Preorders for Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen go live on the eShop, games to be released on February 27th

As Pokémon Day draws closer, a recent rumor circulating the internet has been confirmed. Nintendo Switch ports of the Generation III remakes Pokémon FireRed and Pokémon LeafGreen, have become available for preorder on the Nintendo eShop. As of writing, no formal announcement about this has been made by official sources outside of these eShop listings.

Individual English, French, and European Spanish versions of each game are available in most western regions; other languages are available in other regions. Each game is around 40MB in size, and costs $20 USD. Pokémon HOME support is also confirmed to be added for the games at a later date. However, it appears there will be no support for online multiplayer: the description in the eShop only mentions local communication.

It's unknown if this early shadowdrop was intended, or if these were intended to be announced and released on Pokémon Day and them showing up now was simply accidental.

UPDATE: An official trailer has now been released. The UK version of this trailer shows a PEGI 3 rating, which may suggest that modifications have been made to the Celadon Game Corner. The Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console releases of the Generation I and Generation II games were all rated PEGI 12 due to the inclusion of the Game Corner, and in the years since, it's become common that games with any gambling elements at all receive an automatic rated PEGI 18 rating. It's worth noting that ESRB rates them E10+, citing simulated gambling, so the American versions appear to be unmodified.

UPDATE 2: Nintendo has removed mention of Pokémon HOME support from the games' eShop page. It's unclear whether this point was made in error.

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