Important
Supported device: Anbernic RG SP (2026) only: the clamshell model with the 720 x 480 display. Not compatible with the older RG35XX SP. For that model or any other Anbernic device, use upstream slot.
Latest release: slot.advance 1.0.0 · Download ZIP
Install · User guide · Release notes · Website
- Real hardware sleep. Close the lid and your game waits in memory.
- Instant resume. Open the lid and you're back at the same moment, with nothing reloaded.
- Super-efficient standby. Hours of sleep for a few percent of the battery an hour, then a clean automatic shutdown that restores your game.
- Optional Wi-Fi, off by default. Join a network from Settings only when you want it. Sleep still comes first.
- Syncthing built in. Keep your Saves and States in step with your computer or home server, on your own network.
- RetroAchievements, off by default. Softcore achievements on mGBA. Start a game online once, and from then on it earns achievements offline too, sent when Wi-Fi next connects. Progress toward an achievement survives sleep and automatic resume.
- In-game menu. Tap
MENUto pause for Resume, States, Settings and Exit Game, with shader and fast-forward settings for the game you're playing. - Cartridge shelf, favourites and save states. All, Recents and Favourites shelves, five save states per game, and a carousel that reopens on your last game.
How does it differ from slot? See the full comparison.
slot.advance is a fork of slot by Brandon T. Kowalski. The carousel, the cart shelf, the save-state switcher, link play and nearly everything else you see is his work, and the in-game menu is adapted from his. This fork shapes it for one way of playing: GBA games on the 720 x 480 RG SP (2026).
The carousel (top), the in-game menu (left) and Settings with Network and RetroAchievements on (right).
Close the lid and your game is saved and held in memory. Open it to carry on. If the sleep time you choose in Settings > Sleep (3 minutes to 8 hours) runs out first, it shuts down cleanly and restores the game at the next power-on.
Hardware sleep uses about 2% of the battery an hour, against roughly 7% for semi-stock software standby (an earlier test build held in standby; ordinary 0.3.0 shuts down after three minutes). 1.0.0 keeps 0.5.0's hardware sleep unchanged, and that figure comes from two 8-hour sleeps on a 0.5.0 test build, one with Wi-Fi off and one with Wi-Fi on. Earlier extended sleeps on 0.4.x read 2 to 3.2% an hour.
With Wi-Fi on, slot.advance saves your game, then disconnects and takes Wi-Fi down before every sleep. The two 0.5.0 sleeps read the same, though that doesn't show identical standby use in every situation. Wi-Fi and Syncthing do use more battery while you play.
Observed battery-gauge readings and estimates over a small number of runs, not guaranteed battery life. How it was measured, the 0.5.0 Wi-Fi results, and how far the figures can be trusted.
The download is a complete games-card layout for the RG SP (2026). It holds no games, saves or settings, and following the upgrade instructions below preserves your existing ones. slot.advance runs on the same system card (SD1) as slot; if your RG SP (2026) already runs slot, skip to Upgrading.
- Follow the slot guide to set up the system card (SD1) for the RG SP (2026).
- Put your games card (SD2) in your computer, formatted as the slot guide describes. exFAT is recommended for best compatibility with slot.advance.
- Unzip the download,
slot.advance-<version>-rg-sp.zip. On a Mac, double-clicking it makes a folder of the same name. - Open that folder and copy everything inside it (
BIOS,Config,Games,Labels,Saves,States,System,Wallpapers) onto the top level of the games card. Copy the contents, not the folder itself. - Put your
.gbafiles inGames/GBAand, if you have it, the GBA BIOS (gba_bios.bin) inBIOS. - Eject the card, put it in the RG SP (2026)'s second slot, and power on. Set the clock when asked.
Important
ROMs must be unzipped. slot does not read .zip or .7z files.
- Power off the RG SP (2026), then put the games card (SD2) in your computer.
- Optional: to keep a way back, rename
System/sloton the card toslot.previous. - Unzip the download and open its
Systemfolder. Select everything inside it and drag it into theSystemfolder on the card. When asked, choose Replace. Your games, saves, states, favourites and settings are not inSystem, so they stay as they are. - Eject the card, put it back, and power on.
Warning
On a Mac, don't drag the download's top-level folders (Games, Saves, States and so on) onto the card's folders of the same name. They are empty, and Finder's Replace swaps a whole folder for the empty one, deleting what was in it. When upgrading, only the contents of System need copying.
Going back to an earlier version is covered in the User guide.
| Button | What it does |
|---|---|
L2 / R2 |
Switch between All, Recents and Favourites |
Y |
Add or remove a favourite |
Tap / hold A |
Resume where you left off / start the game fresh |
MENU on the carousel |
Settings, including Network for Wi-Fi and Syncthing |
Tap MENU in game |
The in-game menu: Resume, States, Settings, Exit Game |
Double tap MENU in game |
Straight to the save-state switcher |
Hold MENU in game |
Save and go back to the carousel |
Close the lid, or tap POWER |
Save and sleep |
Wi-Fi is off by default. For Syncthing or link play, open Settings > Network, switch Wi-Fi on and restart when asked. Wi-Fi and Syncthing.
Every control and setting is in the User guide.
- Screen still dark after a quick lid flick? Close the lid and open it again. Your game carries on.
- Red "Can't write to SD card" band? That game isn't being saved. Stop playing it and see what to do.
- A synced save seems older than expected? Look for a Syncthing conflict copy beside it. Details.
- Found a bug? Before you power on again, copy
slot.logandslot.log.1from the games card, pluscrash/cores.logand the newestcrash/slot-….logif there is acrash/folder. The next start-up replaces the logs. Then open an issue. The full steps, troubleshooting and known limitations are in the User guide.
For players: User guide · Release notes · slotadvance.com
For developers: Technical reference · Sleep and battery measurements · Building
This build: 1.0.0 · All releases
slot.advance is free and open source. If you enjoy using it and would like to support its development, you can buy me a coffee. Completely optional.
- slot by Brandon T. Kowalski: the frontend this fork is built on, including the design of the in-game menu adapted here. The cart sounds are recordings of his childhood Game Boy.
- slots by ciscosweater: the Recents category is adapted from this community fork of slot, and its favourites tab inspired ours.
- mGBA by endrift and gpSP through libretro: the emulation. AGS-102, a fork of BaseOS by @pvaibhav: the operating system slot boots on.
- RetroAchievements: the achievement sets and the service they sync with. rcheevos v12.5.0 (MIT) by the RetroAchievements team is included unmodified to evaluate achievements, identify games and build server requests; its licence is in
System/licenses/. slot.advance's achievement support builds on the design of @pvaibhav's slot fork (GPL-3.0). - Syncthing (Mozilla Public License 2.0) by the Syncthing contributors: included unmodified for syncing Saves and States. Its licence and authors are in
System/licenses/. Web interface passwords use the EFF Large Wordlist (CC BY 3.0 US). - Open Sans (SIL Open Font License) and Nerd Fonts symbols by Ryan L McIntyre (MIT), including the favourite star. The LCD3x screen shader's panel mask is derived from gigaherz's LCD3x (shader credits and licences).
- The cartridge-label photographs in the starter pack are credited to their photographers in its README. Both slot and slot.advance were built with Claude (see AI disclosure).
slot.advance is released under the same licence as slot, the GNU GPL v3 or later.
slot's Rust frontend was put together with Claude Opus and reviewed by its author. The changes in this fork were also written with Claude (Anthropic), at my direction, and checked with slot's own automated test suite plus new tests for each feature. The battery charts and README screenshots were generated from the development test results and slot.advance's own drawing code.