If you’re a longtime fan of the Battle Network series, you’ve probably heard of the BattleChip Gate. The Chip Gate was a peripheral supported by EXE4 through EXE6, that connected to your GBA via the link port and allowed you to slot in BattleChips and NaviChips in real life that would then be used in the game. These BattleChips could also be used in PET toys and arcade games. Aside from the BN4 PET toy and a limited set of BN4 BattleChips, however, none of these peripherals were ever released outside of Japan.
For a long time, the only way to play with these Chip Gates in the games was to buy a real Chip Gate and chips from Japan. Until now! In the past few days, two GBA emulators, mGBA and GBE+, have added support for all the different versions of the BattleChip Gate and their in-game uses, thanks to the efforts of their developers endrift and Shonumi. Currently, all in-game single-player features of the Chip Gates are functional, including chip slotting in, Operation Battle, Navi unlocking, Navi Change, and LinkNavis. (Which features are available varies per game. For more info, check out our Wiki!)
As a bonus, even though imported Beast Link Gates normally do not function in the English version of MMBN6, the new Chip Gate emulation for mGBA and GBE+ does have limited support for this. For the first time, aside from using cheat codes, you’ll be able to use the permanent Beast Out that comes with connecting a Beast Link Gate, and slot in BattleChips, in the English version of MMBN6! Sending LinkNavis is not supported, however, as the related menus were removed from the game.
To try out the new Chip Gate emulation, you can grab one of the nightly builds for mGBA. The feature is only supported in the Desktop version for the foreseeable future. Simply load up your game backup and go to Emulation → BattleChip Gate to attach the Chip Gate to the game. Then, you can select from the available BattleChips and check “Inserted” to slot in the chip. Chip Gate emulation has also been added to GBE+, but there are no nightly builds for this, so you will have to wait for a new version release or build the emulator yourself.