[GB/CGB/GBA] Game Boy Speedrun Emulator 0.6 31/05/2026

Game Boy Speedrun Emulator 0.6 31/05/2026

Sixth release of GSE.

This release replaces the GBA emulation core. Previously, mGBA's GBA emulation core was used for GBA games. GSE now uses Mesen's GBA emulation core for GBA games. This offers far better accuracy, to the point even GBA Pokémon TASes can sync on console, and as such emulator players can fairly compete with console players in GBA Pokémon speedrunners, along with likely many other games.

This release also features various bugfixes, along with minor QoL improvements such as an option to automatically hide the mouse cursor, saving the last used emulator width/height for when no ROM is loaded (i.e. no longer hardcoding GBA resolution), and more.

This release will likely be the last release for various old platforms (for macOS < 12, Linux < glibc 2.35, and Android < 7), mainly due to dependencies dropping support. This shouldn't affect most users, but it is noted for whatever users still use these old platforms.

Several download options are available, for various OSes and CPU architectures, per the requirements listed in the README. For most users (with a Windows machine on an x64 device), the GSE-win-x64.zip file should be downloaded.

Game Boy Speedrun Emulator 0.5 9/01/2026

This release is mainly a bug-fix and internal improvement release. The biggest change here is the move from SDL2 to SDL3. SDL is a library that handles a lot of things internally in GSE, most notably it handles controller support. SDL3 offers even better controller support than SDL2, such as Switch 2 controller support.

For now, this is mostly a straight port, which offers better support for things currently used in SDL. Over time, more features may be able to be introduced due to this move.

A minor feature introduced in this release is a "Low Latency Mode." This is a mode that offers even lower latency, at the potential cost of slightly less consistent frame pacing. It is disabled by default, as it's assumed a runner will generally prefer more consistent frame pacing over lower latency. Besides this mode, other changes have been made to improve latency across the board.

Memory exports have also been fixed for macOS and Linux. These are used by autosplitters, which are currently Windows only. This allows macOS and Linux support to be possible for autosplitters, if such end up being developed.

NOTE: The default audio latency has been raised to 35 ms, as various users have reported issues with the previous default of 0 ms. This change won't affect existing configs (only new configs), so users updating are recommended to change their audio latency to the new default.