wiseemu) than the .fds, .nes and .unf (FCEUmm). The .nfc extension is seen in 280 of the 868 stock ROMs. The most notable difference is that wiseemu's save states are uncompressed. Loading .fds fails for both, but can be enabled.

The GB300 relies on the extension (or, more precisely, the extension's bitmask) to decide what to do with the file:

  • Display a thumbnail?
  • Search for ZIP or WQW header and decompress the file before starting the ROM? All files with a thumbnail also belong into this category. This means that there is no way to have a thumbnail without compression.
  • Choose the emulator (see the table above).

There are no signs of other supported emulators, but it looks like MPEG-2 support is included but inaccessible. If you force the GB300 to display .chd files, opening one will cause it to load indefinitely, even for the tiniest PCE-CD game out there, Hawaiian Island Girls (under 3 megabytes). Same goes for .cue files no matter if MD-CD or PCE-CD.

Nintendo Entertainment System

On the SF2000 and GB300 v2, there are more files than were accessible by the default menu. These normally inaccessible files were removed from the GB300 v1 completely:

  • Island.zfc
  • Jump Jump.zfc
  • Little Witch.zfc
  • Mad Xmas.zfc
  • Metroid.zfc
  • Miner1.zfc*
  • Nut Cracky.zfc
  • Pobble.zfc
  • Sodoku.zfc*

Games with an asterisk are duplicates of games that are still on the device.

The GB300 comes with two NES emulators: FCEUmm is associated with .nes, .fds, .unf, whereas a mysterious other emulator called wiseemu is used for .nfc. To find out which one is used for which stock ROM, see this list. FCEUmm seems to be the better one for NES. You can see the difference in Galaxian which clearly glitches/tears.

(GB300 v2 only) There are two more NES games, but they's in the ROMs folder:

  • ARES.nes: Ares (Captain America and the Avengers hack)
  • BARESARK.nes: Baresark (SD Hero Soukessen - Taose! Aku no Gundan hack)

Famicom Disk System

(GB300 v1 only – full section) (Feature does exist on GB300 v2, but we cannot currently enable it.)

To enable FDS support in stock, do any of the following:

  • Open bios\bisrv.asd in a hex editor and stuff 0xa7f00b at offsets 0x34f170, 0x34f194 and 0x34f1b0. Remember that you need to rehash the BIOS after making changes to it.
  • Enable the feature in the most recent version of GB300 Tool.

In both cases, you must put disksys.rom in ROMS (does not respect your Foldername.ini). Now you can simply start .fds images like any other ROM.

To play double-sided disks, you need a way to eject them, turn them around and insert them. Virtually, that is. This is done by binding keys to 0x0A00 (FDS Turn Disk) and 0x0B00 (FDS Eject/Insert). This is not possible by the GB300's GUI but you can use GB300 Tool or a hex editor. More details are found here. To be clear: You must press three buttons to turn the disk: Eject, Turn and Eject again.

Thanks to osaka (bnister) for finding all this out.

V.R. Technology VT02/VT03

(GB300 v1 only – full section) (Feature does exist on GB300 v2, but we cannot currently enable it.)

Now we get to something the SF2000 cannot do, not even with multicore: V.R. Technology made some Famicom clones (Famiclones) that weren't just clones but technically more advanced than the Famicom, called the VTxx. As Sup+ was mostly known for making Famiclones (400-in-1, 500-in-1, a.s.o.) before making the GB300, the GB300 retains Wise Wang's strange Famiclone emulator, even on the GB300 v2. Discord user bnister (osaka) did some research on this. I won't explain the steps required to enable it, as you can simply check the two checkboxes in GB300 Tool's July 2024 version (the one that reads v1.0-final, not the one that reads v1.0). Files must have the .nfc extension.

You can get VTxx ROMs from Project Plug-and-Play and from the Internet Archive. Note that the tagging of ROMs in Project Plug-and-Play is inconsistent and their games are more prone to issues than those from the Internet Archive. Notes on Project Plug-and-Play:

  • Most games that are untagged or tagged VT02 are actually NES games. You can play them in FCEUmm and wiseemu without changing the iNES header.
  • Some VT03 games are not actually tagged as such, e.g. most/all TimeTop games are actually VT03.
  • Many VT03-tagged games in Project Plug-and-Play do not load on the GB300 or the sprites are glitched. Games available for different VTxx chips and games from Jungletac rarely load. Not a single original CubeTac game works. TimeTop's games and a few of CubeTac's hacks (e.g. Arrow Maze) however work very well.
  • Many soccer-related VT03 games do load but do not register input.
  • A few untagged VT03 slot machine games from Jungletac do load, but have weird colors.
  • Some games changed platform during development. The first demo of Street Dance works on FCEUmm, whereas the second demo and the final bundle with Hit-Mouse require VTxx emulation. Said game is pointless on the GB300's nameless emulator since PCM audio does not work. (And you cannot connect your dance mat to the GB300, making this game even more pointless.)
  • Roughly half of the VT09-tagged games in Project Plug-and-Play do load, but these have weird interlaced graphics, making most of them unplayable. The other half does not load.

Only about 10% of the OneBus games in Project Plug-and-Play work. OneBus is a requirement for VTxx. Checking for OneBus is easy in Project Plug-and-Play files because you just look at address 0x05 in the iNES header. If it's 0x00, the game has no CHR ROM and is therefore a OneBus ROM.

This is the full list of the 784 OneBus games from Project Plug-and-Play (2023-12-31) that you can play on the GB300:

Group (.7z) Game (.nes) Type
Cube Tech\Hacks
Arkanoid Pocket VT03
Balloon Fight Beat Ballute VT03
Battle City S Move VT03
Brush Roller Pengoo VT03
Duck Maze Maze Trooper VT03
Elevator Action Spy vs. Spy Combat VT03
Flappy Pro Genius VT03
International Cricket Cricket World Cup 2003 VT02
Magmax 3D Machine VT03
Penguin-kun Wars Fire Ball VT03
Pooyan Maze Arrow (VT03) VT03
Raid on Bungeling Bay Aero Gyrodine VT03
Spelunker Ghost Zero Trap VT03
Sqoon Deep Fighter VT03
Thexder Xtreme Robot VT03
Hummer
Ping Pong Ping Pong VT02
Inventor
Street Dance Street Dance (rev1)* VT02
Jungletac
Bubble Blaster Bubble Blaster (rev0) VT02
Go Bang Go Bang VT02
Number Quest Number Quest VT02
Pool Pro Billiards Master VT02
Submarine War Submarine War (VT09) VT02
Nice Code Software
Mad Xmas Lucky Time (VT03) VT03
Nice Code Software\Intellivision
Snafu Star (VT03) VT03
TimeTop
Adventure Adventure VT03
Bomb Boy Bomb Boy VT03
Firebolt Firebolt VT03
Gun-Force Gun-Force* VT03
Risker Risker* VT03
Stone Age Stone Age* VT03
TimeTop\Hacks
F-1 Race Crazy Speed* VT03
Unknown Developer
Duck & Dodge Duck & Dodge VT03
Hip-Hop Scotch Hip-Hop Scotch VT03
Snowstorm Snowstorm VT03
Unknown Developer\Hacks
Pinball Radium Star VT03

The type given above is what I think is the cartridge type (VT02: requires mapper 12; VT03 also requires LUT patch to not look green-ish). NintendulatorNRS distributed by Project Plug-and-Play does not always agree with me. Games with an asterisk have some glitches that do not technically prevent you from playing them.

UM6578, VT32, VT168 and VT369 never load.

Research is still going on. I am also preparing a list of VT03 ROMs from the Internet Archive that you can play on the GB300.

PC Engine

Performance of PCE is really good. Even the "3D" racing games run very smoothly.

There seems to be no way to get it to run TurboGrafx-CD games.

None of the only five SuperGrafx games work. The screen is all black or purple, and that's not even deterministic. Aldynes has music for some seconds, but then crashes. Pressing the start button before it crashes gives you a purple screen with some glitches at the bottom center, then the game instantly freezes. None of the games will freeze the GB300.

Super Nintendo Entertainment System

The SNES and GBA are the main systems where games can have a bad performance. However, the SNES has a lot less issues than the GBA.

Final Knockout does work on the GB300. It was broken on the SF2000 because the bytes from 0xA8000 to 0xBFFFF of the .zsf file were replaced with unidentified data.

On the SF2000, there was one more file than was accessible by the default menu. This normally inaccessible file was removed from the GB300 completely:

  • 手柄测试.zsf

(GB300 v1 only) The issue mentioned above was newly introduced for the following two games:

  • Wwf Royal Rumble.zsf
  • Wwf Super Wrestlemania.zsf

You can re-enable them in GB300 Tool.

(GB300 v2 only) The GB300 v2 does have both WWF games mentioned above, but instead lacks Al Unser Jr.'S Road To The Top.zsf. This file and 手柄测试.zsf are still present on the GB300 v2, but not in the menu.

SEGA Mega Drive, SEGA Master System and SEGA Game Gear

SEGA Mega Drive

Compared to the SF2000, the following game is missing:

  • 007 Shitou - The Duel.zmd

(GB300 v2 only) On the GB300 v2, that game and the following three are present on the card, but incaccessible via the menu:

  • Alien Soldier.zmd
  • AWS Pro Moves Soccer.zmd
  • Double Clutch.zmd

(GB300 v1 only) One thing got better on the GB300: Instead of the 225 broken thumbnails on the SF2000, there are only 45 on the GB300. These thumbnails were saved in BGRA8888 instead of RGB565. However, the dimension is correct. Despite the thumbnail taking up twice the space, the device is still able to find the archive and run the game. The following MD games have no working thumbnail on the GB300:

  • AWS Pro Moves Soccer.zmd
  • Coach K College Basketball.zmd
  • Davis Cup II.zmd
  • Davis Cup Tennis.zmd
  • Double Clutch.zmd
  • ESPN Baseball Tonight.zmd
  • Fun 'n Games.zmd
  • HardBall III.zmd
  • James Pond III.zmd
  • King of the Monsters.zmd
  • Madden NFL '94.zmd
  • Madden NFL 95.zmd
  • Madden NFL 96.zmd
  • Mario Lemieux Hockey.zmd
  • Mr. Nutz Hoppin' Mad.zmd
  • Muhammad Ali Heavyweight Boxing.zmd
  • NBA Live 95.zmd
  • NFL '95.zmd
  • NHL 96.zmd
  • NHL 97.zmd
  • NHL 98.zmd
  • PGA Tour 96.zmd
  • PGA Tour Golf III.zmd
  • PGA Tour Golf.zmd
  • Pro Quarterback.zmd
  • Puyo Puyo 2.zmd
  • R.B.I. Baseball '94.zmd
  • Ren & Stimpy Show Presents - Stimpy's Invention.zmd
  • RoboCop versus The Terminator.zmd
  • Rolo to the Rescue.zmd
  • Sampras Tennis 96.zmd
  • Scooby-Doo Mystery.zmd
  • Spirou.zmd
  • Sub-Terrania.zmd
  • Super Baseball 2020.zmd
  • The Smurfs Travel the World.zmd
  • Tintin au Tibet.zmd
  • Triple Play - Gold Edition.zmd
  • Triple Play 96.zmd
  • Wolverine - Adamantium Rage.zmd
  • World Series Baseball '95.zmd
  • World Series Baseball '96.zmd
  • World Series Baseball 98.zmd
  • World Series Baseball.zmd
  • Wu Kong Wai Zhuan.zmd

GB300 Tool can fix them for you all at once.

