Benchmark profile
GBA-Eval
An agentic coding benchmark that asks models to build a Game Boy Advance emulator from scratch and grades emulator behavior against procedural, audio, and gameplay tests.
Data verifiedHow BenchLM shows GBA-Eval
BenchLM mirrors the official GBA-Eval leaderboard snapshot graded on May 30, 2026. The benchmark asks coding agents to build a Game Boy Advance emulator and scores the result against 27 procedural, audio, and gameplay test cases.
GBA-Eval is display only on BenchLM. The source rows are agentic software-engineering runs with large token budgets and verifier-specific emulator tests, so BenchLM does not fold them into model-only weighted rankings.
Overall score on GBA-Eval — May 30, 2026
BenchLM mirrors the published overall score view for GBA-Eval. Claude Opus 4.8 leads the public snapshot at 70.9% , followed by GPT-5.5 (53.2%) and Claude Sonnet 4.6 (48.8%). BenchLM does not use these results to rank models overall.
Claude Opus 4.8
Anthropic
claude-opus-4-8
GPT-5.5
OpenAI
gpt-5.5
Claude Sonnet 4.6
Anthropic
claude-sonnet-4-6
Overall score table (14 models)
ScoreThe published GBA-Eval snapshot places Claude Opus 4.8 first at 70.9%. The third row is 22.1 points behind. The broader top-10 range is 70.0 points, so the table still separates the published systems.
14 models have been evaluated on GBA-Eval. The benchmark falls in the External benchmark mirrors category. We keep external benchmark mirrors separate from the weighted global scoring system, so these results remain source-specific evidence. GBA-Eval is currently displayed for reference but excluded from the scoring formula, so it does not directly affect overall rankings.
About GBA-Eval
Year
2026
Tasks
27 emulator test cases
Format
Overall emulator score
Difficulty
Long-horizon systems programming
GBA-Eval evaluates long-horizon coding agents by having them implement a working GBA emulator. The public leaderboard reports overall scores across 27 test cases with token usage and checkpoints preserved in the source JSON feed.
BenchLM freshness & provenance
Version
GBA-Eval 2026
Refresh cadence
Quarterly
Staleness state
Current
Question availability
Public benchmark set
BenchLM uses freshness metadata to decide whether a benchmark should still be treated as a strong differentiator, a benchmark to watch, or a display-only reference. For the full scoring policy, see the BenchLM methodology page.
FAQ
What does GBA-Eval measure?
An agentic coding benchmark that asks models to build a Game Boy Advance emulator from scratch and grades emulator behavior against procedural, audio, and gameplay tests.
Which model leads the published GBA-Eval snapshot?
Claude Opus 4.8 currently leads the published GBA-Eval snapshot with 70.9% overall score. BenchLM shows this benchmark for display only and does not use it in overall rankings.
How many models are evaluated on GBA-Eval?
14 AI models are included in BenchLM's mirrored GBA-Eval snapshot, based on the public leaderboard captured on May 30, 2026.
Know when it’s worth switching models
The model to choose, the cheaper alternative, and the release we would wait on.
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