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SPOILERS! 2026 FireRed/LeafGreen Switch rerelease announced (standalone purchase)

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https://twitter.com/x/status/2024732629321601441

lol

- Currently on the eShop listed as a pre-order for February 27 2026, digital exclusive
- (it's not on the GBA NSO but it's probably still GBA FRLG)
- (FRLG ACE may be particularly relevant now)
- $20 USD/$30 CAD
- Each language/version is a separate purchase
- The Wireless Club is still in local wireless
- Description claims Pokemon HOME support is "coming soon"
- Rated ESRB E10+ for Mild Fantasy Violence and Simulated Gambling

EDIT: Online store link for further confirmation:
https://www.nintendo.com/en-ca/store/products/english-pokemon-firered-version-switch/
https://store-jp.nintendo.com/item/software/D70010000113121

EDIT: When you think about it, more time has passed since LGPE's release to FRLG's rerelease now than English RB to FRLG's original release so now the letsgunners can enjoy a remake for their nostalgia.

EDIT: Physical bundle for Japan.
https://bsky.app/profile/serebii.bsky.social%2Fpost%2F3mfbn47iaz22n

EDIT: Official announcement trailer (spoilers for vanilla FRLG).
https://twitter.com/x/status/2024757682851233891
 
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I just checked and the two versions (like the actual games, not just the languages) are totally separate purchases. And the description seems to indicate there are zero QoL additions (read: save states, extra files, or rewind) for this release.

Plus of course it's a purely Kanto circlejerk. Could have at least dropped Emerald on us.
 
Karxrida said:
(read: save states, extra files, or rewind)
Click to expand...

To be fair, no main series Pokémon game has ever offered these things, so I wouldn’t have expected that to change here. Part of the whole reason why one would even make these a standalone release on the eShop instead of bundling them with an NSO+ sub would be to circumvent those features. Game Freak pretty clearly consider those things a big no-no.

(Yes, technically you can have multiple saves of the Switch games by making extra user profiles, but obviously that’s not an inherent feature of the games themselves. It’s just a byproduct of how the Switch is designed.)
 
Makes me wonder if this game will have Collosseum compatibility when that games launches on Switch online. Has there been any new updates on that? Anyway, I hope they fix the roaming Pokemon glitch in these games and the IV bug.
 
https://bsky.app/profile/pldhnet.bsky.social%2Fpost%2F3mfbixe5rn22u
Cleaner shots of the entire product listing on the eShop.
With nothing else to talk about I like the attention to detail of naming the rival BLUE as in canon instead of the default of RED/GREEN, I guess.

DreamPrince said:
Makes me wonder if this game will have Collosseum compatibility when that games launches on Switch online. Has there been any new updates on that? Anyway, I hope they fix the roaming Pokemon glitch in these games and the IV bug.
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No word on it but if anything happens in the near future it might be for Pokemon Day.
 
I'll stay on the camp of "20 bucks for a 20 year old game with 0 updates isn't worth it".

That said, *if* it gets confirmed to have Home connectivity, I'll cave in and get one. I haven't played FRLG and I have little reason to even consider emulators, but Home connectivity would be one more way to get older mons and legendaries and I enjoy collecting those.
 
I hope these releases include old events like Navel Rock and Birth Island, similar to how they included the GS ball within VC Crystal. That’d actually be a big selling point for the Switch version since it’d be the only way to get these events officially in modern times, and not through cheating or glitches.

Even more unrealistically, hoping for NSO Colosseum and XD compatibility, but that’s wishful thinking and idk how they’d go about doing that. Perhaps since the re-releases are standalone, the games can read what your party is on your save file?
 
If this game receives robust withdraw-deposit styled Pokemon Home support, that's some absolute damn wizardry. As far as I'm aware, there's nowhere by default on the Pokémon's data for a Home ID, or any of the basic other features you have in a modern Pokémon's file. Would probably need some sort of external script tracking all of your Pokemon all the time or something? I'm way more expecting Pokemon Transfers "plop down a box and it's a one-way street to the future forever" if anything. If I can deposit my middle school venusaur back into FRLG though, it really will feel like some Knuckles in Sonic 2 magic type shit, more than Pokémon Home does that already.

It'll be very funny if RSE are not also eventually released and your national dex is stuck as all of kanto + a light smattering of Johto + exactly two Hoenn Pokemon.
 
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I wonder how the Home connectivity handles Pokémon that you can't legally obtain in FRLG. If I obtain a Treecko in the game through either glitches or hacks, will Home reject it? Most likely yes, if I had to guess.

In a cruel twist of fate, these Gen 3 games don't have Spinda legally obtainable in them, so Spinda is still going to be stuck in homeless purgatory.

If the Deoxys event is included, this rerelease will be the first time Deoxys will be natively obtainable on Switch, without needing a transfer from 3DS or GO.
 
