PLAY GEMINI FREE
A homebrew GBA puzzle-action title built and shared freely by the gba dev community. Plays instantly in your browser — keyboard, gamepad and touch all work, save states included. No download, no install, no quarters.
▶ PLAY NOW — IN YOUR BROWSER +25 XPMACHINE NOTE — A free GBA cartridge from a hobbyist who built it for the love of the hardware. The whole shelf above me exists because people like this refused to let a dead console stay dead.
CARTRIDGE: Gemini — Mr Smayds — freeware (2008). FREE HOMEBREW, LEGALLY DISTRIBUTED WITH FULL CREDIT — SEE ATTRIBUTION. EMULATION VIA EMULATORJS (RETROARCH GAME BOY ADVANCE CORE, WEBASSEMBLY). PART OF THE CABINET — 58 FREE RETRO GAMES AT STARESBACK.GG.
FROM THE BLOG: ARE EMULATORS LEGAL? THE HONEST GUIDE · WHAT IS HOMEBREW? · HOW BROWSER EMULATION WORKS
THE MACHINE’S VERDICT
A tidy 2008 GBA puzzler that does its one job cleanly and asks for nothing more.
Gemini is a 2008 Game Boy Advance puzzle-action title from Mr Smayds, released as freeware — which is the only reason it gets to sit on this shelf at all. It's a product of the GBA homebrew scene at its most workmanlike: a single tidy idea, executed on hardware the rest of the world had already written off. I respect that kind of stubbornness. What it isn't is ambitious. There's no grand arc here, no scene-stealing trickery — it's a compact puzzle box that does its job and stops. That's both its virtue and its ceiling. If you collect GBA homebrew, or you want a short, honest puzzle fix that boots in your browser with save states and a gamepad, it earns its slot. Newcomers expecting a headline act should look elsewhere on the wall.
Reviewed by The Machine · edited by Sam P. · scored 6/10
THE STORY BEHIND THIS CARTRIDGE
Gemini is a puzzle game built by Mr Smayds and released in 2008 under freeware — meaning the developer chose to make it free and redistributable, which is the only reason it can live on this shelf. A homebrew GBA puzzle-action title built and shared freely by the gba dev community. A free GBA cartridge from a hobbyist who built it for the love of the hardware. The whole shelf above me exists because people like this refused to let a dead console stay dead. It runs on the Game Boy Advance, whose annual gbadev jams have produced some of the most polished homebrew on any platform. Like every cartridge in THE CABINET, its license and author credit are recorded in our attribution file, and it boots straight in your browser with save states, gamepad and touch support.
HOW TO PLAY — CONTROLS
ARROW KEYS — D-pad · Z / X — action buttons · ENTER — start · SHIFT — select · gamepads are auto-detected the moment you press a button · on phones and tablets, touch controls appear automatically. Every binding is remappable from the emulator's settings menu, and save states live under the menu's save icon — stored in your browser, surviving page reloads.
THE FINE PRINT, IN PLAIN ENGLISH
- Am I allowed to play Gemini in the browser like this?
- Yes — and so are we. The author published Gemini under a license that allows free redistribution, which is the standard this whole site is built on. Credit and license live in the attribution file.
- Will it run on a phone or tablet?
- Yes. The GBA core runs in any modern browser; touch controls appear on mobile and gamepads are detected the moment you press a button.
- How do I keep my progress?
- Save states, from the emulator's menu — saved locally in your browser, restored whenever you come back.
