Pokémon Fulldex: GBA Games, Regional Beta, and the November 3 Releases
By Indie Kings | November 4, 2026
Updated November 4, 2026: Pokémon Fulldex has moved on since our November 3 coverage. The project now stands at 742 stars and 41 forks under GPL-3.0, and four releases landed on November 3, 2026: pc-v1, ios-v1, android-v1 and all-games-v2. This follow-up covers what changed, in particular the GBA games now built into every download, regional support in beta, and the iPhone and Switch paths.
Image: Snowpoint City in Pokemon Platinum, the snowy overworld drawn across the full widescreen width. Credit: mamesj/GitHub.
Per the official repository README, Pokémon Fulldex is a program that runs the DS games on the melonDS emulator core, with a layer that knows what the game is doing, which screen, which menu, which battle, and rearranges it into one proper widescreen picture. It is not a native port, and the README says so. Seven DS games ship in every download: Black 2, White 2, Black, White, SoulSilver, HeartGold and Platinum. It runs on PC, Mac, Steam Deck or other handhelds, Android, iPhone and iPad, and a modded Nintendo Switch as homebrew.
The repository is a C++ project created on October 25, 2026, with 41 forks and 37 open issues. The four November 3 releases are the platform builds: a PC build covering Windows, macOS and Linux, an iOS build, an Android build, and the all-games Switch build. The Android APK has by far the most downloads of the four, at 953 of its 1,434 total. The repository ships no game data. Bring your own ROMs, and the program reads what it needs from them when the game starts.
What Fulldex still is
The framing in the README's comparison table is the cleanest version of the argument. melonDS gives you two 256 by 192 DS screens, stacked or side by side, with the 3D world in 4:3 at DS resolution, and the game's own 30 frames per second for the 3D. Fulldex gives you one 16:9 picture with the touch screen's buttons tucked beside the action, the 3D world in 16:9 with skies and scenery carried to the edges, and 60 frames per second with in-between frames. Up to 4K on a PC where your graphics card does the drawing, and 720p on the Switch.
The widescreen world is drawn by a graphics chip: your graphics card with OpenGL on a PC, the Switch's own chip with deko3D. On the Switch, Black 2 runs at or a whisker under 60 frames per second at 720p in towns and battles, measured on a Switch OLED in handheld mode. The games run on melonDS's fast JIT. If a start ever fails with it, the next one falls back by itself, and holding L while starting selects the interpreter.
Settings are the same on every platform. Display covers language, screen layout with merged as the one widescreen picture, large screen, borderless fullscreen, smooth scaling, battle buttons, and an FPS counter. Graphics covers 60 FPS, the widescreen world, wide map loading, 3D resolution, lowering resolution when busy, drawing the world on the GPU, and fast forward at low resolution. Controls cover remappable keys and buttons, the start button, buttons, and the stick touch cursor. The pause menu adds resume, save state, load state, fast forward, cheats, RetroAchievements, reset game and quit.
The GBA games are now in the same download
The GBA games are the biggest change since our November 3 article: Pokémon Emerald, FireRed, LeafGreen and Ultra Violet, which is a FireRed hack, now ship built in on Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iPhone, iPad and the Switch. They come from the Pokémon GBA Widescreen project. ROMs go in the same roms folder as the DS games, and a GBA folder inside roms also works. Wins the overworld drawn wider, with the people and Pokémon around you kept in view out to the edges. Battles have their backgrounds carried across the whole width. Weather, including rain, sandstorm, fog and snow, reaches both sides. The DS games' settings for smooth scaling, FPS counter, volume and buttons carry over to them.
Other GBA games play too, without widescreen. Quit game in a GBA game's pause menu returns to the game list. The Ultra Violet ROM can be supplied either as its own .gba file or as its .ips patch with a FireRed 1.0 ROM beside it. Saves sit alongside the others, or in a GBA folder's own saves folder.