On the GB300 v2, Double Clutch.zmd (which is inaccessible by default) is the only one that's still bugged.

SEGA PICO

The SEGA PICO is technically identical to the Mega Drive. It looks like a children's laptop, but you place the book-shaped cartridges ("storyware") where you would expect a screen and connect it to a TV for video. As this is simply the Mega Drive, the GB300 can run SEGA PICO games software. No PICO storybook ROMs ship with the console though.

Even current versions of PicoDrive do not support its successor, the SEGA Advanced Pico Beena.

SEGA Master System

Only MD is advertised and there are no SMS games included. The device will still play them if you add them yourself. The button assignments are strange, though:

  • SMS Button 1 is called B by the GB300 and defaults to B.
  • SMS Button 2 is called C by the GB300 and defaults to R.
  • The pause key that is located on the SMS physical console (not on the gamepad) is on Start.

SEGA Game Gear

Most Game Gear games will load. (The games that don't load will have a black screen.) The Game Gear's resolution is 160x144, but the emulator displays this in the center of the SMS's 256x192 pixel viewport. Graphics outside the center 160x144 area sometimes make sense (so you basically have an extended vision) but in some cases they're glitched. Colors are severely glitched all the time, but Audio is fine. If you don't mind the weird colors, you could play, if it wasn't about one other thing: The Game Gear has a D-Pad (which corresponds to the GB300's D-Pad), a "1" button (which the GB300 calls B and is mapped to the B button by default) and a "2" button (which the GB300 calls C and is mapped to R by default). And then, well, there's the "Start" button, which isn't mapped at all and none of the key IDs I tried (-1 through 19) corresponded to it. The majority of the Game Gear games require you to press it to get past the title screen (or, in some cases, to start the game after picking options), most notably almost all Sega games (the only exception that I know of is the beta version of the Sega Game Pack 4 in 1). Of the 25 best-rated Game Gear games on MobyGames, there are only seven that aren't blunt ports from other GB300 consoles and only one of the latter does not require the use of the Start button: Magical Puzzle: Popils.

smspower.org has patches for many games, especially the unique ones, that will change them to SMS. The Start button seems to be an issue for them as well, because the SMS has no direct equivalent.

  • The logical equivalent would be the Pause key, but it's located on the console and not on the gamepad. Most patches seem to be made for owners of the actual console, sitting a few meters away from it, so the Pause button is out of reach. A few patches use it anyway. This equals Start on your GB300.
  • A few games do not make use of both of the gamepad's buttons, so hackers bind Start (and pause) to the unused one.
  • You can connect an MD gamepad to the SMS, so hacks can make use of its dedicated Start button. A few hacks do that. Even after playing almost 500 GG2SMS hacks, I'm still not sure if this works on the GB300.
  • A few hacks address the button issue on the title screen only, as both available buttons have no use there anyway, but leave the pause function non-working. That's not an issue for you, as the GB300 has its own pause menu. A very few games pause themselves when you enter the GB300's pause menu, even though you had no Start button and you cannot resume anymore...
  • All of the above options will work on the GB300, but by far the most common Start replacement in these patches is moving the second controller's D-pad down. Sadly, that's the most problematic one.

Here's a complete list of Game Gear to SMS conversions that you can play on your GB300 because they work and do not require an external gamepad. There are 88 different games (103 including regional versions, revisions and re-releases). The following tables uses A and B for the buttons to make them easier to distinguish.

No-Intro Name (Other Names) ID CRC-32
Before
Best
Patch
CRC-32
After
Pause Start
Does
Outside
160Ă—144
Aa Harimanada (Japan) 0002 1d17d2a0 v0.6 442398bb ? - useful
Arcade Classics (USA) 0013 3deca813 v1.0 3ea9582d ? - blank
Arena (USA, Europe) (Arena Maze of Death) 0015 7cb3facf v0.31 f9a9e13f ? - glitched
Ariel - The Little Mermaid (USA, Europe, Brazil) (En) 0016 97e3a18c v1.1 98c81182 ? - useful
Baku Baku (USA) 0025 8d8bfdc4 v1.1 2360c031 Start Start blank
Batman Forever (World) 0028 618b19e2 v1.1 5c80865b Start Start glitched
Batter Up (USA)
Gear Stadium (Japan)
0030
0128
16448209
0e300223
v0.3 df35fa20
148b2704
? - glitched
Battleship - The Classic Naval Combat Game (USA) 0031 e9987511 v1.1 500eff47 ? Start glitched
Battletoads (Japan, Europe) (En)
Battletoads (USA)
0032
0033
cb3cd075
817cc0ca
v1.1 7aa39825
(for both)
Start Start glitched
Berlin no Kabe (Japan) 0037 325b1797 v1.2 e8b0a245 Start Start blank
Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon S (Japan) 0038 fe7374d2 v0.2 95f50b0e Start Start glitched
Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble (USA, Europe) 0042 5c34d9cd v0.1 4542f03d ? Restart glitched
Bust-A-Move (USA) 0043 c90f29ef v1.0 920970f1 B Restart background
Buster Ball (Japan) 0044 7cb079d0 v1.2 3bf5c4d8 Start Start blank
Buster Fight (Japan) (En,Ja) 0045 a72a1753 v1.0 f76c577c ? Freeze useful
Captain America and the Avengers (USA) 0047 5675dfdd v0.4 c8c650f9 Start Start glitched
Chessmaster, The (USA, Europe, Brazil) (En) 0053 da811ba6 v1.1 27696636 Start Start blank
Clutch Hitter (USA) 0060 d228a467 v1.1 f042b9c7 Start, A Start blank
Crazy Faces (Europe) (Proto) 0493 46ad6257 v1.0 28e07c39 Start Start blank
Crystal Warriors (USA, Europe) 0067 529c864e v1.11 702483aa Start Start glitched
Dr. Franken (Europe) (Demo) 0485 c9907dce v1.0 810adea6 ? Crash useful
Ganbare Gorby! (Japan) (Factory Panic, Crazy Company) 0125 a1f2f4a1 v0.4 ac0e19ea A - glitched
Fatal Fury Special (USA)
Fatal Fury Special (Europe)
Garou Densetsu Special (Japan)
0108
0458
0127
449787e2
fbd76387
9afb6f33
v1.2 4b7f7b2d
1c6cfac7
Start Start glitched
Frogger (USA) (Proto) 0117 02bbf994 v0.92a 71112e1e Start Start glitched
Galaga '91 (Japan) (Galaga 2) 0122 0593ba24 v1.0 812d56ee B - mostly blank
GG Aleste (Japan) (En)
GG Aleste (Japan) (En) (Aleste Collection)
0132
0807
1b80a75b
0a49407d
v1.2 c84576ba
d98c919c
B - background
Power Strike II (Japan, Europe) (En) (GG Aleste II) 0286 09de1528 v1.6 f0b7cef6 Start Start useful
GG Portrait - Pai Chen (Japan) 0134 695cc120 v1.0 11875dea ? - glitched
GG Portrait - Yuuki Akira (Japan) 0135 51159f8f v1.0 ec9023ee ? - blank
GG Shinobi, The (Japan)
Shinobi (World) (Rev A)
0138
0137
83926bd1
30f1c984
v1.1 c79d7b37
85b0c578
B - background
GP Rider (World) 0141 876e9b72 v1.0 48966551 B - glitched
Griffin (Japan) 0143 a93e8b0f v1.01 8653cb4d ? - background
Gunstar Heroes (Japan) 0144 c3c52767 v0.9 9fbd6261 Start Start background
Tarot no Yakata (Japan) (House of Tarot) 0152 57834c03 v1.0 fe6180fd ? Restart glitched
Itchy & Scratchy Game, The (USA, Europe) 0162 44e7e2da v0.99 f15d8e09 ? - useful
J.League GG Pro-Striker '94 (Japan) 0163 a12a28a0 v1.0 628518c7 ? - background
J.League Soccer - Dream Eleven (Japan) 0164 abddf0eb v1.0 79b83f96 ? - background
James Pond 3 - Operation Starfi5h (Europe) 0166 68bb7f71 v1.1 71bb012e ? - background
Jeopardy! (USA) 0168 d7820c21 v1.0 7066f925 ? Freeze glitched
Jeopardy! - Sports Edition (USA) 0169 2dd850b7 v1.0 fe274916 ? Restart glitched
Junction (Japan) (En) 0174 a8ef36a7 v1.1 203f4abe B - blank
Kinetic Connection (Japan) 0183 4af7f2aa v1.0 ae1e11b4 A - blank
Madden NFL 95 (USA) 0200 75c71ebf 0.1 dbc73e55 ? - glitched
Magical Puzzle Popils (World) (En,Ja) 0209 cf6d7bc5 v1.1 e48ac8a3 ? - blank
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (USA, Europe) 0224 9289dfcc v0.6 e6c9e6c3 Start Start glitched
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - The Movie (USA, Europe, Brazil) (En) 0225 b47c19e5 v0.61 66e2943f Start Start glitched
Nazo Puyo 2 (Japan) 0236 73939de4 v0.9 a0715293 ? - blank
NFL Quarterback Club 96 (USA) 0246 c348e53a v1.0 e130321e ? Restart useful
Ninja Gaiden (USA, Europe, Brazil) (En)
Ninja Gaiden (Japan)
0251
0250
c578756b
20ef017a
v1.2 244bc257
(for both)
? - glitched
Pac-Attack (USA) 0261 9273ee2c v1.0 c57cd3f1 B - blank
Pac-in-Time (USA) (Proto) 0262 64c28e20 v1.01 5c547a12 ? - glitched
Pac-Man (Japan) (En) 0263 a16c5e58 v0.91 aaeb0ebd A - glitched
Paperboy 2 (USA) 0266 8b2c454b v1.0 0d491508 ? - glitched
Pengo (Europe)
Pengo (Japan)
0268
0267
0da23cc1
ce863dba
v1.0nv c466c41f
3bb9e266
A - blank
Phantasy Star Adventure (Japan) 0275 1a51579d v1.1 9a34f904 ? - blank
Pinball Dreams (USA) 0278 635c483a v1.0 9b1e554a ? - glitched
Pop Breaker (Japan) 0284 71deba5a v1.2 70f930e7 A+B, Start Start useful
Primal Rage (USA, Europe) 0288 2a34b5c7 v1.0 4405645e ? - glitched
Psychic World (USA, Europe, Brazil) (En) (Rev 1) 0295 73779b22 v1.0 5da0dabd Start Start glitched
Puyo Puyo (Japan) (En,Ja) (Puzlow Kids) 0298 d173a06f v1.0 718376c0 ? - blank
Ristar (World) (Ristar - The Shooting Star) 0311 efe65b3b v1.5 40707acd Start Start useful
Royal Stone - Hirakareshi Toki no Tobira (Japan) 0315 445d7cd2
11d36c92
v1.2en
v1.2jp
8e95363c ? - glitched
Shanghai II (Japan) (Rev A)
Shanghai II (Japan)
0456
0325
81314249
2ae8c75f
v1.0 a3852ecb
(for both)
? - glitched
Shaq Fu (USA) 0326 6fcb8ab0 v0.1 52531898 ? - glitched
Shikinjou (Japan) 0327 9c5c7f53 v1.0 f670d70d B Restart blank
Slider (USA, Europe)
Skweek (Japan)
0336
0335
4dc6f555
3d9c92c7
v1.2 94a1f113
59ed0b75
B Restart glitched
Solitaire FunPak (USA) 0338 f6f24b75 v1.0 c5e6fbb1 N/A - blank
Solitaire Poker (USA, Europe)
Ryuukyuu (Japan)
0339
0316
06f2fc46
95efd52b
v1.0 08d4d240
74c64832
? - useful glitch
Sonic Drift (Japan) (En) 0344 68f0a776 v0.4 43258667 Start Start useful
Sonic Drift 2 (World) 0346 d6e8a305 v1.1 051fb276 Start Start useful
Sonic Labyrinth (World)
Sonic Labyrinth (USA, Europe) (Virtual Console)
0347
0802
5550173b v1.1a 1d51f6d3
fd304176
A - glitched
Sonic The Hedgehog - Triple Trouble (USA, Europe, Brazil) (En) 0352 d23a2a93 v0.4 1e40e1ea Start Start mostly useful
Soukoban (Japan) 0354 0f3e3840 v1.1 e35a6edd A - blank
Spider-Man - X-Men - Arcade's Revenge (USA) 0357 742a372b v1.1 35a0a649 Start Start mostly useful
Spirou (Europe) (Proto) 0359
0366
ab622adc v1.1 a9dd9a7c ? Restart glitched
Star Wars (USA, Europe)
Star Wars (USA, Europe) (Alt)
0365 db9bc599
0228769c
v0.2a b7c53d7e
? - useful ingame
Streets of Rage (World) (Bare Knuckle) 0368 3d8bcf1d v0.56 206d16e8 Start Start glitched
Streets of Rage 2 (World) (Bare Knuckle II) 0369 0b618409 v0.71 45b8adb8 Start Start glitched
Super Golf (Japan) 0373 528cbbce v0.1 6753bb03 ? - glitched
Super Momotarou Dentetsu III (Japan) 0375 b731bb80 v1.0 65cbd81f N/A - blank
Surf Ninjas (USA, Europe, Brazil) (En) 0383 284482a8 v1.0 11d9e074 ? - glitched
Tails Adventure (World) (En,Ja) (Tails Adventures)
Tails Adventure (World) (En,Ja) (Virtual Console)
0386
0803
5bb6e5d6
a354ea49
v1.5
v1.3
8635c737
2935ba70
Start Start useful
Tarzan - Lord of the Jungle (Europe) 0394 ef3afe8b v1.0 52a3501b ? - glitched
Tempo Jr. (World) 0398 de466796 v1.0 4a707dfb Start Start glitched
Tesserae (USA) 0402 bf696f94 v1.0 415e61d0 ? - useful glitch
WildSnake (USA) (Proto) 0501 d460cc7f v1.0 0c45632b A - blank
Yu Yu Hakusho II - Gekitou! Nanakyou no Tatakai (Japan) 0439 46ae9159 v1.0 7afa5fa3 A - useful glitch
Yu Yu Hakusho - Horobishimono no Gyakushuu (Japan) 0438 88ebbf9e v0.1 475b35f8 ? - glitched

