When the OG Nintendo horizontal handheld meets the new kid on the block. A handheld that came out in 2001 shouldn't be able to hook up to a hybrid handheld from 2025, but here we are, with Pokémon being traded between the two machines like they were both brought out yesterday. May I present to you an adapter that connects two Nintendo powerhouses together, spanning over two decades of tech and making them communicate perfectly.
The project comes to us from Drewworks on X, who has created an adapter that allows you to trade Pokémon caught on GBA Pokémon games like Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald to Pokémon Home, and possibly FireRed/LeafGreen.
Trading Pokémon between an original GBA and a Switch 2 😎😲
— Drewworks (@ahenley17) September 3, 2026
My GBA-to-Switch trade adapter is working!
Still plenty of work ahead, but seeing a real GBA communicate and trade with the Switch is pretty incredible.#Pokemon #GBA #Switch2 pic.twitter.com/W09ELMBCM3
Drewworks, which just make me think of that little person fishing on the moon in the DreamWorks logo, couldn't have created this at a better time, what with Pokémon Bank shutting down next year. I will say that at this stage, it's not exactly something that you can plug in and play with straight away. Though I will say that it seems to be working better than the 4-way GBA cable that my friend Cris and I tried using to trade a Mew on our ModRetro Chromatic's the other day - we spent about an hour outside of the climbing gym trying to get that cable working to no avail, so at this point, Drewworks could probably get it done faster!
The thing is, Drewworks knows that there's still a long way to go, with the adapter looking a bit like something that you would pull out of a computer tower. But that's not the bit to focus on here - the fact that the GBA and the Switch can communicate like this is fantastic and a huge achievement. It's one step further than the controller link cable that Robert Dale Smith worked on earlier this year, with every creation in the retro gaming space helping others to develop new ideas and push ideas further. That's why I love this space - it's a bona fide melting pot of creativity, and I'm looking forward to seeing where the Switch-GBA link cable goes next and who makes it a reality.
