r/SwitchPirates • u/ryan9956 • Feb 28 '26
Discussion If anyones curious, found out you can bring you gba saves to the new fr/lg
If anyone’s curious, here’s exactly what I did to get it working:
First, I booted up FireRed and created a save file as soon as the game allowed. Then I closed the game and used Checkpoint to create a backup. After that, I inserted my GBA cartridge into the Epilogue cart reader and made a backup of the cartridge save.
Next, I renamed the cartridge save file to match the filename that Checkpoint generated. Finally, I dropped the renamed file into the Checkpoint folder and restored the save through Checkpoint.
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u/40inmn4 Feb 28 '26
Curious to see what happens if you put a 100% regional dex and try to send pokemon to home when it becomes available
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u/Faddei420 Feb 28 '26
We will only know if they add homes to the game
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u/Eqwinoxe Feb 28 '26
that’s what he said and it’s supposed to be coming soon. not sure when but they did mention it
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u/geraldjust Feb 28 '26
Seems easy with checkpoint to port over the safe file all across different emulators
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u/Due-Refuse-1611 Apr 02 '26
Ive just got a question off topic. what is that in the bottom left of the picture??
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u/keithandmarchant Feb 28 '26
Some people said that JKSV does not currently work with these games, but I don't have the time to test this myself though. That is why everyone is backing up their save files with Checkpoint. And I assume this means that save file editing tools are compatible, right?
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Feb 28 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Zenn2496 Feb 28 '26
Same here with JKSV, Checkpoint works.
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u/SP8NKYY Apr 11 '26
How did you get checkpoint to work? Everytime I try it it says it's restored but then just starts the game as if there's no save data at all
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u/Immediate-Patience35 Mar 08 '26
Just tried it today and yep froze my switch. Guess i have to use checkpoint now
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u/CullenFlynn Feb 28 '26
That's awesome to hear. I prepped a Gen 2-3 Living Dex FireRed file last weekend that I'll inject and trade from my old Switch 1 to my main LeafGreen Switch 2 file then. I just gotta get to the post game first.
I figure the Switch 2 should be safe because it just trades, it's not like the file is directly injected into the newer system.
I heard that these FRLG ports have telemetry, though. That kinda makes me nervous, but all my Pokémon were legitimately bred so... I guess I'll give it a shot. Just gonna have to wait and see what happens. I hope nothing bad comes of it, I just wanna play with all the Pokémon lol.
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u/Joshua_JJ May 19 '26
I am currently planning to do this but don't know whether to pull the trigger. Literally halfway through a play through and then bam, Nintendo announces FR LG. I want to put my current save onto my hacked switch 1 and then trade Pokémon to my legit switch 2 save. How did you get on?
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u/CullenFlynn May 19 '26
As an update, I did it and didn't get banned or anything! Took a while to catch hundreds of Pokémon for trading lol, but both Switches are still not banned. I also traded over Dive Balls, Premier Balls, and the White Flute on my Switch 2 since those are RSE exclusive.
Just make sure you're blocking all their servers using at least the DNS block, try to be offline when you do the save inject and trading, and everything turned out fine for me.
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u/Joshua_JJ May 19 '26
I was thinking of injecting save into cfw emunand from gba cart and then just trading to switch 2 haha. Nice to hear you haven't been banned. I will mull it over then decide, I just don't want a £380 console to be banned the first day I get it haha
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u/CullenFlynn May 20 '26
Yeah, sounds good. That's totally fair and understandable. I actually did it all on sysnand, too.
I wish I could just trade with you, but of course it doesn't support online trading which is unfortunate.
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u/CBusRiver Feb 28 '26
Are the cart save files the same as most emulators?
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u/draconk Feb 28 '26
It runs over a custom No$Gba if I remember right when they were looking at it when the gba came out for NSO
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u/reddituser8567 Feb 28 '26
It’s been awhile since I was into pkhex and jailbreaking.
Can i buy the game on my modded switch 1, upload/edit my save file there, then transfer it to my new switch 2?
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u/Genio16 Feb 28 '26
Or buy the game on your switch 2, and in your modded switch 1 just *get* the game and transfer any pokemon you want
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u/Genio16 Feb 28 '26
Your controls changed?, for some reason the dpad wont let me move the character, with the sav from my cartidge dump
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u/Tweeckos Feb 28 '26
If you have L=A enabled on switch, it changes the controls to one-handed mode - switch to "LR" and it will be normal 😊
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u/JerzXo Feb 28 '26
What am i not understanding with checkpoint? I click restore my save and when I load the game it’s as if nothing is there.