Notes:

  • The versioning scheme is inconsistent on SMS Power. This list uses v1.0 for releases called v1.

  • I applied 387 different patches to 225 games and then played the resulting 490 ROMs. Should there be new hacks released after April 25th, they might be better than the ones above.

  • The column "Pause" names the button to pause the game. "N/A" means that it is not necessary to pause the game according to SMS Power and probably not possible in the original game either. "?" means that you cannot pause with the GB300 alone. Usually, this means that a second gamepad's down button would work.

  • The column "Start Does" tells you what the Start button does with the ROM: "Start" means that it does what the Start button is supposed to do. Dash means that nothing happens at all when you press Start. "Restart", "Freeze" and "Crash" all mean that you cannot play anymore after pressing Start. "Crash" means that the game glitches and instantly freezes.

  • "Outside 160Ă—144" explains what you can see outside the GG viewport: "blank" means nothing (solid color, usually black) and is preferable on games that do not scroll. "background" means that you can see the background but sprites still pop up only when entering the GG viewport. "glitched" describes that the non-GG part of the SMS viewport does not make sense and contains glibberish or random map tiles. "useful glitch" is used for games with a map that is only slightly bigger than the GG viewport. The map extends beyond the GG viewport, but can wrap to the other edge of the screen. "useful" means that the hacks use (almost) the entire SMS viewport and feel like a true SMS game.

  • Notes on individual games:

    • Aa Harimanada: Version v0.5 fixed the colors after the end of a fight, but also introduced frequent health bar glitches. Since v0.6 makes use of the full screen, I consider v0.6 to be the best patch. If you're annoyed by the health bar glitch, use patch v0.4.
    • Arcade Classics: Missile Command SEGA Version seems glitched.
    • Berenstain Bears' Camping Adventure, The: I did start a Cave Adventure during my first test by pressing the Start button, but never managed to do that ever again. So this game is not listed.
    • Frogger: You'll often find a 256KiB ROM, but that's an overdump. The actual size is 128KiB and has the CRC-32 values above. The overdump has da724710 and applying the patch results in a working ROM (68b958f0). The first half of the 256 KiB ROMs is identical to the 128 KiB ROM.
    • Magical Puzzle Popils: The map editor is completely glitched and you cannot exit it.
    • Mighty Morphin Power Rangers - The Movie: There is some white text on white background.
    • Pinball Dreams: Heavily glitched colors in transitions.
    • Pop Breaker: A+B is not only Pause but also self-destruct (I think that's only if you press them a bit longer). Beware!
    • Royal Stone: One of the two patches includes an English translation. There are many of these hacks that include a translation for the respective game, but this is the only one that works.
    • Sega Game Pack 4 in 1: Requires a second gamepad for the Start button and therefore isn't listed. The beta version didn't require the use of the Start button, but the hack results in a non-working ROM. I did test the earliest and latest beta version of all games whenever the final version required pressing the Start button and beta versions where available, but Sega Game Pack 4 in 1 was the only game whose beta version was different in this regard.
    • Slider/Skweek and Solitaire Poker/Ryuukyuu: Use the respective version's patch. The wrong one does not work. This is in contrast to Pengo, where BcnAbel76's patch only works for the wrong ROM (the A button does not work if the patch is applied to the intended ROM), but nextvolume's patch is better and region-independent.
    • Surf Ninjas: Menu is completely glitched, but in-game it's okay.
    • Tails Adventure: v1.4 and v1.5 do not work for the Virtual Console one. Patch the normal version if you can.

There's a few more GG games that you can play, because technically they are normal SMS games and will therefore not have glitched colors. Some ROM sites even list these with an .sms extension although they're in the Game Gear category. Still, some ROMs will not work.

No-Intro Name ID CRC-32 Remarks
Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (USA, Europe, Brazil) (En) 0051 59840fd6 Start button is working
Cave Dude (USA) (Proto) 0503 cc521975 Start button neither working nor mandatory
Chase H.Q. (USA) 0480 c8381def Start button neither working nor mandatory
Excellent Dizzy Collection, The (Europe) 0100 aa140c9c Game does not load
Fantastic Dizzy (USA, Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It) 0105 c888222b No useful video, glitched audio
Jang Pung II (Korea) (En) (Unl) 0469 76c5bdfb No useful video, no audio
Mickey Mouse no Castle Illusion (Japan) 0050 9942b69b Start button is working
Olympic Gold (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It,Nl,Pt,Sv) 0256 1d93246e Start button is working
Olympic Gold (Japan, USA, Brazil) (En,Fr,De,Es,It,Nl,Pt,Sv) 0257 a2f9c7af Start button is working
OutRun Europa (USA) 0260 f037ec00 Start button neither working nor mandatory
Predator 2 (USA, Europe) 0287 e5f789b9 Start button is working
Prince of Persia (USA, Europe) (Beta) 0290 45f058d6 Start button is working
Prince of Persia (USA, Europe) 0289 311d2863 Start button is working
R.C. Grand Prix (USA) 0305 56201996 Start button neither working nor mandatory
Rastan Saga (Japan) 0306 9c76fb3a Start button is working
Street Battle (USA) (Proto) (Unl) 0506 01a2d595 No useful video, no audio
Street Hero (USA) (Proto 1) 0489 9fa727a0 No video, glitched audio
Street Hero (USA) (Proto 2) 0490 fb481971 Start button neither working nor mandatory
Super Kick Off (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It,Nl,Pt,Sv) 0374 10dbbef4 Start button is working
Taito Chase H.Q. (Japan) 0391 7bb81e3d Start button is working
WWF Wrestlemania - Steel Cage Challenge (USA, Europe) 0433 da8e95a9 Start button neither working nor mandatory

This list contains only ROMs listed on No-Intro. GoodGG has more ROM than No-Intro.

Other SEGA Consoles

Despite the undocumented support for PICO, SMS and options to make GG games work, you aren't that lucky with the other Sega consoles. If you change the GB300's BIOS to display them or change the extension (it doesn't matter which of these you do, with the exception of a very few SG-1000 games), the following things will happen:

  • Sega CD games (.bin or .cue) will load indefinitely/freeze the console, even the tiniest and/or single-image ones (Ishii Hisaichi no Daiseikai, around 10 megabytes – the largest GBA games are 32 megabytes).
  • Most Sega 32X games will not display anything at all, even if you put the correct BIOS in the root or Roms directory. A few games will display "something":
    • Both versions of Knuckles' Chaotix display an error message.
    • NBA Jam: Tournament Edition, Star Trek: Starfleet Academy - Starship Bridge Simulator and WWF Raw display glibberish.
    • Mars Check Program Version 1.0 (SDK Build) (Set 2) and Toughman Contest display a green screen.
    • Mars Check Program Version 1.0 (SDK Build) (Set 1) and WWF WrestleMania: The Arcade Game display a red/orange screen.
  • Most SG-1000 games will "load". (The games that don't load will freeze the device, e.g. Champion Baseball 40kB.) There is no video (black screen), but audio is fine. Buttons are also fine. (Note that applications like Home Basic likely don't have sound, so you can't tell if they're loading or not.) SG to GG/SMS conversions do not work. Well, unless your goal is to analyse the screen tearing – all these patches cause the entire screen to quickly change color. So: Do not try this if you're photosensitive.
  • Advanced Pico Beena ROMs display a black screen.

