7 DS Pokémon Games Are Now Playable On Nintendo Switch

Published Nov 7, 2026, 10:01 AM EST

Tom Wilson is a Gaming Features Writer at Screen Rant. Over the past five years, Tom has worked as the Editor-in-Chief at The Game Crater, as a Staff Writer for GamingIntel, a List Writer at TheGamer, and, of course, as a Senior Writer at ScreenRant. Tom has experience writing reviews, guides, news, and features, and has been responsible for teams of writers, training them and editing their work.

Tom graduated with a Masters in Multimedia Journalism, and has since gone on to build up his portfolio of games journalism work.

It is no small secret that fans would like to see more Pokémon games ported to the Nintendo Switch. After the success of FireRed and LeafGreen's simple yet effective ports, many have been speculating about what could be next, with many assuming that The Pokémon Company is most likely to port Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire to the Switch. While that may indeed happen, fans have something perhaps even more exciting to enjoy, depending on your love for the DS era of Pokémon games.

Seven different Pokémon titles from the Nintendo DS are now fully playable on the Nintendo Switch, making them more accessible than ever before. These aren't fan-made Pokémon ROM hacks or even truncated versions of some of Pokémon's greatest games. Rather, the playable Pokémon DS games on Switch are the complete experiences ported over to the handy handheld. If you've ever wanted to experience these titles but were prohibited by their exorbitantly high resale value, now is your chance to finally play them.

Pokémon HeartGold, SoulSilver, Platinum, Black, White, Black 2, and White 2 have all been made available for the Nintendo Switch courtesy of mamesj. They're all a part of a recently created single-screen mod, which makes the aforementioned games playable on a single screen, with all UI elements, menus, and gameplay features functional without the need for the DS' dual screens. Notably, this mod, which is available on PC, is completely playable on a modded Nintendo Switch, allowing you to play all seven of these Pokémon DS games on Nintendo's handheld console.

To be clear, these aren't native ports. Rather, mamesj has forked the ssrecomp by a different user, ClickingMaster, and built upon it to make everything functional. Indeed, it is running off the work of several members of the decomp community, all of which are necessary to make it even remotely playable on a single-screen device such as the Nintendo Switch.

Additionally, the download does not contain any game files, but rather serves as a launcher that utilizes the melonDS emulator core alongside the custom-made modifications to run your existing and legally obtained ROMs of the aforementioned games on a single-screen device with widescreen support. You can download the launcher from its official GitHub page.

Should you have a modded Nintendo Switch, then you can run this same launcher and access all seven games on the console. It's a nifty way of not only modernizing the original DS games by offering widescreen support (which expands the image by showcasing more of the available surroundings, rather than simply stretching the existing image), but also making these games playable on modern hardware, something that has seemingly proven difficult for The Pokémon Company to do.

Considering that physical copies of games like Pokémon HeartGold go for hundreds of dollars on the secondhand market, it is nice to finally have an accessible way of playing these DS games. Of course, an official native port would be the preferred option, as it would make these incredible DS games accessible to absolutely everyone, including those who don't have a modded Switch. However, for now, this at least offers a way of playing these near-impossible-to-obtain-physically Pokémon DS games.