Can You Play Pokémon on the R36S? Every Generation Explained

The short version: the R36S plays the handheld Pokémon games from the first three generations perfectly, because Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance emulation is trivial for hardware of this class. The Nintendo DS generations run too, but with caveats around speed and controls. Anything from generation 6 onwards was released on the 3DS or the Switch and is well beyond what any R36S-class handheld can do.

Here it is generation by generation, followed by the two things people always ask next: trading and saving.

Which Pokémon generations run on the R36S?

Every mainline Pokémon game launched on a Nintendo handheld, so the question is really which of those handhelds the R36S can emulate. Here is the whole picture in one table.

How well do the Game Boy and Game Boy Color games run?

Perfectly. The original Game Boy ran at 160×144 pixels on a 4 MHz processor, so emulating it costs a modern handheld almost nothing. Generation 1 and generation 2 games run at full speed with no tinkering, and they barely touch the battery — these are the titles most likely to beat the quoted 6+ hours of runtime.

The obvious upgrade is the screen: a 3.5-inch IPS panel at 640×480 with an adjustable backlight, a different world from the unlit green-grey original. If you prefer the authentic look, most firmware includes shader and palette options that recreate the old LCD grid.

One thing to watch with generation 2: those games track real time for day and night cycles, which relies on the emulator's real-time clock support and on the handheld knowing the right time. If nocturnal encounters never appear, that is where to look first.

Are the Game Boy Advance games the best way to play?

For most people, yes. Generation 3 on the Game Boy Advance is where a retro handheld genuinely improves on the original experience, mainly because of the screen. The original GBA had no backlight at all, and a whole generation of players fought to find a well-lit room. On an IPS panel those games finally look the way the artists intended.

Performance is a non-issue too: GBA emulation is light enough that every model in the range handles it without breaking a sweat, with no settings to tune. Add save states, which suit a long RPG on a commute far better than hunting for a Pokémon Centre before your stop, and you have the best way to replay these games. Our round-up of the best GBA games on a retro handheld covers the wider library.

Generation 3 also keeps time, for berry growth and tides, so the same real-time clock note applies as for generation 2.

Can the R36S run Nintendo DS Pokémon games?

This is the honest bit. Nintendo DS is listed among the systems GameBro handhelds emulate, and generation 4 and 5 games do run — but "runs" and "runs perfectly" are not the same thing.

The R36S family is built on Rockchip RK3326-class hardware, which sits below what full-speed DS emulation comfortably needs. Community testing on these handhelds consistently reports that the mostly 2D Pokémon DS games are among the better-behaved DS titles, typically playable with a small amount of frameskip enabled. Busier moments — double battles, heavy 3D camera work, large overworld scenes — are where the frame rate dips, and generation 5 leans on 3D far more than generation 4 does.

Then there are the controls. The DS had two screens and a stylus; the R36S has one screen and no touch input. Firmware either squeezes both DS screens onto the one panel, making each of them small, or shows one at a time and lets you switch, with touch mapped to a stick-driven cursor. For Pokémon that is workable, because the bottom screen is mostly menus, but it will never feel like the original.

So treat generations 4 and 5 as a bonus on top of a device that is outstanding at generations 1 to 3, not as the headline feature. The R36S Max, with its larger 4.0-inch screen, does make the squeezed dual-screen layout easier to read, although it changes nothing about performance.

Can you trade or battle between two handhelds?

Realistically, no. The original link cable and wireless features are not meaningfully reproduced by the emulator cores these handhelds use, and the standard R36S has no WiFi or Bluetooth. Even the R36S Ultra, which adds both, uses them for file transfers and audio rather than for linking two consoles to trade.

That matters more here than in almost any other series, because trading is built into the design:

• Trade evolutions. Several species only evolve when traded. Without a link, they stay as they are.
• Version exclusives. Each pair of games deliberately withholds certain species so the two versions have to be combined.
• Completing the Pokédex. Between those two constraints, a genuinely complete single-cartridge Pokédex is not possible on original hardware either.

So a complete Pokédex is off the table, and so are link battles with the person next to you. Everything single-player — the story, the gyms, the Elite Four, the post-game — works exactly as it should, which for most people replaying a childhood favourite is the whole game.

How do saves and save states work?

There are two separate ways to save, and the difference matters.

In-game saving is the real one. When you save inside the game, the emulator writes to a file on the card that mirrors the battery-backed save on an original cartridge. That is your permanent progress.

Save states snapshot the whole console at that instant, mid-battle or mid-sentence, and restore it later — ideal for a commute, or for retrying a risky legendary encounter.

The rule that prevents most lost progress: always save in game before you shut down, and treat save states as a convenience on top. It is also worth copying your save folder to a computer now and then.

What is already on the card, and what can you add?

Every R36S ships with a 128 GB microSD card holding more than 40,000 games across 20+ systems, ready to play out of the box. The exact contents vary between batches and firmware versions, so rather than promise specific titles, here is how to add your own.

The device uses two cards: one holds the operating system and emulators, the other holds the games, and you only ever touch the second. Our guide on how to add games to the R36S covers which slot is which, the right folder for each system, the file formats each emulator accepts, and how to make new titles appear.

On the legal side: emulators are legal and the devices are ordinary consumer electronics, but the legality of any given ROM depends on its copyright status and how you obtained it. Only add backups of games you legally own; GameBro does not supply ROMs. Our guide to whether retro handhelds are legal in the UK explains where the lines fall in plain English.

The bottom line

If you want to replay the Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance Pokémon games, the R36S is close to ideal: full speed, a backlit IPS screen and save states, for the price of a couple of takeaways. If you specifically want the Nintendo DS generations, it will run them, but you will be managing frameskip and a stick-driven cursor rather than playing them as they were designed.

The trade-off worth weighing is trading itself: single-player, everything works; link features do not, and no setting will change that. For most people revisiting a childhood favourite on the train, that is a price worth paying at £34.39.

The R36S product page has the full specs, colour options and customer reviews. Everything ships from UK stock with free delivery.