Game Boy

On the SF2000 and GB300 v1, there are more files than were accessible by the default menu. These normally inaccessible files were removed from the GB300 v1 completely:

  • Aladdin [a].zgb
  • Dokuhon Yume Goyoshin - Tenjin Kaisen 2.zgb
  • Gakken Kanyouku Kotowaza 210.zgb
  • Gluecksrad.zgb
  • Goukaku Boy Series - Chuugaku Eijukugo 350.zgb
  • Goukaku Boy Series - Eijukugo Target 1000.zgb
  • Goukaku Boy Series - Eitango Target 1900.zgb
  • Goukaku Boy Series - Gakuken Yojijukugo 288.zgb
  • Goukaku Boy Series - Koukou Nyuushi Rika Anki Point 250.zgb
  • Goukaku Boy Series - Nihonshi B Yougo Mondaishuu.zgb
  • Goukaku Boy Series - Nihonshi Target 201.zgb
  • Goukaku Boy Series - Rekishi 512.zgb
  • Goukaku Boy Series - Sekaishi B Yougo Mondaishuu.zgb
  • Goukaku Boy Series - Z Kai Chuugaku Eigo 1132.zgb
  • Kirby's Pinball Land.zgb
  • Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Back from the Sewers [a].zgb
  • Uchiiwai - Kyoudai Kami Waza no Puzzle Game.zgb
  • X.zgb

Game Boy Color

On the SF2000 and GB300 v2, there are more files than were accessible by the default menu. These normally inaccessible files were removed from the GB300 v1 completely:

  • 3-D Ultra Pinball Thrillride.zgb
  • Honkaku Taisen Shogi - Ayumu.zgb
  • Konami GB Collection Vol.1.zgb
  • Konami GB Collection Vol.2.zgb
  • Konami GB Collection Vol.3.zgb
  • Konami GB Collection Vol.4.zgb
  • Pokemon - Gelbe Edition.zgb
  • Pokemon - Gold Version.zgb
  • Pokemon - Goldene Edition.zgb
  • Pokemon - Kristall Edition.zgb
  • Pokemon - Silberne Edition.zgb
  • Pokemon - Silver Version.zgb
  • Pokemon - Version Argent.zgb
  • Pokemon - Version Cristal.zgb
  • Pokemon - Version Jaune.zgb
  • Pokemon - Version Or.zgb
  • Pokemon - Versione Argento.zgb
  • Pokemon - Versione Cristallo.zgb
  • Pokemon - Versione Gialla.zgb
  • Pokemon - Versione Oro.zgb
  • Pokemon Card GB 2 - Team Great Rocket Visit.zgb
  • Pokemon Crystal.zgb
  • Shadowgate Return.zgb
  • Shogi Oh.zgb
  • Shougi 2.zgb

Game Boy Advance

(GB300 v1 only) Unlike all other consoles in the GB300, the GB300 has all the ROM files the SF2000 has.

(GB300 v1 only) Pokemon Glazed is the only non-MD file with an incorrect thumbnail, but not because of an incorrect format but because it's too big (346x500). It will still run. Like all (CN) versions, this game has been removed from the GB300 v2.

The GB300 ships with the official (pirated) gba_bios.bin in the bios folder. This is, however, not the folder where the emulator will look for it. To use the official BIOS, copy it to \GBA\mnt\sda1\bios\gba_bios.bin and \Roms\mnt\sda1\bios\gba_bios.bin (create all of these folders if they do not exist). Thanks to bnister (osaka) for finding this out. One game that requires this procedure is The Legend of Zelda - The Minish Cap (for the main menu), which however does not ship with the device. There are still games that don't work even with that BIOS. The BIOS does not seem to affect the performance. States with and without the BIOS are mutually incompatible. Loading a non-BIOS state when BIOS is active displays the GBA's boot animation and then starts the game. The battery from the state will not be present either. Under unknown circumstances, GB300's stock emulator stops using the GBA BIOS even if placed in the correct directory.

As in the SF2000, performance varies heavily between games. And even language versions: Probably the oddest example here are the two Advance Wars games, considered the best games for the GBA according to MobyGames. Graphically, they are very simple games. The American version of Advance Wars 2 (a hack of which with Chinese menus ships with the console) is somewhat playable. The American version of Advance Wars 1 works a tiny bit worse but is still playable. The European version of Advance Wars 1 (included with the console) performs too bad to be fun to play. The European Advance Wars 2 is basically unplayable because it's too slow. There is no PAL or NTSC version of the GBA or its games. They're always supposed to run at 60 fps. Using TV output doesn't improve the performance either, no matter if PAL or NTSC. Performance on all Advance Wars games gets even worse when there is any dialogue on screen. f 3D games on the GBA don't work well either. Of the five Need for Speed games for example (none of which are included), only Porsche (both regions) and Underground 2 will get past the language selection and the EA logo.

(GB300 v2 only) The GB300 v2 also lacks the following 141 games completely:

  • All 119 chinese bootlegs tagged with (CN) (nothing of value lost here)
  • FIFA 2004.zgb
  • FIFA.zgb
  • Hey Arnold! - The Movie.zgb
  • Konchu Ouja - Mushiking.zgb
  • LEGO Star Wars - The Video Game.zgb
  • LEGO Star Wars II - The Original Trilogy.zgb
  • Lemony Snicket's - A Series of Unfortunate Events.zgb
  • Let's Ride! Sunshine Stables.zgb
  • Max Payne Advance.zgb
  • Medabots - Metabee Version.zgb
  • Medabots - Rokusho Version.zgb
  • Minna no Soft Series - Happy Trump 20.zgb
  • Robots.zgb
  • Shrek - Smash n' Crash Racing.zgb
  • Speedball 2 - Brutal Deluxe.zgb
  • SpongeBob SquarePants - The Movie.zgb
  • The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion
  • the Witch and the Wardrobe.zgb
  • The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring.zgb
  • The Lord of the Rings - The Third Age.zgb
  • Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004.zgb
  • Tiger Woods PGA Tour Golf.zgb and Tony Hawk's Underground.zgb

They were likely removed to make room for Arcade ROMs.

Arcade

Introduction: How does arcade emulation work?

  • There are thousands of arcade machines. An emulator is programmed to replicate their hardware, resulting in what is called a driver per emulated hardware platform. Some machines are based on the same hardware, so their ROMs can be handled by the same driver. The largest drivers are Neo Geo, CPS1 and CPS2. Hundreds of high-quality games have been released for these three.
  • Unlike all other emulators, arcade emulators are not made to support "all" games, even on a supported driver. Arcade games usually have more than one ROM, so all ROMs come in a ZIP file, called a set. Drivers are programmed to load only a limited number of sets, for which they require that the ZIP file and all files inside have exactly the names the driver expects (they sometimes can work with CRC as well). File names inside the ZIPs vary heavily between sets. For Neo Geo, a few common naming patterns have been established, but even then there might be single ROM files inside a set that may be named differently.

In my opinion, this is extremely dumb. Sets should have information on how to load them. E.g. for Neo Geo sets, it's usually just about placing the ROMs in RAM, which you can often derive from the XML file ("DAT"), so there is a way how to ship this information in a text file. iNES and UNIF do something similar with NES games.

Because many people seem confused about the arcade games they can play on the GB300, here's the full list:

  • (GB300 v2 only) GB300 v2's FinalBurn Alpha (FBA), incorrectly dubbed MAME in the menu, knowns how to load 1431 sets (released no later than 2006). However, not all of them work. See the linked list. Games shipping with the SF2000 are tagged with inrom there, but stock GB300 v2 will lack the games found in the next list.
  • (GB300 v2 only) GB300+SF2000 Tool v2.0-beta and up can make the stock FBA run around 300 more playable Neo Geo sets (including the most recent homebrew like gladmort) from FinalBurn Neo (FBN). I chose Neo Geo for my project because CPS2 support in FBA is basically complete and for CPS1, there are only few games that could be looked into, but I found them boring. If you want me to look into a certain unsupported game whose driver is supported contact (not add!) me on Discord (numma_cway).
  • Multicore's MAME 2000 (m2k) can run 2241 sets (no newer than 1998). I don't think there's a list for humans to read, but you can search in this XML. Of these, six don't work because they need more ROM memory than the 63.1 MiB m2k can offer: kof97, kof98, lastblad, lastbld2, rbff2, shocktr2. Performance is way worse than FBA on GB300 v2 and SF2000.
  • My own version of MAME 2000, humorously called MAME nummacwaytausend (a pun in German), adds 62 Neo Geo sets. It reduces memory usage for kof97, lastblad so these work now. The most important sets supported by my version are mslug4fd and sengk3fd. For these two, it is the only emulator running these on GB300 and SF2000. It also supports the most recent homebrew like gladmort. These three games will run with around 45 FPS, as my version's performance did not improve over the standard m2k. You should be using FBA over MAME whenever possible.
  • Multicore's Geolith is another arcade emulator, but for Neo Geo only. Performance is absolutely horrible and sets in its ROM format are hard to find.

The SF2000 has access to all five variants. Leonardo's SF2000 multicore even ships with MAME nummacwaytausend which it calls m2kn.

(GB300 v2 only – remaining section)

Presumably to save space on the 8GB TF card, the GB300 lacks the following ROMs from the SF2000:

  • 2020 Super Baseball.zfb
  • B.C. Kid.zfb
  • Bakatonosama Mahjong Manyuuki.zfb
  • Baseball Stars 2.zfb
  • Battle Flip Shot.zfb
  • Breakers.zfb
  • Capcom Sports Club.zfb
  • Captain Tomaday.zfb
  • Carrier Air Wing.zfb
  • Crossed Swords.zfb
  • Cyberbots- Fullmetal Madness.zfb
  • Eco Fighters.zfb
  • Fatal Fury Special.zfb
  • Fight Fever.zfb
  • Football Frenzy.zfb
  • Galaxy Fight -Universal Warriors.zfb
  • Garou -Mark of the Wolves.zfb
  • Ghost Pilots.zfb
  • Ghostlop.zfb
  • Ghouls'n Ghosts.zfb
  • Goal! Goal! Goal!.zfb
  • Gogetsuji Legends.zfb
  • Janpai Puzzle Choukou.zfb
  • Jyangokushi- Haoh no Saihai.zfb
  • Jyanshin Densetsu -Quest of Jongmaster.zfb
  • Karate Blazers.zfb
  • King of the Monsters 2 -The Next Thing.zfb
  • King of the Monsters.zfb
  • Knights of the Round.zfb
  • Knights of Valour 1.15.zfb
  • Knights of Valour Plus a.zfb
  • Last Resort.zfb
  • League Bowling.zfb
  • Magical Drop III.zfb
  • Marvel Super Heroes Vs. Street Fighter.zfb
  • Mega Man- The Power Battle.zfb
  • Mercs.zfb
  • Metal Slug 6.zfb
  • Metal Slug X -Super Vehicle-001.zfb
  • Minasanno Okagesamadesu! Daisugorokutaikai.zfb
  • Money Puzzle Exchanger.zfb
  • NAM-1975.zfb
  • Neo Bomberman.zfb
  • Neo Drift Out -New Technology.zfb
  • Neo Mr. Do!.zfb
  • Neo Turf Masters.zfb
  • Neo-Geo Cup '98 -The Road to the Victory.zfb
  • Nightmare in the Dark.zfb
  • Ninja Combat.zfb
  • Pang! 3.zfb
  • Panic Bomber.zfb
  • Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon.zfb
  • Pulstar.zfb
  • Puzzle De Bowling.zfb
  • Puzzle De Pon!.zfb
  • Puzzle Star.zfb
  • Street Fighter Alpha- Warriors' Dreams.zfb
  • Street Fighter II'- Champion Edition.zfb
  • Street Fighter II- The World Warrior.zfb
  • Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo.zfb
  • Tenchi wo Kurau II- Sekiheki no Tatakai.zfb
  • The King of Fighters 2000.zfb
  • The King of Fighters '99 -Millennium Battle.zfb
  • Thunder Heroes.zfb
  • Top Player's Golf.zfb
  • Varth- Operation Thunderstorm.zfb
  • Zintrick.zfb

