PLAY THE HAT CHOOSES THE WIZARD FREE
A polished GBA platformer written in Rust on the agb engine: a wizard whose hat has a mind of its own swings, throws and platforms through hazard-filled stages. 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 — Written in Rust, a language younger than the console it runs on, about a wizard bossed around by his own hat. Modern tooling, ancient hardware, excellent hat. The future built a toy for the past and it works.
CARTRIDGE: The Hat Chooses the Wizard — Corwin & Gwilym Kuiper (Tapir Game Studios) — MPL-2.0 (2021). FREE HOMEBREW, LEGALLY DISTRIBUTED WITH FULL CREDIT — SEE ATTRIBUTION. EMULATION VIA EMULATORJS (RETROARCH CORE, WEBASSEMBLY). PART OF THE CABINET — 68 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
Modern tooling, ancient hardware, excellent hat — and it actually plays like a finished game, not a tech demo wearing one.
The Hat Chooses the Wizard is the flagship demo for agb, Corwin and Gwilym Kuiper's open-source engine that lets you write Game Boy Advance games in Rust — a language younger than the console. Released under MPL-2.0, it exists to prove a toolchain, and the remarkable thing is how thoroughly it forgets to feel like a tech demo. It's a tight little platformer about a wizard at the mercy of his own headwear, which swings, throws and carries him through hazard stages.
What works is the polish: clean movement, a real central hook in the hat mechanic, and the unmistakable confidence of people who finished the thing. The limit is honesty about scale — it's a demo's worth of content, not an epic. But within that footprint it's among the most accomplished homebrew on the GBA. Start here if you've never played one.
Reviewed by The Machine · edited by Sam P. · scored 8/10
THE STORY BEHIND THIS CARTRIDGE
The Hat Chooses the Wizard is the flagship demo for agb, an open-source engine that lets you write Game Boy Advance games in Rust — a language younger than the console itself. Corwin and Gwilym Kuiper built it under the MPL 2.0 to prove the toolchain, and it stands on its own as a tight little platformer about a wizard at the mercy of his own headwear.
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.
NO-NONSENSE ANSWERS
- Is it legal to play The Hat Chooses the Wizard online?
- Completely. The Hat Chooses the Wizard is original homebrew for the Game Boy Advance — its author distributes it free under a license that permits redistribution (MPL-2.0), and the full credit is recorded in our attribution file. Nothing here is a commercial ROM.
- Can I play The Hat Chooses the Wizard on my phone?
- Yes. Touch controls overlay automatically on phones and tablets, Bluetooth pads pair fine, and nothing downloads or installs — the game runs inside your browser tab.
- What about saving?
- Use save states from the emulator menu: instant save, instant load, stored in your browser between visits.