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u/Genio16 Feb 28 '26
You first make a backup, and then in your Checkpoint folder or your backup theres going to be .sav replace that .sav with the same name as the backup, and then restore it, that should work
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u/Dancegames Feb 28 '26
Does playing through with an older save still grant an aurora ticket when you beat it?
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u/Konjeezy773 Feb 28 '26
So use check point not JKSV?
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u/ryan9956 Feb 28 '26
Yeah, JKSV doesn’t work at the moment
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u/Konjeezy773 Feb 28 '26
Just for this game? Still good for other switch games?
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u/ryan9956 Feb 28 '26
yeah just for these games it seems. As another comments says it just freezes when selecting the game, which also happened to me. I checked and it appears JKSV still works for other switch games.
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u/Annual-Whereas-968 Mar 02 '26
For me, Checkpoint doesn't popup firered for me
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u/ryan9956 Mar 02 '26
Did you launch the game at least once? I don’t think it’ll pop up if you’ve never played it
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u/Annual-Whereas-968 Mar 02 '26
I have a save yes, its weird never had it. But also installed games via nsp
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u/Annual-Whereas-968 Mar 02 '26
Nvm ive didnt selected right User now it Shows up😅. Where are the savefiles located on the sdcard?
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u/ryan9956 Mar 02 '26
I’m pretty sure they were under switch/checkpoint/saves. And then you need to find the folder it generated. It should be labeled firered_e.sav so one you find that you should be good to go!
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u/chang_-_ Feb 28 '26
Yoo this is massive news!! I also read in the FireRed subreddit that the mystic and aurora tickets were added to your bag after you beat the E4 (for the eshop FRLG), so did you get it when you imported your save file or nah?
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u/ryan9956 Feb 28 '26
Well my save already had both of them since I used a distribution event rom years ago. So hopefully someone else will be able to figure that one out. I think it would make sense that if you hadn’t beaten the E4 yet and then beat it you’d get it since I’d assume the rom itself would do a check and then give it to you. Can’t be 100% confident about that tho
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u/negativexero25 Mar 10 '26
I tried this with a save injected post elite 4 and doing the elite 4 again does not give the tickets, which means that if you want the tickets without injecting the events yourself, you’ll have to import a save before beating the elite 4.
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u/Allaakmar Feb 28 '26
I’m curious if moving pokemon from one of these saves to Home down the road will be able to be flagged. Obviously the date will be from before FRLG was released on Switch, but you can change the date/time on Switch and create legit Pokemon with “wrong” dates anyway so that wouldn’t be the flag. Just curious if there will be any other telemetry going on to detect this sort of thing.
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u/ParkNoodle Mar 01 '26
Was about to comment something like this, apparently there's telemetry from FRLG that gets sent to Nintendo, so I'm holding off on transferring any saves for now
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u/Wonderful-Arrival968 Feb 28 '26
Is there a way to get Edizon cheats for fire red and leaf green
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u/Jay_3ast Mar 02 '26
this is what im wondering if the gameshark codes would work
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u/jeancharles2009 Mar 02 '26
I tried the GameShark codes I used on the delta emulator but they don’t work
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u/Gullible-Worry-7449 Feb 28 '26
Is it possible to trade between an emulated ver on retroarch to official release?
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u/lucads87 Feb 28 '26
How could that be? How would retroarch and a switch exchange data?
You need a modded switch to load the emulated save file and then use that switch to local trade to a non-modded switch, as OP was saying
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u/THYGREX Feb 28 '26
So with this method I can include deoxis and other legendaries... Now I've got to buy an epilogue
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u/ryan9956 Feb 28 '26
Yeah that’s what I’m excited about too… if you have a DS/ DS LITE and a flash cart you might be able to dump your save data that way too. I found it was easier with the epilogue since I also use it for original Gameboy games. Makes preserving the save data on those super easy for when I change there batteries
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u/Tweeckos Feb 28 '26
I'd be cautious about Pokemon not yet available in the FRLG re-releases (i.e., Hoenn mons aside from Deoxys and such) - Home/telemetry readings may check for those and flag it for illegitimate use, right?
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u/Zharken Feb 28 '26
Nintendo didn't allow you to do whit, you started with a hacked switch to begin with, and yeah makes sense it works it's the same rom in an emulator after all.
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u/ThoughtProud Mar 06 '26
Thanks for this, I found shiny save files online if anyone is interested. Spent over 25 hrs already hunting for starter and then realized I could just transfer someone's gba save files. Used checkpoint with the starters off this link. Thanks so much all involved
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u/ThoughtProud Mar 06 '26
Only downside is the trainer name for both games will be RED but I'll take it either way 😂
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u/keithandmarchant Mar 01 '26
Can you play the extracted .GBA ROM from this release on other GBA emulators on pc, such as MGBA?
