Pokemon Home New GBA Category Sparks Ruby And Sapphire Theories

Pokemon Home's New Category Fuels Hopes For Ruby, Sapphire, And Emerald Ports Published Oct 7, 2026, 8:22 AM EDT Josh Coulson is an editor at TheGamer covering breaking news on everything from colorful platformers to the latest Lego sets. Primarily a news writer since 2018, Josh has covered just about every major game from the past decade. Now an editor, their focus has shifted to being the leading affiliate expert at the site, building relationships between TheGamer and global brands including Mattel, Funko, and The Pokemon Company. Sign in to your TheGamer account An update for Pokemon Home was rolled out today that will finally let FireRed and LeafGreen players transfer their Pokemon to the database, and then onto other games. However, the new category created for the Switch ports has reignited hopes that more older Pokemon games will be ported to the latest consoles in the future. The expectation was that, since the versions of FireRed and LeafGreen being made compatible with Home today are on Switch, they’d simply be labeled using their names, much like Pokemon Champions and Pokemon Go. They have instead been filed under a newly added category - GBA Games. It’s that detail which has Ruby, Sapphire, and potentially even Emerald port hopefuls believing again. Fans are wondering why Pokemon would make a whole new category just for two games. Yes, there's a category for 3DS games, but that category covers a lot more than just two games, so if anything, it has only solidified the belief that this GBA Games option has been created with the intention of adding more to it. Is There Room For Ruby And Sapphire In That GBA Folder? In order to put more games in that new category, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company need to go get them off the GBA and put them on the latest consoles. The only other mainline Pokemon games released on the GBA were Ruby and Sapphire, followed by Emerald two years later, hence fans jumping to the conclusion that Pokemon has plans to make those games playable on Switch too in the near future. This alone really wouldn’t be enough to clutch at that straw, but this isn’t the first shred of evidence pointing to more GBA Pokemon ports. A few weeks ago, Pokemon shared a clip from Ruby and Sapphire for no other reason than to remind people those games exist. The clip is the hardest evidence yet that the games have been polished ahead of being ported, as the footage was clearer than what you’ll find in any officially released version of the games. Pokemon ported FireRed and LeafGreen to Switch earlier this year, releasing the games to celebrate Pokemon Day after announcing them just a few days before. My hope remains that the same cycle will become an annual tradition. That each year, Pokemon will announce incoming ports around mid-February and then release them on Switch on Pokemon Day. If that’s the plan, we might see Ruby and Sapphire on Switch early next year, and then perhaps some of the DS games the year after that. Systems Released March 19, 2003 ESRB e Developer(s) Game Freak Publisher(s) Nintendo Engine Unreal Engine Multiplayer Local Multiplayer Franchise Pokemon