The other new name on the list is Pokémon Omega Ruby, which is in the 3DS tab and marked coming soon. It is being built as its own project. The README's what's next section ties it to the longer-term aim, which is native ports, described as the dream, hopefully for all of them, and the project says it is aiming for it while being optimistic.
| Platform | Build | Notes from the README |
|---|---|---|
| Windows PC and Windows handhelds | pc-v1 zip for x86_64 | ROG Ally, Legion Go and MSI Claw are named as supported handhelds |
| Mac, Apple silicon and Intel | pc-v1 zips for arm64 and x86_64 | Not notarized, so the first open needs the Privacy and Security override |
| Linux and Steam Deck | pc-v1 tarball or AppImage | glibc 2.38 or later. On the Deck, set 3D resolution to 720P |
| Android | android-v1 APK | 64-bit phone, Android 7 or later, 16 KB memory pages now supported |
| iPhone and iPad | ios-v1 IPA | Sideloaded with your own Apple ID. No JIT, so use a recent phone |
| Nintendo Switch homebrew | all-games-v2 zip | One program with all seven games. sys-clk recommended for full speed |
Regional support in beta, and its limits
Regional DS support is now in beta across the platform builds. You bring your own ROM, and only the listed language and version profiles are recognized. The README states what that does not mean: this is not support for every language, revision or game, and complete playthroughs have not been verified.
French, German, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Korean profiles are added for Black, White, Black 2, White 2, SoulSilver, HeartGold and Platinum. English Diamond and Pearl and Spanish Diamond are experimental. The supplied collection contains 42 exact ROM versions, and new profiles validate their fingerprint before loading a save. The earlier 41-ROM menu and settings checks passed, and the newly supplied Korean Platinum has startup and menu checks so far. Broader battle, adapted-screen and full-playthrough testing continues.
Regional versions use separate save names, such as heartgold-fr.sav, heartgold-es.sav and heartgold-it.sav, so you should keep a backup when bringing an existing save across. GBA regional compatibility is unchanged: this update adds no GBA game translations. GBA game text comes from the ROM, and widescreen still requires an existing matching patch. Display language offers Auto, English, Spanish, Italian, French, German, Japanese and Korean menus, with Auto following a supported system language, and the interface language is independent of the ROM language.
Saves, cheats and other version Pokemon
Carrying a save over is supported from other emulators, flash carts or a real cartridge. A plain .sav works, as made by melonDS, DeSmuME's export of backup memory, flash carts such as TWiLight Menu++ and R4, and cartridge dump tools such as Checkpoint, JKSM and GodMode9. A DraStic or DeSmuME .dsv, or an Action Replay save, first goes through the project's converter. The game list shows save found under a game when it has one. A backup folder beside the saves keeps the last eight versions of each, made as a game starts and every half hour of play, named by date and time. To go back to one, quit the game and copy it over your save with the save's own name.
Cheats are Action Replay codes switched on and off during play. A checksum database named usrcheat.dat holds codes for every game, and the README points readers at the DeadSkullzJr database on GBAtemp rather than shipping it. Codes of your own go in a text file named after the game's code, and melonDS's own cheat files work too. The README warns that a cheat changes the game's memory while it runs, so save first, and turn it off if the game misbehaves.
RetroAchievements work on every platform: turn them on in the pause menu, log in with your account, and unlocks pop up as you play. Your password goes to RetroAchievements once and is not kept. The program keeps only the sign-in they send back. It is casual mode only, so save states, fast forward and cheats still work. Achievements pause while a cheat or the other version Pokémon option is on, and return when those are off. Wide map loading stays off with achievements on, so achievements read the game's memory as on a DS.
The other version Pokémon option is the most fun part of the build and the one most likely to confuse people. It is off by default. Wherever one version has an exclusive such as Gothita, Cottonee, Vullaby, Heracross or Magby, each encounter has the other version's equivalent in the same spot, such as Solosis, Petilil, Rufflet, Pinsir or Elekid, at its rates and levels. Legendary Pokémon stay with their own version, and so do the Hidden Grottos. The same option exists for SoulSilver and HeartGold, where the README notes that both versions' encounter tables are already in every ROM, so nothing is added. RetroAchievements pause while it is on.
The known limits, stated plainly
The known limits section is short and worth reading in full. English versions, US or Europe, for the seven established DS games. French revision 0 for all seven. Spanish White, Platinum, SoulSilver and HeartGold. Italian HeartGold. Diamond and Pearl support is experimental. In Platinum the Pokétch, the watch on the touch screen, is not shown during normal play, and its apps are one press of the screen-swap button away. In SoulSilver and HeartGold, at map borders such as Route 29 and New Bark Town and Celadon City and Route 16, parts of the neighbouring map pop in and out at the sides of the wide view, and loading more of the map, as Black 2 and White 2 do, should fix it. PC speeds on a range of PCs are estimates so far. Mac tested on one machine so far, a MacBook Air M1. Android tested on one phone so far, a Pixel 9 Pro XL.
