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Pokémon FireRed & LeafGreen are coming to Nintendo Switch!

When Gen I and II Pokémon games were announced for the 3DS, I was not excited the slightest because those games were not meant for me in terms of QoL and graphics. I didn't grow up playing those games, as the first games I played were the Gen III games, and my absolute favorites were FireRed & LeafGreen rather than Hoenn installments, so for me the nostalgia kicker is those two games. I've been waiting since forever for my favorite Kanto iteration games to be released and here we are! I am so excited to finally play those games with the online features!
 
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I’m extremely excited to play those games again, especially with online features now for the first time!!
Uhh I got some bad news for ya.

Unless you're specifically excited for Pokémon Home compatibility, there are no online features being added to the games other than that.
 
To be honest, I'm really glad these games aren't going to be part of the NSO collection, which means I'll be able to play them (since I'll never get NSO). I was actually thinking of replaying LeafGreen sometime this year, and this will make it a lot easier than using the old GBA version. :skiploom:
 
RSE next? GSC were released on VC after gen 1 so why not :bulbaLol:
Feeling tempted to pick up FireRed since I still have my childhood LeafGreen cartridge, give me the Gen 3 events and I'm sold

Unless you're specifically excited for Pokémon Home compatibility, there are no online features being added to the games other than that.
I remember being so disappointed when Crystal VC came, told a friend I'd trade with him and we found out multiplayer was local only :jessie:
 
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I still have my GBA and cartridges. I also have Yellow, the game I remember more fondly.

But this is a good thing. All Pokemon games should be playable on modern hardware.
 
I will likely just play the Gen 1 remakes on my DS outside of Pokemon Home support.

Also the games are seemingly PEGI 3 in Europe despite having the game corner.
$20 each for ROMs instead of just sticking them on the NSO GBA app because God forbid they 'devalue' the Pokémon brand or something.
Likely something with GameFreak specifically since spin-offs have not issue.

If had to guess the actual reasons, they likely didn't want the cloud save, save state or rewind feature that is possible on the NSO app.
 
I'm just happy they aren't on NSO c':

Admittedly, I also wish it was $20 for both of them bundled and not separately, but I'll live. I'm always down for a rerun of Kanto and I'm already started putting together a team in my head (I just gotta double check to see what the exclusives are... but I'm pretty much locked in to LG rn.)
 
Mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I've wanted the GBA/DS games on the Switch for ages, partly because I am no longer 8 years old and using a DS for a prolonged period hurts my hands and neck lmao, and partly because Bank's ever-looming shutdown means it'd be nice to have the older games available in a way that preserves forward-transferring. I think having every gen playable on one console, with full transferring between all of them, would be very very cool.

That said, while I hope this is a sign of more to come, I'm not gonna delude myself into thinking that vision would become a reality, even if we do get more. And even just taking these at face value, the price is a bit steep, the implementation seems as barebones as possible (no online + different purchases for different languages is really rough), and FRLG are by far the games I care least about out of all of gens 3 and 4. I do agree it's nice they're not on the NSO thing though. Never been a fan of the whole "pay a membership to get access to games" model.
 
$20 each for ROMs instead of just sticking them on the NSO GBA app because God forbid they 'devalue' the Pokémon brand or something.

Likely something with GameFreak specifically since spin-offs have not issue.

If had to guess the actual reasons, they likely didn't want the cloud save, save state or rewind feature that is possible on the NSO app.
Still not sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, I think you would actually save money in the long run, since GBA games are on the Expansion Pass which is $30 more and you have to re-up every year. Not a big fan of the $20 price tag, though.

I'm gonna have to think about this (but will probably pick one up). The Sevii Islands are cool, but lack of Fairy type and Physical/Special split may be hard to go back to. The fact that I already have both versions of Let's Go may also be a factor.
 
Woohoo!!! Buying them day one!!! I still have my GBA copies of the games from when I first bought them, but I'm so happy to be able to get them on Switch too!! I wonder why they didn't put out the other GBA games, like Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald too? Maybe they're doing them later? Or Red, Blue, Yellow, Gold, Silver, and Crystal as well? Eh, who knows? Game Freak is weird like that. I still have RBY and GSC on both my 3DSes so even if they don't come to Switch, it's no big loss for me. And hey, Pokemon Home compatibility with FRLG means that I can transfer my GBC mons to FRLG on Switch! I'll have a reason to use Pokemon Bank again!
 
Sometimes you get a product you want, but in a presentation you don't want. I've been wanting to replay this game for ages, as I only played it in 2008 before losing it and I liked the accesibility, the artstyle and the postgame. But times have changed, Pokemon has changed, and slapping it on the Switch without any upgrade is just...ugh, and probably worse than the VC versions of RBY we saw 10 years ago.
-No online connectivity, so trade evolutions and versión exclusives are pretty much locked for me.
-No versions of RSE on the horizon, so this is pretty much an anti-Dexit person's worst nightmare as it will forever be a game with an incomplete mon roster.
-No Deoxys event, which was the only mythical to get zero attention in the Switch era and I know many people need it for completing BDSP's national dex.

Things that would not cost much to make but as always they go after our wallets with minimal investment.
 
I'm hoping that the reason they revealed FRLG specificially a week early is because on Pokemon Day they'll show off a roadmap for further games to be released on the EShop over the next year or so. Something like...

-April-May: GSC and/or HGSS
-Summer: RSE and/or ORAS
-Winter: DPPt
-Q1 2027: BW1+2

If they did this by the end we would've approached something at least resembling acceptable access to the older games while being appropriate to celebrate the anniversary by touring from era to era over a year's time. Still subpar, honestly, but even this feels unreasonable to expect so I dunno
 
I am going to hold off on getting these, mostly because I want to see if they add the ticket event items in or not and also because I like to see what else gets revealed. I've seen some discussions(tm) on pricing and I'm not touching that with a 100 ft pole but 20 USD is surprisingly tame of a price given what I expected.
 
20 USD is surprisingly tame of a price given what I expected.

When you consider that when they first came out, the GBA games were $30-40 each, $20 is literally pocket change. Not sure what the big deal is with the price, especially since nowadays the physical GBA cartridges go beyond $150 now.
 
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