The following weren't accessible on SF2000 either. They were removed completely:

  • Aero Fighters 2.zfb
  • Aero Fighters 3.zfb
  • Area 88.zfb
  • B.C. Kid.zfb.bak
  • Chiki Chiki Boys.zfb
  • Cyber-Lip.zfb
  • Daimakaimura.zfb
  • Digger Man.zfb
  • Gururin.zfb
  • Karnov's Revenge.zfb
  • Kizuna Encounter -Super Tag Battle.zfb
  • Knuckle Bash.zfb
  • Knuckle Bash.zfb.bak
  • Lost Worlds.zfb
  • Magical Drop II.zfb
  • Matrimelee.zfb
  • Matrimelee.zfb.bak
  • Mille Miglia 2- Great 1000 Miles Rally.zfb
  • Neo-Geo Cup '98 -The Road to the Victory.zfb.bak
  • Power Instinct 2.zfb
  • Power Instinct 2.zfb.bak
  • Power Instinct.zfb.bak
  • Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon.zfb.bak
  • Pulstar.zfb.bak
  • Raiga -Strato Fighter.zfb.bak
  • SD Fighters.zfb
  • SD Fighters.zfb.bak
  • Shadow Warriors.zfb.bak
  • The Ultimate 11 -The SNK Football Championship.zfb
  • Windjammers.zfb
  • Zintrick.zfb.bak

The GB300 v2 includes an extra .zip (with no matching .zfb): mslug3.zip (the Metal Slug 3 in the menu is using mslug3h). mslug3 does not work with the stock FBA.

Resources (v1)

Note: There are no language strings on the GB300 v1, just a few images. Everything that is not in an image is hardcoded in English. For example, this applies for the error if your save subfolder is missing, both low battery warnings and of course the "Loading ..." screen.

Fonts (v1)

There is only one file, yahei_Arial.ttf, identical to the SF2000's (unused) font file of the same file name. Microsoft YaHei is a Chinese typeface that you can probably find on your computer. Despite also showing up as Microsoft YaHei when you open it, yahai_Arial.ttf is different as it uses Arial for non-Chinese script, but with some differences to the usual Arial typeface. For example, it does not feature so-called tabular figures (so names are not aligned in the game lists) and the baseline varies significantly between Latin letters, making the font look "wavy". Both of these concerns have been fixed on GB300 v2 which uses a different font.

Images (v1)

Unlike the SF2000, the GB300 supposedly does not have any unused images (not sure about the 'empty battery' screen though). Many have been renamed on the GB300 compared to the SF2000.

File Comp's Dim's Description View
appvc.ikb BGRA8888 150x214 "missing image" image, also the white frame for thumbnails view
bfrjd.odb RGB565 640x280 language selection, Korean selected (the seventh item) view
bisrv.nec RGB565 640x480 pause menu, third entry selected view
bttlve.kbp BGRA8888 60x144 6 battery states view
bxvtb.sby BGRA8888 192x224 "TV SYSTEM" in 7 different languages view
c1eac.pal BGRA8888 26x22 checked checkbox, indicating the selected TV standard and language view
d2d1.hgp RGB565 640x480 pause menu, second entry selected view
dism.cef RGB565 640x480 pause menu, first entry selected view
dpskc.ctp RGB565 384x320 4 different selected save states view
drivr.ers BGRA8888 152x160 the five words of the pause menu in Arabic view
dsuei.cpl BGRA8888 152x160 the five words of the pause menu in English view
dufdr.cwr BGRA8888 240x168 "SETTING" in 7 different languages view
dxva2.nec RGB565 640x288 keyboard for search, embossed keys view
ectte.bke BGRA8888 1200x120 12 bottom tab items, default state view
eknjo.ofd RGB565 640x280 language selection, Spanish selected (the fifth item) view
exaxz.hsp BGRA8888 448x768 logos in the top left view
fhshl.skb RGB565 640x280 language selection, English selected (the first item) view
fixas.ctp BGRA8888 152x160 the five words of the pause menu in Chinese view
gpapi.bvs RGB565 640x480 pause menu, fifth entry selected view
hctml.ers RGB565 320x2256 6 images of the device with one of the shoulder and ABXY buttons highlighted view
hlink.bvs RGB565 640x288 keyboard for search, keys with a bright frame view
icuin.cpl BGRA8888 152x160 the five words of the pause menu in Russian view
igc64.dll BGRA8888 217x37 Yes/No, No highlighted view
irftp.ctp BGRA8888 152x160 the five words of the pause menu in Korean view
jccatm.kbp RGB565 640x480 empty battery screen view
jsnno.uby BGRA8888 240x168 "HISTORY" in 7 different languages view
kmbcj.acp BGRA8888 288x448 "Archive already exists, overwrite this archive?" in 7 different languages view
lf9lb.cut RGB565 640x280 language selection, Portuguese selected (the sixth item) view
lk7tc.bvs BGRA8888 52x192 key names (B, TB, C, TC, ST, ST, SL, SL, U, U, D, D, L, TL, R, TR, A, TA, Z, TZ, X, TX, Y, TY) view
mczwq.ikb RGB565 640x336 6 device logos (the GB/GBC share one) for the top of the pause menu; whenever you press the DOWN key in the pause menu, the image is shown or hidden depending on whether you are at the bottom (Joystick) of not view
mhg4s.ihg RGB565 400x192 Background for confirmation messages, with 3 different buttons selected (English only) view
mksh.rcv RGB565 640x288 keyboard for search view
ntrcq.oba BGRA8888 240x168 "SEARCH" in 7 different languages view
nvinf.hsp BGRA8888 1200x120 12 bottom tab items, selected state view
okcg2.old BGRA8888 24x24 star (for favorited games) view
ouenj.dut BGRA8888 240x168 "FAVORITES" in 7 different languages view
pwsso.occ RGB565 640x480 pause menu, fourth entry selected view
qasfc.bel BGRA8888 328x224 "Favorites are full !" (when already having 1000) in 7 different languages view
qdbec.ofd BGRA8888 240x168 "DOWNLOAD ROMS" in 7 different languages view
qwave.bke BGRA8888 152x160 the five words of the pause menu in Portuguese view
sdclt.occ BGRA8888 424x58 selection background view
sfcdr.cpl RGB565 640x480 main background view
sgotd.cwt RGB565 640x280 TV system selection, NTSC selected (first item) view
snbqj.uby RGB565 640x280 TV system selection, PAL selected (second item) view
t2act.sgf RGB565 640x280 language selection, Chinese selected (the second item) view
tvctu.uby RGB565 640x280 language selection, Arabic selected (the third item) view
ucby4.aax BGRA8888 448x224 "Folder is empty!" in 7 different languages view
urlkp.bvs BGRA8888 328x224 "Remove from favorites?" in 7 different languages view
vdaz5.bjk RGB565 640x280 language selection, Russian selected (the fourth item) view
wshrm.nec BGRA8888 217x37 Yes/No, Yes highlighted view
wtrxj.lbd BGRA8888 192x224 "LANGUAGE" in 7 different languages view
xajkg.hsp BGRA8888 152x160 the five words of the pause menu in Spanish view
xjebd.clq BGRA8888 448x224 "No games match the keyword!" in 7 different languages view
zaqrc.olc BGRA8888 8x224 message box left/right border view
ztrba.nec RGB565 64x320 key names (single and prefixed with "T" for autofire; also without and with a whitish background) view

ROM Lists (v1)

Your custom ROMs are alphabetically indexed into tsmfk.tax when the device boots. The following files contain the hardcoded names of the stock ROMs:

DefaultFolder File name file Chinese name file Pinyin name file
FC rdbui.tax fhcfg.nec nethn.bvs
PCE urefs.tax adsnt.nec xvb6c.bvs
SFC scksp.tax setxa.nec wmiui.bvs
MD vdsdc.tax umboa.nec qdvd6.bvs
GB pnpui.tax wjere.nec mgdel.bvs
GBC vfnet.tax htuiw.nec sppnp.bvs
GBA mswb7.tax msdtc.nec mfpmp.bvs

The Pinyin name file contains a Latin transcription of the Chinese names, but without vowels (except for Latin vowels in the Chinese names, e.g. FIFA). It is used for searching when language is set to Chinese. File names are relative to a folder that can be changed by editing Foldername.ini. The first row in the table above refers to the fourth row in Foldername.ini (which is FC by default) and so on. See the Foldername.ini section right below.

Internally, the above table continues with the file name files tsmfk.tax, Favorites.bin and History.bin. The latter two however are in a different format. There are no corresponding Chinese name files or Pinyin name files.

tsmfk.tax and the files in the table have the following format:

  • 1 Int32 for the number of items.
  • Now comes an array, consisting of Int32's for the position of the name inside this file.
  • After that, you have all the strings, encoded in UTF-8 (without BOM of course). Each string is terminated with a NUL (\0), including the last string, meaning these files always end with a NUL.
  • Do note that the order of the two arrays does not necessarily match! I copied over 2300 VTxx files to my device and the second half of the strings came before the first half (they weren't exactly halves) and some items were logically ordered (e.g. ignoring case) instead of binarily, probably because Windows put them there in logical order. I believe the default files' order of the arrays does match though.

Foldername.ini (v1)

Foldername.ini is neither an INI file, nor does it contain only folder names. It is a general menu configuration. Its default content is:

GB300
7
FFFFFF
FF8000 FC
FF8000 PCE
FF8000 SFC
FF8000 MD
FF8000 GB
FF8000 GBC
FF8000 GBA
FF8000 ROMS
FF8000 ROMS
FF8000 ROMS
12 0 3
7 8 9 10 11
20 112 144 208
424 58

The file's content is matched to a Format string to extract the values. Funnily, this file is Windows (CR+LF) by default, even though the Format string is specifically Unix (LF). The encoding is UTF-8 without BOM (the device will not get past the boot logo if a BOM is present).

