Yesterday Nintendo announced that they were re-releasing Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire on the Nintendo 3DS in the form of Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire. Despite the almost unanimous praise, it left a lot of people wondering if these were straight up ports, or if they were remastered in any shape or form.

The teaser trailer that can be viewed in our original report has some vague statements like “explore a dramatic new world,” which made some people think that they might be spin-offs, or maybe even sequels of some sort. We’ve done a little digging and we’ve found something interesting that we think you’d find interesting.

Yesterday Nintendo also published a financial results briefing that had a whopping operating loss for the company, information that I’m sure they didn’t want to make public. However, buried in that briefing  is a very curious statement that pertains to the newly announced games, it reads:

They are full-remakes of the Game Boy Advance “Pokémon Ruby” and “Pokémon Sapphire” games, which sold more than 5.44 million units in Japan and more than 16.22 million units worldwide.

Now, this could just be Nintendo PR speak trying to dress up the fact that they’re just up-res’ed or something, but it could be an indicator that the games truly are remade for the 3DS. The presser even mentions a “spectacular new world,” as we mentioned in our original report.

What do you guys think? Regardless, these are two of my favorite games within the series, so it’s exciting for me to see them come back.