Nintendo, The Pokemon Company and Game Freak’s role-playing games, Pokemon FireRed And LeafGreen, appear to feature compatibility with Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire And Emerald.
Dataminer luigiblood took to Blue Sky to share that the Nintendo Switch versions of Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen contain internal compatibility hooks for Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald. According to them, a datamine of the new release revealed that the emulator explicitly recognizes ROMs for Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald alongside FireRed and LeafGreen themselves. The finding was uncovered while examining initialization code related to enabling emulator-specific hacks.
While the dataminer made it clear that they did not intend to conduct a deep dive into the emulator’s full structure, they did confirm a few key technical details. The Switch versions continue to use “Sloop” as the Game Boy Advance emulator. However, the ROMs included in this release are not straightforward dumps of the original cartridges. Instead, they appear to be heavily modified and rebuilt, with major code alterations that rely on emulator-level hacks to function properly.
The emulator’s recognition of Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald ROMs suggests that Nintendo Switch ports could be coming in the future. Luigiblood clarified that they did not investigate the specifics of these changes, stating that they had no interest in digging further into the technical nuances. They warned that datamining only reveals a snapshot of code at the time the build was compiled, and that it shouldn’t be taken as a roadmap or confirmation of future releases.
While the presence of compatibility references doesn’t guarantee that Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, or Emerald are coming next, it does indicate that such a possibility has been considered. If sales are anything to go by, that possibility may soon become a reality. We recently reported that Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen took the top sellers spot on the Switch eShop, showing that there is a substantial audience for previous-gen entries in the Pokemon series.