Let's take a closer look at it:

Default Content Description
GB300 Name of the device. The BIOS is hardcoded to expect this header. Do not change.
7 Number of languages. It affects how the language strings are loaded from the images with multiple languages inside, and is also the index of the first TV system setup item, counted starting from 0. So you can hide languages from the language menu if you move the TV System backgrounds to their image files. You better leave this.
FFFFFF Default UI text color (HTML Code: #FFFFFF) unless selected (see below). All colors in this file are case-insensitive.
FF8000 FC First folder and its selected color (HTML Code: #FF8000)
FF8000 PCE Second folder and its selected color
FF8000 SFC Third folder and its selected color
FF8000 MD Fourth folder and its selected color
FF8000 GB Fifth folder and its selected color
FF8000 GBC Sixth folder and its selected color
FF8000 GBA Seventh folder and its selected color
FF8000 ROMS Eighth folder (see below) and its selected color
FF8000 ROMS Ninth folder (see below) and its selected color
FF8000 ROMS Tenth folder (see below) and its selected color
12 0 3 Number of bottom tabs (you better leave this), left tab (starting with 0) and default tab starting from the left tab (starting from 0) – so the selected tab is the sum of the latter two numbers (starting from 0)
7 8 9 10 11 Index of the "ROMS", "FAVORITES", "HISTORY", "SEARCH" and "SETTINGS" tabs on the bottom tab bar (counting from 0). See below.
20 112 144 208 Position of the thumbnail (X, Y) and its width and height. Note that this does not cause the image to be stretched, so the latter two also affect the dimensions the device expects and loads from thumbnailed files. This means that decreasing the height may make sense (clips off the bottom part of the image) whereas any other change to the last two numbers will glitch the thumbnails unless you recreate all thumbnailed files. The width and height of appvc.ikb must be 6 more each.
424 58 Dimensions of sdclt.occ. As with the thumbnail file above, this changes the dimensions the device expects.
Trailing line feed

Note that the ROM List files (see the sections above) are bound to the folders in this file. So rdbui.tax, which is used for the FC by default, will always refer to the first folder listed here. So if you swap the order of the folders, you need to swap (or rebuild) these files.

Changing anything in the 7 8 9 10 11 row has a lot of strange side effects: The numbers 7, 8 and 9 each correspond to a file, tsmfk.tax, Favorites.bin and History.bin respectively. The file that corresponds to the first number in this row is populated with the folder given in its corresponding the line above. Example: Say this line starts with 9, meaning tenth folder and History.bin. If you turn on the device, History.bin gets populated with file names from the tenth (last) folder defined in Foldername.ini because the index 9 refers to History.bin. Now it gets inconsistent, because the eighth tab (count from 1) that you just changed (because it's the first number in this line) will look like the History tab now as it has a thumbnail image, but it will still use the tsmfk.tax ROM list and still use the eighth image from ectte.bke. Accessing the tab that originally was the History however will freeze the device because it too will load its original file, History.bin, which has just been populated with data in an unsupported format. Swapping 8 and 9 causes existing Favorites and History lists to be initially swapped, but from then being updated with the correct entries. So it seems that this modification works, so does swapping 10 and 11. Changing Foldername.ini does not affect the order of the bottom tab bar - it's still the same as in the images. tl;dr: You better leave this line. Or better: The entire file except for the colors.

KeyMapInfo.kmp (v1)

The GB300 uses a larger KeyMapInfo.kmp file because it stores 7 key mappings instead of just 6. This makes its file incompatible with the SF2000 key map editor. Another difference to the SF2000 is that this file does not exist by default and is only created once you assign non-standard keys.

After each emulated console's key map (24 bytes), it is repeated instantly (probably for the second player). Then comes the next console.

Consoles are encoded in the following order:

Console/Order Physical Button Save Order Available Values per Physical Button
1. FC X, Y, L, A, B, R 0x0800: A, 0x0000: B, 0x0A00: FDS Turn Disk, 0x0B00: FDS Eject/Insert
2. PCE X, Y, L, A, B, R 0x0800: I, 0x0000: II
3. SFC X, Y, L, A, B, R 0x0800: A, 0x0000: B, 0x0A00: X, 0x0B00: Y, 0x0900: L, 0x0100: R
4. MD/SMS X, Y, L, A, B, R 0x0800: A, 0x0000: B, 0x0A00: X, 0x0B00: Y, 0x0100: C, 0x0900: Z
(SMS: 0x0000: 1, 0x0100: 2)
5. GB/GBC X, Y, L, A, B, R 0x0800: A, 0x0000: B
6. GBA L, R, X, A, B, Y 0x0800: A, 0x0000: B, 0x0A00: L, 0x0B00: R
7. unknown defaults identical to SFC's defaults

After each button's 16-bit value from the table above comes a 16-bit flag for autofire: 0x0100 (or any odd number) if autofire is active (indicated by a T in the console's key map editor), 0x0000 (or any even number) if not.

Note that not all of the button values you can select in the device's key map editor actually exist on the PCE and GBA. Assigning other values than those above does display a different text, but doesn't usually give any result. Just the Game Boy treats most (but not all) values assigned to the R button as B.

Note that the table above describes the actual behavior, whereas the key map editor is bogus for a lot of reasons:

  • In the editor's optical representation, the physical R and L buttons are swapped for all emulators but GBA (see below) when you use the console's key map editor. If the button on the left (next to the five menu items where you selected "Joystick") is highlighted, you'll set the button physically labeled R.
  • To account for this bug, L and R values are swapped for the SFC.
  • For GBA, the editor's optical representation of the physical L is swapped with X, and R is swapped with Y.
  • To account for this bug, L and R values are swapped with X and Y values respectively for the GBA.

This means that the bugs cancel each other out when the default key mappings are set, so the default mapping seemingly makes sense. Changing the buttons however will rarely ever do what you expect.

Per-game key mappings do not seem to work.

multicore Key Maps

multicore is affected by the stock GBA's mapping, so it is still the sixth entry in the file, the physical button save order is still L, R, X, A, B, Y and the bugs described above still make the GB300's key map editor worthless.

Here are a few examples:

Core Emulator Con-
sole
0800
(A)
0000
(B)
0900
(X)
0100
(Y)
0A00
(L)
0B00
(R)
Test ROM
msx blueMSX CV L R 1 2 4 3 Final Test Cartridge
msx blueMSX SG L R SG-1000 M2 Check Program Proto
amstradb Caprice32 CPC Joy1 Joy2 Amstrad Diagnostics 1.3
amstrad CrocoDS Joy Joy1 Joy2 Key2 Key3 Amstrad Diagnostics 1.3
amstrad CrocoDS Key Space Key1 Key2 Key3 Amstrad Diagnostics 1.3
amstrad CrocoDS int. A B X Y L R none
amstrad CrocoDS BAS X Z Ă© " none
col Gearcoleco CV R L 2 1 3 4 Final Test Cartridge
gg Gearsystem SG R L SG-1000 M2 Check Program Proto
gg Gearsystem GG 2 1 Gamegear button test
gba gpSP GBA A B TA TB L R GBA D-Pad Test
sega Picodrive MD C B Y A X Z Contra - Hard Corps
sega Picodrive SG* R L SG-1000 M2 Check Program Proto
sega Picodrive SMS 2 1 SMS Test Suite v0.35
pokem PokeMini PM A B TA C Zany Cards (no test ROM available)
snes Snes9x 2005 SFC A B X Y L R NTF 2.5 Test Cartridge
snes02 Snes9x 2002 SFC A B X Y L R NTF 2.5 Test Cartridge

T indicates autofire. Homebrew test ROMs are linked, official and/or commercial ones are not. Platforms with an asterisk are not officially supported. Only if you are using the default GBA key mapping, the hex numbers above correspond to the physical buttons in brackets.

Notes:

  • Only officially-assignable button values are listed because the values between 0x0200 and 0x0700 either did nothing or counted as 0x0000, depending on the emulator, assigned value and physical button. Only B, R and X had the chance of counting as 0x0000 whereas the others seemed to always be useless. This was tested with gba, pokem and sega.
  • pokem: Select is reset.
  • There is a GG button test ROM on smspower.org, but gg and sega both think it was SMS, so neither the Start button nor the colors work. (Stock also thinks it's SMS, but that's expected because it doesn't even know GG.) You can force gg to GG mode. You can do this with sega too, but that doesn't work (GG support is unofficial on sega anyway).
  • GearSystem cannot run SMS Test Suite v0.35, v0.29 and probably all other versions of that ROM.
  • There is an SMS test ROM for the MD controller which does not register the keys properly on gg, sega and stock. This ROM is also notable for looking completely different on all of these three: It's blue on stock, grey on sega and mixed on gg.
  • The default key order on SMS actually makes sense because that's how the buttons are aligned. Start is Pause.
  • bluemsx's mapping seems to make less sense than the others emulators' for the same platform.
  • col: Select is #, Start is *. bluemsx is the other way around.
  • CrocoDS gives you the option to map buttons yourself (but it cannot save this, nor does it load crocods.opt). The table lists the defaults for joystick and keyboard mode (joystick is the default), the internal name of the keys when you remap them inside CrocoDS and keys it gives in BASIC or the default shell.
  • Pressing Start plus whatever button you assigned 0x0900 to (default: Y) shows the keyboard in CrocoDS.
  • On m2k, pressing 0x0A00+0x0B00 is pause.

Sounds (v1)

  • c2fkec.pgt
  • dpnet.dll
  • help.lis
  • mfsvr.nkf
  • nyquest.gdb
  • oldversion.kbe
  • pagefile.sys
  • swapfile.sys

All files are completely identical and have the same use as on the SF2000 v1.71. See the SF2000 documentation for more details.

Other Files (v1)

  • Archive.sys
  • Favorites.bin
  • History.bin

Once again, their format and use is identical to the SF2000.

In theory, you can also add ROMs inside the ROMS to Favorites.bin and History.bin (first word = 0x0700). But because the order changes whenever you add a game with a name lexically lower than any of your favorites, this will change the reference, so the GB300 does not add your own games there (I would guess the SF2000 doesn't do that either).

Resources (v2)

Please refer to the SF2000 documentation until further notice. Not everything applies to the GB300 v2, so I will add the correct information here in September.

Foldername.ini (v2)

See here. The first of the two placeholder rows is now used for PCE.

KeyMapInfo.kmp (v2)

After each emulated console's key map (24 bytes), it is repeated instantly (probably for the second player). Then comes the next console.

Consoles are encoded in the following order:

Console/Order Physical Button Save Order Available Values per Physical Button
1. FC X, Y, L, A, B, R 0x0800: A, 0x0000: B, 0x0A00: FDS Turn Disk, 0x0B00: FDS Eject/Insert
2. SFC X, Y, L, A, B, R 0x0800: A, 0x0000: B, 0x0A00: X, 0x0B00: Y, 0x0900: L, 0x0100: R
3. MD/SMS X, Y, L, A, B, R 0x0800: A, 0x0000: B, 0x0A00: X, 0x0B00: Y, 0x0100: C, 0x0900: Z
(SMS: 0x0000: 1, 0x0100: 2)
4. PCE X, Y, L, A, B, R 0x0800: I, 0x0000: II
5. GBA L, R, X, A, B, Y 0x0800: A, 0x0000: B, 0x0A00: L, 0x0B00: R
6. FB Alpha X, Y, L, A, B, R 0x0800: A, 0x0000: B, 0x0A00: C, 0x0B00: D

After each button's 16-bit value from the table above comes a 16-bit flag for autofire: 0x0100 (or any odd number) if autofire is active (indicated by a T in the console's key map editor), 0x0000 (or any even number) if not.

Note that not all of the button values you can select in the device's key map editor actually exist on the PCE and GBA. Assigning other values than those above does display a different text, but doesn't usually give any result. Just the Game Boy treats most (but not all) values assigned to the R button as B.

Note that the table above describes the actual behavior, whereas the key map editor is bogus for a lot of reasons:

  • GB and GBC are hardcoded: L, R, X and Y do nothing, the rest does what they are supposed to do.
  • In the editor's optical representation, the physical R and L buttons are swapped for all emulators but GBA (see below) when you use the console's key map editor. If the button on the left (next to the five menu items where you selected "Joystick") is highlighted, you'll set the button physically labeled R.
  • To account for this bug, L and R values are swapped for the SFC.
  • For GBA, the editor's optical representation of the physical L is swapped with X, and R is swapped with Y.
  • To account for this bug, L and R values are swapped with X and Y values respectively for the GBA.