The per-platform caveats add up. The Mac's OpenGL stops short of what drawing the world on the GPU needs, so the processor draws the widescreen world at 720P to start, and a MacBook Air M1 holds 60 frames per second at 1080P. iOS lets no app make code as it runs, so the faster way the other versions run the DS, melonDS's JIT, is left out, and a recent iPhone, an iPhone 13 or newer, is the most likely to keep up. The 3D world is drawn by the processor at 720P to start there too. Quit in the pause menu may close the app rather than going back to the list. On the Switch, without sys-clk the games run at the console's normal speeds and drop frames in busy places. The recommended clocks are CPU 1785 megahertz, GPU 460 megahertz, memory 1600 megahertz.
Updates are checked when the game list opens, and downloads are verified against the checksum file from the same release, with the previous program kept. ROMs, saves and settings stay in place. A release without checksums is offered as a download page rather than installed automatically. Android uses its system installer, while Mac and iPhone and iPad open the download page. The native libraries now support 16 kilobyte Android memory pages, and the previous APK crashed on the project's 16 kilobyte emulator before drawing the launcher, though physical Odin 3 verification is still pending.
Bug reports go through a form that asks for the game, your ROM's version and the game.log file, which says what the program did. The README says never to attach your ROM. A white or black screen when a game starts usually means the ROM is not one the program plays: an English copy of one of the seven games, or a Spanish copy of White, Platinum, SoulSilver or HeartGold, unchanged, with no patches, translations, randomizers or trimming.
Our take: we covered Fulldex on November 3 as a DS widescreen launcher, and the release wave that same day is what changes the shape of it. The GBA games in the same download and the regional beta are the substantive additions. The limits list is the part to read, because it tells you exactly which parts are verified and which are estimates.
FAQ
Does Fulldex include Nintendo Pokémon games?
No. Per the repository README, the downloads are free of the games themselves. You bring your own ROMs, and the program reads what it needs from them when the game starts.
Which games are included in the game list?
All seven DS games in every download: Black 2, White 2, Black, White, SoulSilver, HeartGold and Platinum. The GBA games are also included: Emerald, FireRed, LeafGreen and Ultra Violet. Pokémon Omega Ruby is in the 3DS tab and marked coming soon.
Is Fulldex a native port?
No. Per the README, it runs the DS game on the melonDS emulator core with a widescreen presentation layer. Native ports are described as the goal for later.
Which languages are supported?
Per the README, English US and Europe for the seven DS games, French revision 0 for all seven, Spanish White, Platinum, SoulSilver and HeartGold, and Italian HeartGold, with English Diamond and Pearl and Spanish Diamond experimental. Regional support is in beta and complete playthroughs are not verified.
Can I use my own save file?
Yes. Per the README, copy a .sav from another emulator, a flash cart or your cartridge into the saves folder under the game's name. DraStic and DeSmuME .dsv files and Action Replay saves first go through the project's converter. The game list shows save found when a save is present.
Can I get the other version's exclusives?
Yes. The other version Pokémon option, off by default, puts the other version's exclusive encounters in the same spot at their rates and levels. Legendary Pokémon stay with their own version, and RetroAchievements pause while the option is on.
Bottom Line
Fulldex is now a wider product than the November 3 version we covered: seven DS games and four GBA games in one program per platform, regional support in beta across the platform builds, RetroAchievements, Action Replay cheats, save backups, and builds for Windows, Linux, Mac, Android, iOS and the Nintendo Switch. The project stands at 742 stars under GPL-3.0 with four releases that landed on November 3, 2026.
The limits are the honest part and they are printed in the README. Regional playthroughs are not verified, Platinum hides the Pokétch, SoulSilver and HeartGold pop at map borders, PC speeds are estimates, and the Mac and Android builds have each been tested on one device. Read those, bring your own ROMs, and the game list will do the rest.
Related: Pokemon Emerald Decomp: A 2015 Repository Still Builds a Byte Exact ROM, Pokemon Black 2 and White 2 Decompilation: 43,046 Functions Match and the Goal Is a PC Port
Sources: per the official Pokémon Fulldex repository README at github.com/mamesj/pokemon-fulldex, fetched in full on November 4, 2026; repository metadata (742 stars, 41 forks, 37 open issues, GPL-3.0, created October 25, 2026, language C++) re-verified via the GitHub API on November 4, 2026; release notes and download counts for pc-v1, ios-v1, android-v1 and all-games-v2 (November 3, 2026) from the same repository.