Posted July 16, 2013
Austrobogulator: Well, I would hardly call something unofficial 'real'. Also, there are heaps of GBA games on the 3DS eShop o_O' Although, maybe the only GBA games are ones that came with the Ambassador Program.
As I said, differing ideas of what is real. ;) And there aren't any GBA games on the eShop. Yes there are the Ambassador games but they're not available on the eShop, that's just how you download them if you have them (and that's certainly not heaps either). People can still download games removed from GOG but I wouldn't say those games are 'on GOG'.
Anyway, there's a reason the GBA games aren't on the eShop (while the NES games are), it's because the way they got them running seems to be hacky as hell. Notice how there are no Virtual Console features like save states and the ability to suspend the game to open the home menu? As far as I can tell, the GBA games are running directly on the hardware making use of the fact that the 3DS is backwards compatible with the DS and the DS was backwards compatible with the GBA. From this I conclude that the only reason you can't play actual GBA carts on the 3DS is the lack of cartridge slot (and associated circuitry) rather than inability to run the games.
So because there are no Virtual Console features and the scaling is wank, I don't think Nintendo considers them fit for general consumption. If they manage to write a GBA emulator that runs fast enough on the 3DS then we might see some GBA games on the eShop.