This means that the bugs cancel each other out when the default key mappings are set, so the default mapping seemingly makes sense. Changing the buttons however will rarely ever do what you expect.

Per-game key mappings probably won't work, but need research.

List of ROMs

For the FC, MD, GB, GBC, GBA and SFC see vonmillhausen's list. Games that are missing from the GB300 are listed above in this document.

(GB300 v2 only) For Arcade, see games tagged as inrom in madcock's list. Again, games missing from the GB300 are listed above.

Final Knockout does work on the GB300 v1 and v2.

There are no new games on the GB300 for consoles that the SF2000 has. GB300 v1 and v2 have the same selection of GB300 games (see below).

To play your own games, create the folder ROMS on the TF card. You can also use ZIP files to save space, given that they contain a single file. Make sure to create a save subfolder in ROMS to be able to save.

List of PCE Games

The following is a list of all PCE games that ship with the GB300 v1 and v2. The names listed here are the names on No-Intro. Their catalog knows all of the hashes, meaning that the PCE games no strange hacks like many of the other ROMs, especially FC. Thumbnails use only covers here, whereas other consoles use at least some screenshots instead. If you remove everything in brackets (and trailing spaces resulting hereof) from the No-Intro name, you get the name on the GB300, with four exceptions given in non-bold brackets after the No-Intro name.

