4/12/2020 Rip Game Boy Sprites Mythical Creatures
The Game Boy Advance is a handheld game console created by Nintendo. It was released in Japan. Disney's Magical Quest 3 Starring Mickey and Donald.
![]() Tutorials» GBA Ripping with VisualBoyAdvanceThe Game Boy Advance is a great system for sprite rippers, thanks to the excellent features of the VisualBoyAdvance emulator. For this tutorial we're going to be using the VBA-M version of the emulator, which is more up-to-date and feature rich, but most of this information should apply to the original releases too.
Click here to download VBA-M. Use 7Zip to extract the .7z (just like a .zip or a .rar)
The first thing you'll want to do is shrink the window down to 1x GBA resolution. To do this, go to Options > Video > 1x Window Size. You may also want to turn off sound, which you can do in Options > Audio > Core Settings - just drag the Volume slider to Mute. The default controls are fine, but if you want to change them, go to Options > Input > Set > Config 1. Make note of the Speed Up feature (spacebar by default) which will help you fast forward through those boring or slow parts of the game.
That's about it for setup - there are a few other options you can tinker with, but nothing that matters for sprite ripping, anyway. Now then, let's go over the basic ripping features.
Use File > Open GBA to select a .gba game rom to play & rip from. 1. Layer Disable
Here's the above Street Fighter Alpha 3 screenshot, as seen when we remove one layer at a time.
For screenshot ripping, this is ideal. Just the sprites, with nothing else to get in the way.
2. Pause & Frame Advance![]()
Another crucial feature is the ability to pause gameplay and advance the action one frame at a time.
To pause, use the hotkey Ctrl+P. To advance a frame, use the hotkey Ctrl+N. Once the game is paused, use frame advance to move the action forward. You should be able to take a screenshot of every frame in a sprite's animations this way. Every time the sprite you're trying to rip changes, simply use Alt + PrintScreen on your keyboard to take a screenshot, then paste it into your graphics editor. The emulator has a built-in screenshot function, mapped to the F12 key by default, but for some reason it doesn't seem to work when the game is paused. Useless! Don't forget that we can also input control commands while using Frame Advance.For example, to move your character to the right while paused, you'd simply hold down on the → key and tap Ctrl+N. Don't let go of the → key or you'll stop walking. To get the whole animation, make sure the key is always held before you tap Ctrl+N. 3. OAM ViewerThe OAM Viewer is one of the best features of VBA for sprite ripping. This tool enables you to view the individual sprites that are currently on-screen in the game. Often the sprite will be broken up into multiple pieces, but usually it is a simple matter to piece them together. To use the OAM Viewer, go to Tools > OAM Viewer. (Be sure to pause the game first, though!) Once inside, use the arrow keys to scroll through the sprite parts.
You can keep the OAM Viewer open while using Frame Advance too - just switch between the VBA emulator window and the OAM Viewer window. Make sure 'Automatic update' is checked in the OAM Viewer - that way, the sprites in the OAM Viewer will change along with what's happening on-screen. ![]() 4. Map Viewer
In addition to the OAM Viewer for sprites, there's also a Map Viewer for backgrounds! To use it, go to Tools > Map Viewer. Use the buttons to switch between BG 0, 1, 2, and 3.
Like the OAM Viewer, you can set this to Automatic update which will make it follow along with the emulator window - useful for ripping animated backgrounds or areas that scroll horizontally / vertically.
5. Tile Viewer
Of course there's a tile viewer too, why wouldn't there be? To access it, go to Tools > Tile Viewer.
You will have to fiddle with the Colors and Char Base options depending on the game you're ripping. Palette does what it says - cycles between color palettes. The usual Automatic Update option is here too. Overall, the Tile Viewer is nice, but for our purposes the OAM viewer will usually be more than enough. Of course, it may be worth checking out depending on your situation.
That just about covers all you need to know for basic screenshot-based sprite ripping. VBA-M is a very full-featured emulator and there's a lot more it can do to make your job easier.
And that's it for this tutorial. If you're just learning the basics of ripping, the GBA is a great console to start with. Questions, comments, oversized novelty checks? Send them to [email protected]!
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