Iván Delgado, the developer known online as @toruzz, has revealed GB Bridge, a modified Game Boy-to-GBA emulator he has been quietly building for years. The project effectively ports original Game Boy titles to the Game Boy Advance, taking advantage of the GBA’s wider screen, expanded resolution, and additional color capabilities, something no standard emulator has attempted in quite this way before.
Delgado is no stranger to pushing the limits of Game Boy hardware. He is best known in the ROM hacking community for his colorization projects, most notably Super Mario Land DX and Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins DX, two hacks that transform the original grayscale Game Boy titles into fully colorized Game Boy Color experiences.
The Super Mario Land 2 project alone took him over a thousand hours to complete. He has also been working on a colorized version of The Frog For Whom the Bell Tolls, a Japan-exclusive Game Boy title with a dedicated cult following, and was hired by Limited Run Games to officially colorize Trip World, which was commercially released in 2023 as Trip World DX.
His background matters here because GB Bridge is not the work of someone casually tinkering with emulation. It is the result of years of deep familiarity with how Game Boy hardware handles graphics, memory, and assembly code at a low level.
I’ve hinted at it so much there’s no point in keeping it under wraps any longer.
For the longest time, I’ve been working on a way to port GB games to the GBA.
What I ended up building is a modified GB>GBA emulator that targets a fantasy console instead – I call it the GB Bridge https://t.co/4nJ70FopLY pic.twitter.com/t86BIC0jx8
— Iván Delgado (@toruzz) April 14, 2026
What GB Bridge actually is
GB Bridge is not a traditional emulator. Standard Game Boy emulators for the GBA already exist and do exactly what you’d expect, they run GB games on GBA hardware without any enhancements. What Delgado built is something different.
In his own words: “For the longest time, I’ve been working on a way to port GB games to the GBA. What I ended up building is a modified GB to GBA emulator that targets a fantasy console instead, I call it the GB Bridge. GB Bridge is basically a GBC with a different memory map, a bigger screen, and extra inputs. The real trick is that I use special registers to trigger native GBA routines from the emulator, meaning that, while very hard to pull off, I can push things as much as I want.”
The concept of a “fantasy console” is key here. Rather than simply emulating the Game Boy on GBA hardware, GB Bridge targets an imaginary system that sits somewhere between the two, a Game Boy Color that has been upgraded with the GBA’s screen real estate, memory layout, and inputs. By using special registers to call native GBA routines from within the emulator, Delgado can leverage the more powerful hardware underneath to enhance the experience well beyond what standard emulation allows.
After his announcement generated some confusion online, Delgado followed up with a clarification: “I’m building a way to port GB/GBC games to the GBA. The end result is a native GBA game. This uses a custom GB to GBA emulator, think Classic NES Series but for GB, plus native GBA code.”
That Classic NES Series comparison is a useful one. Nintendo’s Classic NES Series for GBA wrapped NES games in a custom emulator to run them natively on the handheld. GB Bridge works on a similar principle, but applied to Game Boy titles.
Mockups, not a release, but the potential is real
Delgado has shared GIF mockups showing what GB Bridge could look like in practice, with Super Mario Land as his current working test case. The mockups show the game running with expanded resolution, more colors, and a wider screen that fills the GBA display, essentially what a real GBA port of the game might have looked like back in the day.
— Iván Delgado (@toruzz) April 12, 2026
That word “mockups” is important, though. Delgado has been upfront that what he has posted represents the end goal, not the current state of the project. “What I’ve posted are mockups of the end goal, but I’ve tested key parts and they are feasible,” he says. He also added a direct request for patience: “Like most of my stuff this is long-term, so please don’t expect releases anytime soon. That said, I hope I gave you something cool to look forward to.”
It is also worth noting that GB Bridge is not a plug-and-play solution. Each game ported through it will require significant individual work to take full advantage of the system, the colors, the expanded graphics, the wider screen layout, none of that happens automatically.
This is a framework that makes those enhancements possible, with a lot of skilled, manual work required for every individual title.
Delgado mentioned he actually dropped hints about this project as far back as six years ago, though the secret was kept so well that most people missed it entirely. Now that he is finally ready to talk, the reaction from the retro gaming community has been enthusiastic, with players already drawing up wishlists of games they want to see get the treatment.
There is no release window in sight, and the road ahead is long. But for fans of either handheld, GB Bridge is shaping up to be one of the more ambitious preservation and enhancement projects the Game Boy community has seen in years.
What do you think about GB Bridge, which Game Boy game would you most want to see ported to the GBA? Let us know in the comments!