No-Intro Name CRC32 No-Intro # No-Intro Status
21 Emon - Mezase Hotel Ou!! (Japan) 73614660 0002 good
1943 Kai (Japan) fde08d6d 0001 verified
Adventure Island (Japan) 8e71d4f3 0010 verified
Aero Blasters (USA) b03e0b32 0012 not verified
After Burner II (Japan) ca72a828 0013 verified
Air Zonk (USA) 933d5bcc 0014 good
Alien Crush (USA) ea488494 0016 good
All Star Power League (Japan) 04a85769 0286 not verified
Andre Panza Kick Boxing (USA) a980e0e9 0264 good
Aoi Blink (Japan) 08a09b9a 0018 verified
Appare! Gateball (Japan) 2b54cba2 0019 verified
Armed F (Japan) 20ef87fd 0020 verified
Artist Tool (Japan) 5e4fa713 0021 not verified
Atomic Robo-Kid Special (Japan) dd175efd 0022 verified
Ballistix (USA) 420fa189 0025 not verified
Bari Bari Densetsu (Japan) c267e25d 0026 verified
Barunba (Japan) 4a3df3ca 0027 verified
Batman (Japan) 106bb7b2 0028 good
Battle Lode Runner (Japan) 59e44f45 0029 verified
Battle Royale (USA) e70b01af 0030 not verified
Benkei Gaiden (Japan) (Wii Virtual Console) c9626a43 2465 good
Bikkuriman World (Japan) 2841fd1e 0034 verified
Blazing Lazers (USA) b4a1b0f6 0036 not verified
Bloody Wolf (USA) 37baf6bc 0038 good
Bodycon Quest II (Japan) (Unl) ffd92458 0039 not verified
Bomberman - Users Battle (Japan) 1489fa51 0046 not verified
Bomberman '93 - Special Version (Japan) 02309aa0 0041 good
Bomberman '93 (USA) 56171c1c 0042 not verified
Bomberman '94 (Japan) 05362516 0043 verified
Bomberman (USA) 5f6f3c2a 0045 not verified
Bonk 3 - Bonk's Big Adventure (USA) 5a3f76d8 0047 not verified
Bonk's Adventure (USA) 599ead9b 0048 not verified
Bonk's Revenge (USA) (Alt 2) 14250f9a 0429 not verified
Bouken Danshaku Don - The Lost Sunheart (Japan) 8f4d9f94 0050 good
Boxyboy (USA) 605be213 0051 not verified
Bravoman (USA) cca08b02 0052 not verified
Break In (Japan) c9d7426a 0053 verified
Bubblegum Crash! - Knight Sabers 2034 (Japan) 0d766139 0054 verified
Bull Fight - Ring no Hasha (Japan) 5c4d1991 0055 good
Burning Angels (Japan) d233c05a 0056 good
Busou Keiji - Cyber Cross (Japan) d0c250ca 0057 good
Cadash (USA) bb0b3aef 0059 not verified
Champion Wrestler (Japan) 9edc0aea 0060 verified
Champions Forever Boxing (USA) 15ee889a 0061 not verified
Chase H.Q. (USA) 9298254c 0358 not verified
Chew-Man-Fu (USA) 8cd13e9a 0062 good
Chikudenya Toubei - Kubikiri Yakata Yori (Japan) cab21b2e 0064 verified
China Warrior (USA) a2ee361d 0066 verified
Circus Lido (Japan) c3212c24 0068 verified
City Hunter (Japan) f91b055f 0069 good
Columns (Japan) 99f7a572 0070 verified
Coryoon - Child of Dragon (Japan) b4d29e3b 0071 good
Cratermaze (USA) 9033e83a 0073 not verified
Cross Wiber - Cyber Combat Police (Japan) 2df97bd0 0074 good
Cyber-Core (USA) (Cyber Core) 4cfb6e3e 0076 not verified
Cyber Dodge (Japan) b5326b16 0077 verified
Cyber Knight (Japan) a594fac0 0078 verified
Daichi-kun Crisis - Do Natural (Japan) 61a2935f 0080 verified
Daisenpuu (Japan) 9107bcc8 0079 verified
Darius Alpha (Japan) (SG Enhanced) b0ba689f 0081 not verified
Darius Plus (Japan) (SG Enhanced) bebfe042 0082 verified
Darkwing Duck (USA) 4ac97606 0083 not verified
Davis Cup Tennis (USA) 9edab596 0084 not verified
Dead Moon (USA) f5d98b0b 0086 not verified
Deep Blue (USA) 16b40b44 0087 not verified
Detana!! TwinBee (Japan) 5cf59d80 0089 verified
Devil's Crush (USA) 157b4492 0091 good
Die Hard (Japan) 1b5b1cb1 0092 good
Digital Champ (Japan) 17ba3032 0093 verified
Don Doko Don! (Japan) f42aa73e 0094 verified
Doraemon - Nobita no Dorabian Night (Japan) 013a747f 0096 good
Double Dungeons (USA) 4a1a8c60 0098 not verified
Down Load (Japan) (Download) 85101c20 0099 verified
Dragon Egg! (Japan) 442405d5 0101 verified
Dragon Saber (Japan) 3219849c 0102 verified
Dragon Spirit (USA) 086f148c 0105 not verified
Dragon's Curse (USA) 7d2c4b09 0106 not verified
Dungeon Explorer (USA) 4ff01515 0111 verified
Dungeons & Dragons - Order of the Griffon (USA) fae0fc60 0254 not verified
Energy (Japan) ca68ff21 0112 verified
Eternal City - Toshi Tensou Keikaku (Japan) b18d102d 0378 good
F1 Circus '91 (Japan) d7cfd70f 0115 verified
F1 Circus '92 - The Speed of Sound (Japan) b268f2a2 0116 verified
F1 Circus (Japan) e14dee08 0117 verified
F-1 Dream (Japan) d50ff730 0113 good
F-1 Pilot - You're King of Kings (Japan) 09048174 0114 verified
F1 Triple Battle (Japan) 13bf0409 0119 verified
Falcon (USA) 0bc0a12b 0120 not verified
Fantasy Zone (USA) e8c3573d 0122 not verified
Fighting Run (Japan) 1828d2e5 0123 verified
Final Blaster (Japan) c90971ba 0124 good
Final Lap Twin (USA) 26408ea3 0126 verified
Final Match Tennis (Japan) 560d2305 0127 verified
Final Soldier - Special Version (Japan) (En) 02a578c5 0129 good
Final Soldier (Japan) (En) af2dd2af 0128 verified
Fire Pro Wrestling - Combination Tag (Japan) 90ed6575 0130 verified
Fire Pro Wrestling 2 - 2nd Bout (Japan) e88987bb 0131 verified
Fire Pro Wrestling 3 - Legend Bout (Japan) 534e8808 0132 verified
Formation Soccer - Human Cup '90 (Japan) 85a1e7b6 0133 verified
Formation Soccer - On J League (Japan) 7146027c 0134 verified
Fushigi no Yume no Alice (Japan) 12c4e6fd 0135 verified
Gai Flame (Japan) 95f90dec 0136 verified
Gaia no Monshou (Japan) 6fd6827c 0137 verified
Galaga '88 (Japan) 1a8393c6 0138 verified
Galaga '90 (USA) 2909dec6 0139 not verified
Ganbare! Golf Boys (Japan) 27a4d11a 0140 verified
Gekisha Boy (Japan) e8702d51 0141 good
Genji Tsuushin Agedama (Japan) ad450dfc 0142 verified
Genpei Toumaden (Japan) b926c682 0143 verified
Gokuraku! Chuuka Taisen (Japan) e749a22c 0146 good
Gomola Speed (Japan) 4bd38f17 0147 verified
Gradius (Japan) 0517da65 0148 verified
Gunboat (USA) f370b58e 0149 not verified
Gunhed - Special Version (Japan) 57f183ae 0151 good
Gunhed (Japan) a17d4d7e 0150 verified
Hana Taaka Daka! (Japan) ba4d0dd4 0152 good
Hanii in the Sky (Japan) bf3e2cc7 0153 verified
Hanii on the Road (Japan) 9897fa86 0154 verified
Hatris (Japan) 44e7df53 0155 verified
Heavy Unit (Japan) eb923de5 0156 good
Hisou Kihei X-SERD (Japan) 1cab1ee6 0157 verified
Hit the Ice - VHL - The Official Video Hockey League (USA) 8b29c3aa 0159 not verified
Honoo no Toukyuuji - Dodge Danpei (Japan) b01ee703 0160 verified
ImageFight (Japan) (Image Fight) a80c565f 0162 verified
Impossamole (USA) e2470f5f 0163 not verified
J.J. & Jeff (USA) e01c5127 0165 not verified
J.League Greatest Eleven (Japan) 0ad97b04 0164 verified
Jack Nicklaus - Championship Golf (Japan) ea751e82 0166 verified
Jackie Chan's Action Kung Fu (USA) 9d2f6193 0169 not verified
Jaseiken Necromancer (Japan) 53109ae6 0235 verified
Jigoku Meguri (Japan) cc7d3eeb 0170 good
Jinmu Denshou (Japan) c150637a 0171 verified
Juuouki (Japan) c8c7d63e 0173 verified
Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman (Japan) a9084d6e 0175 verified
Kattobi! Takuhai-kun (Japan) 4f2844b0 0178 good
Keith Courage in Alpha Zones (USA) 474d7a72 0179 good
KickBall (Japan) 7e3c367b 0180 verified
Kiki Kaikai (Japan) c0cb5add 0181 good
King of Casino (USA) 2f2e2240 0183 not verified
Klax (USA) 0f1b59b4 0185 not verified
Knight Rider Special (Japan) c614116c 0186 verified
Kore ga Pro Yakyuu '89 (Japan) 44f60137 0187 verified
Kore ga Pro Yakyuu '90 (Japan) 1772b229 0188 verified
Kung Fu, The (Japan) b552c906 0189 verified
Kyuukyoku Tiger (Japan) 09509315 0192 verified
Lady Sword - Ryakudatsu Sareta 10-nin no Otome (Japan) (Unl) c6f764ec 0193 verified
Legend of Hero Tonma (USA) 3c131486 0196 good
Legendary Axe II (USA) 220ebf91 0197 not verified
Legendary Axe, The (USA) 2d211007 0198 not verified
Lode Runner - Lost Labyrinth (Japan) e6ee1468 0199 verified
Maerchen Maze (Japan) a15a1f37 0200 verified
Magical Chase (USA) 95cd2979 0202 not verified
Mahjong Gokuu Special (Japan) f8861456 0206 verified
Mahjong Haouden - Kaiser's Quest (Japan) df10c895 0207 verified
Mahjong Shikaku Retsuden - Mahjong Wars (Japan) 6c34aaea 0208 verified
Maison Ikkoku (Japan) 5c78fee1 0209 verified
Makai Hakkenden Shada (Japan) be62eef5 0211 verified
Makai Prince Dorabocchan (Japan) b101b333 0212 good
Maniac Pro Wres - Asu e no Tatakai (Japan) 99f2865c 0214 verified
Metal Stoker (Japan) 25a02bee 0216 good
Mizubaku Daibouken (Japan) b2ef558d 0218 verified
Momotarou Densetsu Gaiden - Dai-1-shuu (Japan) f860455c 0219 verified
Momotarou Densetsu II (Japan) d9e1549a 0220 verified
Momotarou Densetsu Turbo (Japan) 625221a6 0221 verified
Momotarou Katsugeki (Japan) 345f43e9 0222 verified
Monster Pro Wres (Japan) f2e46d25 0223 good
Morita Shougi PC (Japan) 2546efe0 0224 good
Moto Roader II (Japan) 0b7f6e5f 0227 verified
Moto Roader (USA) e2b0d544 0226 good
Battle Chopper (Japan) (Mr. Heli no Daibouken) 2cb92290 0229 verified
Naxat Open (Japan) 60ecae22 0232 verified
Naxat Stadium (Japan) 20a7d128 0233 verified
Nazo no Mascarade (Japan) 0441d85a 0234 good
Necros no Yousai (Japan) fb0fdcfe 0236 good
Nekketsu Koukou Dodgeball-bu - PC Bangai Hen (Japan) 65fdb863 0238 verified
Nekketsu Koukou Dodgeball-bu - PC Soccer Hen (Japan) f2285c6d 0239 good
Neutopia II (USA) c4ed4307 0243 not verified
Neutopia (USA) a9a94e1b 0241 not verified
New Adventure Island (USA) 756a1802 0244 verified
NewZealand Story, The (Japan) 8e4d75a8 0245 good
NHK Taiga Drama - Taiheiki (Japan) a32430d5 0246 verified
Night Creatures (USA) c159761b 0247 not verified
Niko Niko Pun (Japan) 82def9ee 0248 verified
Ninja Ryuukenden (Japan) 67573bac 0249 good
Ninja Spirit (USA) de8af1c1 0250 good
Ninja Warriors, The (Japan) 96e0cd9d 0251 verified
Obocchama-kun (Japan) 4d3b0bc9 0252 verified
Off the Wall (USA) (Proto) 8621ae02 0428 good
Operation Wolf (Japan) ff898f87 0253 verified
Ordyne (USA) e7bf2a74 0256 not verified
Out Live (Japan) 5cdb3f5b 0257 verified
Out Run (Japan) e203f223 0258 verified
Override (Japan) b74ec562 0259 good
P-47 - The Freedom Fighter (Japan) 7632db90 0260 verified
Pachio-kun - Juuban Shoubu (Japan) 4148fd7c 0263 verified
Pac-Land (Japan) 14fad3ba 0261 verified
Parasol Stars - The Story of Bubble Bobble III (USA) e6458212 0267 good
Parodius Da! - Shinwa kara Owarai e (Japan) 647718f9 0268 verified
PC Pachi-Slot - Idol Gambler (Japan) (Unl) 0aa88f33 0276 verified
Populous (Japan) 083c956a 0277 verified
Power Drift (Japan) 25e0f6e9 0279 verified
Power Eleven (Japan) 3e647d8b 0281 verified
Power Gate (Japan) be8b6e3b 0282 good
Power Golf (USA) ed1d3843 0284 good
Power League 4 (Japan) 30cc3563 0290 verified
Power League 5 (Japan) 8b61e029 0291 verified
Power League '93 (Japan) 7d3e6f33 0285 good
Power League II (Japan) c5fdfa89 0288 verified
Power League III (Japan) 8aa4b220 0289 verified
Power League (Japan) 69180984 0287 verified
Power Tennis (Japan) 8def5aa1 0293 verified
Pro Tennis - World Court (Japan) 11a36745 0294 verified
Pro Yakyuu World Stadium '91 (Japan) 66b167a9 0295 verified
Psycho Chaser (Japan) 03883ee8 0297 verified
Psychosis (USA) 6cc10824 0298 not verified
Puzzle Boy (Japan) faa6e187 0299 good
Puzznic (Japan) 965c95b3 0300 verified
Rabio Lepus Special (Japan) d8373de6 0305 verified
Racing Damashii (Japan) 3e79734c 0306 verified
Raiden (USA) bc59c31e 0308 not verified
Rastan Saga II (Japan) 00c38e69 0309 verified
Rock-On (Japan) 2fd65312 0310 verified
R-Type I (Japan) cec3d28a 0303 verified
R-Type II (Japan) (v1.1) 417b961d 0304 good
R-Type (USA) 91ce5156 0302 good
S.C.I. - Special Criminal Investigation (Japan) 09a0bfcc 0341 verified
Sadakichi Seven - Hideyoshi no Ougon (Japan) f999356f 0312 verified
Salamander (Japan) faecce20 0314 verified
Samurai-Ghost (USA) 77a924b7 0315 not verified
Sekigahara (Japan) 2e955051 0316 verified
Sengoku Mahjong (Japan) 90e6bf49 0317 verified
Shanghai (Japan) 6923d736 0318 verified
Shinobi (Japan) bc655cf3 0319 verified
Shiryou Sensen - War of the Dead (Japan) 469a0fdf 0320 verified
Shockman (USA) 2774462c 0321 good
SideArms (USA) d1993c9f 0325 good
Silent Debuggers (USA) fa7e5d66 0327 not verified
Sindibad - Chitei no Daimakyuu (Japan) b5c4eebd 0328 good
Sinistron (USA) 4f6e2dbd 0329 good
Skweek (Japan) 4d539c9f 0330 verified
Soldier Blade - Special Version (Japan) f39f38ed 0333 good
Soldier Blade (USA) 4bb68b13 0332 not verified
Somer Assault (USA) 8fcaf2e9 0334 not verified
Son Son II (Japan) d7921df2 0335 verified
Sonic Spike - World Championship Beach Volleyball (USA) f74e5eb3 0336 not verified
Space Harrier (USA) 43b05eb8 0339 not verified
Space Invaders - Fukkatsu no Hi (Japan) 99496db3 0340 verified
Spin Pair (Japan) 1c6ff459 0342 good
Spiral Wave (Japan) a5290dd0 0343 verified
Splatterhouse (USA) d00ca74f 0345 not verified
Stratego (Japan) 727f4656 0346 verified
Strip Fighter II (Japan) (Unl) d6fc51ce 0348 good
Super Metal Crusher (Japan) 56488b36 0349 good
Super Momotarou Dentetsu II (Japan) 2bc023fc 0351 verified
Super Momotarou Dentetsu (Japan) (Alt) 69d52e7a 2464 good
Super Star Soldier (USA) db29486f 0353 not verified
Super Volleyball (USA) 245040b3 0355 not verified
Susanoou Densetsu (Japan) cf73d8fc 0356 verified
Takeda Shingen (Japan) f022be13 0360 verified
Takin' It to the Hoop (USA) e9d51797 0362 good
TaleSpin (USA) bae9cecc 0363 not verified
Tatsujin (Japan) (Beta) c1b26659 0365 not verified
Tatsunoko Fighter (Japan) eeb6dd43 0366 verified
Ten no Koe Bank (Japan) 3b3808bd 0367 verified
Tenseiryuu - Saint Dragon (Japan) 2e278ccb 0368 verified
Terra Cresta II - Mandoler no Gyakushuu (Japan) 1b2d0077 0369 good
Thunder Blade (Japan) ddc3e809 0370 verified
Tiger Road (USA) 985d492d 0371 not verified
Time Cruise II (Japan) cfec1d6a 0373 good
Time Cruise (USA) 02c39660 0372 not verified
Timeball (USA) 5d395019 0374 not verified
Titan (Japan) d20f382f 0375 verified
Toilet Kids (Japan) 53b7784b 0376 good
Tower of Druaga, The (Japan) 72e00bc4 0379 good
Toy Shop Boys (Japan) 97c5ee9a 0380 verified
Tricky Kick (USA) 48e6fd34 0382 not verified
Tsuppari Oozumou - Heisei Ban (Japan) 61a6e210 0383 good
Tsuru Teruhito no Jissen Kabushiki Bai Bai Game (Japan) f70112e5 0384 verified
Turrican (USA) eb045edf 0385 not verified
TV Sports Basketball (USA) ea54d653 0387 not verified
TV Sports Football (USA) 5e25b557 0389 not verified
TV Sports Hockey (USA) 97fe5bcf 0391 not verified
Valkyrie no Densetsu (Japan) a3303978 0403 verified
Veigues - Tactical Gladiator (USA) 99d14fb7 0394 not verified
Victory Run (USA) 85cbd045 0396 not verified
Vigilante (USA) 79d49a0d 0398 verified
Volfied (Japan) ad226f30 0400 verified
Wai Wai Mahjong - Yukai na Janyuu-tachi (Japan) a2a0776e 0402 verified
Wallaby!! - Usagi no Kuni no Kangaroo Race (Japan) 0112d0c7 0404 verified
Winning Shot (Japan) 9b5ebc58 0405 verified
Wonder Momo (Japan) 59d07314 0406 verified
World Circuit (Japan) b3eeea2e 0408 verified
World Class Baseball (USA) 4186d0c0 0409 good
World Court Tennis (USA) a4457df0 0410 not verified
World Jockey (Japan) a9ab2954 0411 verified
World Sports Competition (USA) 4b93f0ac 0412 not verified
W-Ring - The Double Rings (Japan) be990010 0401 good
Xevious - Fardraut Saga (Japan) f8f85eec 0413 verified
Yo, Bro (USA) 3ca7db48 0414 not verified
Youkai Douchuuki (Japan) f131b706 0427 verified
You-You Jinsei (Japan) c0905ca9 0416 verified
Zero4 Champ (Japan) (Alt) (Zero4 Champ V1.5) b77f2e2f 0418 not verified
Zero4 Champ (Japan) ee156721 0417 verified
Zipang (Japan) 67aab7a1 0419 good

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