Nintendo Switch and Switch 2 ports of Game Freak’s Hoenn Pokemon games are reportedly coming later this year.
Following the release of Pokemon Fire Red and Leaf Green on modern Nintendo platforms, Game Freak is said to be planning ports of other titles. According to a well-known leaker, Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald are all coming to the Nintendo Switch.
The leak comes form renowned game insider Shpeshal Nick. While primarily a Xbox insider, the leaker was one of the sources behind leaks of Nintendo’s upcoming The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time remake.
According to the leaker, Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald will all launch on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 in late September or early October. The leaker didn’t supply any additional information on the ports which leads us to assume that they will be almost identical to the aforementioned Fire Red and Leaf Green re-releases.
When they were released earlier this year, Game Freak’s GBA Kanto games launched in a largely unchanged form. Running via the official Nintendo GBA emulator, these modified roms saw the addition of a basic profanity filter, naive event tickets, and some minor bug fixes.
With this in mind, we should expect the same additions to the GBA Hoenn games. This would mean that players would be able to catch its event monsters including Latios, Latias, Lugia, Ho-oh, and Deoxys. Additionally, players won’t be able to name themselves, their rivals, or their Pokemon any rude names.
Considering the Fire Red and Leaf Green releases, this likely means that the upcoming re-releases of the Hoenn trilogy will be quite expensive. The Kanto games launched for $19.99/£16.99 each back in March, which totals $39.98 together, and we will likely see the same for the Hoenn games. This would mean players wanting to grab the trilogy will end up spending around $59.97 or £50.97 to grab all three—more than the $39.99 retail release of one title in 2003.
Hopefully, considering the price of all three games, Game Freak will release a bundle of all three Hoenn games. However, considering the fact that this is still currently just a leak, they may not release at all. With that said, seeing as the prior re-releases were a huge success, it would make sense to bring as many classic Pokemon games modern systems as possible.