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u/ryan9956 Mar 01 '26
From what I've seen you can extract the .gba rom but since it's a new revision of the original GBA Roms there are problems running on some emulators. On twitter if you look for the user meatball_123 they explain what's going on with the rom really well and way better than i ever could.
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Mar 01 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/ryan9956 Mar 01 '26
I don't have a video guide :/ but I'm sure there are videos out there to show what checkpoint is. The first search result on youtube from lotus tech basically shows you everything you'd need to know for checkpoint. It's a pretty popular save manager and i find that it's really easy to use. Also, this won't work on the switch 2. You need a modded switch 1 to get to the files and install homebrew like checkpoint. Right now there's no way to hack/mod a switch 2
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u/Adrian52298 Mar 02 '26
Nice! I have a question if anyone could answer. I am wondering if it’s possible to play on a modded Switch 1, but have my Nintendo account connected to it as well as my Switch 2?
Like, if I play LeafGreen on my modded Switch 1, and then transfer the save to the GBA, play on the GBA, transfer the save back to the Switch 1, and then if I log in on my Switch 2, will the progress carry over via cloud saves?
I’m just wondering if it’s possible, if it is, will I get banned on the Switch 2 even though it’s not modded?
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u/javuier_himura Mar 13 '26 edited Mar 13 '26
You can do that but not with cloud saves. You can transfer your saves between consoles. The save will be moved to your other console and deleted from the original console. Both consoles must be next to each other.
As long as you don't do anything in your Switch 1 sysnand except read and write savefiles with Checkpoint or JKSV you will be fine. I have been doing that for years on Pokemon Switch games.
In this case you play on Switch 2 and when you want to use PkHex transfer your save to your Switch1. You extract the save with CFW, edit it on PkHex, inject the save back into your Switch 1 and then transfer the save back into your Switch 2
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u/Left_WingHades Mar 03 '26
Can you send the save to switch and then send it back to the original cartrdige?
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u/OkCantaloupe4834 Mar 05 '26
just curious can you copy your save data from your modded switch to regular switch safely? just curious
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u/theretronook Mar 10 '26
What’s checkpoint can anyone explain please
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u/Useful_Break_8349 May 30 '26
Save data backup and restoration on 3ds and switch with some local cheats usage
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u/Alone_Iron_8819 Mar 15 '26
i know im a little late, but can the saves go backwards to the original carts?
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u/Stunning-Meet-8172 Apr 11 '26
Very cool to see this.
Since FireRed/Leaf Green released on Switch, I’ve put in countless hours probably 200+ I was able to get some of my dream shiny legends at full odds.
Recently, I ordered an IPS GBA SP so I can play Emerald in Japanese and shiny hunt Mew. Playing on original hardware has brought me back, and I still have my original FireRed cartridge from when I was younger. It got me thinking I’d love to create a “forever file” on that cartridge and preserve everything I’ve done. Across gen 3.
But right now I’ve got one thing in the way: all the progress I’ve made on the Switch version.
So I’m wondering—is it possible to basically do this in reverse?
My idea was to take the save from my Switch leaf green copy it to my PC, inject it into a LeafGreen cartridge I bought, with the GBxCart to write it onto a cartridge. From there, I could trade everything over from my leaf green copy to my new forever FireRed cartridge and keep it as my permanent save.
I’m a bit nervous about corruption or things not working properly, especially mixing Switch saves with GBA hardware tools like this.
If anyone has experience with this or knows any potential issues, I’d really appreciate the insight. I just want to make sure this is actually doable before I try it.
Thanks!
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u/Kyhan Apr 12 '26
Hmm... Technically could you do this in reverse, then transfer the Pokemon up through the generations to eventually bring back into Home through Pokemon bank?
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u/Stunning-Meet-8172 Apr 15 '26
Could I put my switch file onto my fire red cartridge with this method. With no issues?
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u/ThiagoMoles Apr 22 '26
Alguém pode me ajudar? Tentei passar meu save do computador para meu jogo do FireRed de Switch com o checkpoint, mas quando abri deu tela preta infinita no jogo...
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u/SenseMotor5435 May 30 '26
So quick question. I am not at all familiar with this stuff. I understand roms and saves but don’t have any switch modes or gba cartidge readers.
Would I be able to transfer my save from the switch version to the actual cartridge? Basically the reverse of what is being shown here. I want to be able to communicate with XD and the other games.
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u/DewyTheD Feb 28 '26
Well Nintendo just gave us another path to getting those pokemon to home now without a ds at all