Pokemon FireRed and Pokemon LeafGreen are coming to Nintendo Switch on Saturday, and as standalone releases rather than being part of the Nintendo Switch Online Game Boy Advance library. Both games are up for preorder now, for NZD $33 each. Yes, that’s a lot (especially if you want both!), but still a lot cheaper than trying to brave the secondhand market …
FireRed and LeafGreen are remakes of the original Pokemon games, released for Game Boy Advance in 2004. They’re a faithful recreation of Red and Blue, but with the graphical style and new mechanics introduced in Ruby and Sapphire. The remakes also add the Sevii Islands, a new area to explore after completing the main game where Pokemon from later generations could be found.
The Nintendo Switch releases appear to be the GBA games running through an emulator (rather than a direct port or a remaster), similar to the way the Nintendo Classics games work for Nintendo Switch Online. Unfortunately, that means that there’s a separate release for each different language, rather than language being a menu option—the original carts were released with only one language per cartridge.
When the preorders first opened up, the game descriptions included a mention of Pokemon Home support coming soon. The store listings have since been updated to remove anything about Pokemon Home, which is a little odd—here’s hoping it’s still something that’s planned, and that the removal was just a case of being revealed too early.
The games are due to be released after the conclusion of the Pokemon Presents presentation that is scheduled to begin on Saturday, February 27 at 3am NZDT.
