mgba-mcp

MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for mGBA emulator - enables programmatic control of Game Boy, Game Boy Color, and Game Boy Advance emulation.

Features

• Headless execution - Runs via xvfb for automated testing

• Screenshot capture - Get PNG screenshots at any frame

• Memory reading - Read individual addresses or memory ranges

• OAM dumping - Dump all 40 sprite entries with position, tile, flags, and palette

• Entity dumping - Read game entity/actor data from WRAM

• Custom Lua scripts - Execute arbitrary Lua code in the emulator

• Savestate support - Load savestates for reproducible testing

Installation

# Install with uv
uv pip install -e .

# Or with pip
pip install -e .

Requirements

• Python 3.11+

• mGBA (mgba-qt) installed and in PATH

• xvfb-run (for headless operation on Linux)

MCP Tools

mgba_run

Run a ROM for a specified number of frames and capture a screenshot.

{
  "rom_path": "/path/to/game.gb",
  "frames": 120,
  "savestate_path": "/path/to/save.ss0"
}

mgba_read_memory

Read memory at specified addresses.

{
  "rom_path": "/path/to/game.gb",
  "addresses": [49664, 65471],
  "frames": 60
}

mgba_read_range

Read a contiguous range of memory.

{
  "rom_path": "/path/to/game.gb",
  "start_address": 49664,
  "length": 256,
  "frames": 60
}

mgba_dump_oam

Dump OAM (Object Attribute Memory) sprite data.

{
  "rom_path": "/path/to/game.gb",
  "savestate_path": "/path/to/save.ss0",
  "frames": 60
}

mgba_dump_entities

Dump entity/actor data from WRAM.

{
  "rom_path": "/path/to/game.gb",
  "entity_base": 49664,
  "entity_size": 24,
  "entity_count": 10,
  "frames": 60
}

mgba_run_lua

Execute a custom Lua script in the emulator.

{
  "rom_path": "/path/to/game.gb",
  "script": "callbacks:add('frame', function() if emu:currentFrame() > 60 then emu:screenshot('screenshot.png'); emu:quit() end end)",
  "timeout": 30
}

Claude Code Integration

Add to your Claude Code MCP settings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mgba": {
      "command": "uv",
      "args": ["run", "--directory", "/path/to/mgba-mcp", "mgba-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Usage Example

Once configured, Claude Code can use commands like:

Use mgba_dump_oam to check sprite palettes in rom/working/penta_dragon_dx_FIXED.gb

Use mgba_read_range to dump entity data at 0xC200 for 256 bytes

Memory Addresses (Game Boy)

Common memory regions:

• 0x8000-0x9FFF - VRAM (tile data)

• 0xC000-0xDFFF - WRAM (work RAM)

• 0xFE00-0xFE9F - OAM (sprite attributes)

• 0xFF00-0xFF7F - I/O registers

• 0xFF80-0xFFFE - HRAM (high RAM)

License

MIT