Weโve all been wanting more old Pokemon ports to make their way onto the Switch and, completely out of the blue, there is a fresh tease that Ruby and Sapphire’s is actually alive and kicking.
The official Japanese Pokรฉ Times account has shared a clip featuring gameplay from the original Ruby and Sapphire games, but it looks far cleaner than youโd expect from footage captured directly from a Game Boy Advanceโฆ
Are Ruby and Sapphire Switch ports coming soon?
To preface this whole thing, Pokรฉ Times is an official Pokemon social account that is part of the companyโs Japanese social presence, so this isnโt some random โleakerโ claiming to have it in their hands.
As previously mentioned, the footage appears incredibly crisp, leading me to believe that Ruby or Sapphire is running through some form of emulator rather than on original hardware. What emulator that might be obviously hasnโt been stated, but considering Nintendo already has a working GBA solution on Switch, you can probably see where Iโm going with this one.
What is particularly interesting, though, is that Brendan is wearing his original red and black Ruby and Sapphire clothing, rather than the greener outfit introduced in Pokemon Emerald, suggesting the video specifically comes from one of the original two Hoenn releases.
After the Switch releases of Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen earlier this year, dataminers found out that Nintendoโs Sloop GBA emulator contained game-specific recognition for Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald ROMs, alongside the Kanto games.
So, it would be a little odd not to go all in and release the three Gen 3 titles as a package, but weโre talking about Nintendo here; sometimes the most straightforward thing isnโt the way it does things.
There have also been previous rumors pointing towards the Hoenn games launching around late September or October 2026, which makes the timing of this post particularly interesting.
Of course, this could simply be Pokemon using an emulator to produce cleaner social media footage, so, as always, temper expectations, but this is promising, to say the least.
