How to play a rom on VBA after downloading rom

I've just downloaded Golden Sun from romulation.net, but when i go to the VBA and click File, then Open Gameboy, the golden sun file doesn't show up. I got some other Roms from my friends, and they worked on VBA cuz i could play them. However, the Roms from my friends were compressed zipped folders, and had extra files and stuff. But go9golden sun only had one file? So what do do?

these are compressed rar files, they are like zip, but the compression is better. You need a program called 'winrar' (www.rarlabs.com) to extract the rom file from the rar.

um, i alredy have winrar, and i've tried extracting it by clicking 'extract here'. But all that does is create a golden sun folder with one golden sun.gba file. And VBA still can't read it.

then try a different emulator

The Roms that do work have a file type of WinRAR ZIP archive. However the golden sun rom has a file type of WinRAR archive. Anyway i could change the file type? And does romulation have any roms that have a file type of WinRAR ZIP archive?

no, the contents of the archive is the same, zip just takes up more space and takes longer to download. So we don't use it.

fleshhcleaver08 · #5The Roms that do work have a file type of WinRAR ZIP archive. However the golden sun rom has a file type of WinRAR archive. Anyway i could change the file type? And does romulation have any roms that have a file type of WinRAR ZIP archive?

RARs are valid too, they just take up less space because of better compression.

i've noticed about the roms that worked, that they have 3 files. The first one was the WinRAR file, 2nd was a .gba file and the third was a .sgml file. Now for golden sun, i have the WinRAR file, and i got the .gba file by extracting it from the WinRAR file. But i don't have the .sgml (standard generalised markup language). Any idea how to get the golden sun sgml file?

thanks a million loonylion, extracted at the wrong place so ididn't work. But when i clicked the extract button again it worked. Thanks again!!! ;D ;D ;D ;D

You really don't need sgml files either, they have nothing to do with the gba files.

i need help on to i dont have anything that can open the rom game

Replying to #11

You need WinRAR to open RAR files.
http://www.rarlabs.com I think

A fact about VBA that few people here seem to have noticed. It CAN play files that are zipped with winzip or winrar, I have done it before. Actually all of my gba roms are still compressed for simplicity, if you have issues with a rom either you have an outdated version of VBA (unlikely) or there are compatability issues.

As far as I know VBA only support .zip files, you need a license to be abl eto extract .rar files and I doubt a free program would support that.