Introducing Computer Programming Via Gameboy Advance Homebrew

摘要

This paper describes our work motivating a group of students (grades 5-8) to learn real-world computer programming by introducing them to homebrew development for the Nintendo Gameboy Advance (GBA) and DS (NDS) systems using C. Students use a freely available professional toolchain (devkitPro) for development. A custom application was written that allowed the students to easily create their own tilesets (sprites and background maps) and quickly get started building their first ROMs. A series of tutorials was created to complement the program and help the students through the creation of their first game.