Wireless local killed it for me. The feature I'd be most interested in is to be able to revive the experience I had when I was a child, but using the technological paradigm we'are living in right now. These games are targeted towards 30 years old who want to relive the nostalgic experience, as such, I'd like to be able to battle but specially trade with my friends and others. It just happens that most of those friends, as things are in life, stop being 13 years old kids a long time ago, and I do not have the opportunities nor the disposition to walk 8 hours a day on the streets, Switch 2 in hand, asking for Cable Link trades.

It'd have been easy enough to edit the games in such a way that allow for online functionalities regarding trading and battling instead of just having to find another person in 2026 who owns the games (which in my city is also a no-go), but since they didn't do that with GSC I didn't expect them to do here either.
 
R_N said:
$20 is very funny

I'll be extremely interested in if it activates the extra content. Yellow had the surfing game always available and Crystal had the Celebi event, but precedent doesn't mean much & I feel like that would be something you show off in the trailer.
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This is mega hopium, but if they do plan on re-releasing the events, they might be waiting for Pokemon Day to announce them. They also scrubbed Home mentions on the store pages, which could be a Pokemon Day announcement, too.
 
I think what’s going to happen with the GameCube games is that those will also be HOME-compatible but not have trading access with these GBA games. We’ll have to see what they end up doing for the other GBA games if anything- my money’s on Emerald next- but given the complications that would come from GameCube <—> GBA trading being a Switch 2 exclusive feature anyway, I’m honestly pretty satisfied with this announcement in general and don’t really have any complaints. One regular Switch 1 game is $60 and both of these combined are $40, and what this will hopefully lead to is more of these games being available later down the line at a similar price point.
 
bdt2002 said:
I think what’s going to happen with the GameCube games is that those will also be HOME-compatible but not have trading access with these GBA games. We’ll have to see what they end up doing for the other GBA games if anything- my money’s on Emerald next- but given the complications that would come from GameCube <—> GBA trading being a Switch 2 exclusive feature anyway, I’m honestly pretty satisfied with this announcement in general and don’t really have any complaints. One regular Switch 1 game is $60 and both of these combined are $40, and what this will hopefully lead to is more of these games being available later down the line at a similar price point.
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There's no complications of hypothetical trading being S2 exclusive. It would just be disabled on S1 or only available through the GameCube side of things.

I'm guessing that, unless they disable save states (kinda doubtful at this juncture, but we'll see), the gamecube games wont have any home compatability and that'll also be the reason to not enable "trading" between them & their GBA counterparts.
 
bdt2002 said:
One regular Switch 1 game is $60 and both of these combined are $40, and what this will hopefully lead to is more of these games being available later down the line at a similar price point.
Click to expand...

Don't want to start a discussion on this, but I find myself unable to restrain my answering on this matter. The way you just phrased this is almost as if we had to thank Game Freak or TPC for the price. So, let me rephrase it to a thing that makes a bit more sense.

These are GBA games from 2004 selling at 20 Euros 22 years later. This is the same price Hollow Knight: Silksong, was released a few months ago. I don't even have to, and will not, start to compare the development that went into a modern game of the size of Silksong versus porting, just like that, a game from -again- 2004.

I don't get, either, why do you compare the prices of both games combined as being inferior to just 1 title, as if saying "20 Euros is so cheap than even if you double it, it is still less than just 60!". You can compare it too to 2 modern Pokémon titles combined, raising it to 120 Euros. Also, who are we trying to deceive; we've been playing this shit for 30 years, we do know that the 2 versions are not 2 different games, they are the same game with minor differences. It's not as if you are pairing Super Metroid with Sonic The Hedgehog 3. That's not the difference you are buying when you buy both Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire.

The worst thing that could happen in fact is for these games to retain the 20 Euros price in the future. Should I remember you than some GBA games were given freely in the 3DS era, and others sold for a price of like 5 Euros.
 
Having a physical copy of Pokémon FireRed Version, I might bite one or both anyway depending on:

- Compatibility with any Nintendo Switch (2?) Release of Pokémon Colosseum or Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness
- Compatibility with Pokémon Home (would be neat to migrate Pokémon from my original FireRed or other games to the Switch release, but it may be one-way)
- Availability of Navel Rock, Altering Cave, etc
- Barring official access to events, availability of ACE (will almost certainly be patched)

Based on extrapolations from past re-releases, it will likely be a mixed bag. Game-breaking glitches are present in the Virtual Console released of Generation I and II games, along with the event Celebi quest in the Gen II rereleases. However, the Nintendo Switch release of Pokémon Stadium has no Pokémon Home compatibility (as I recall). These rereleases may also be a one-off, attempting to capitalize on nostalgia for Pokémon's 30th anniversary ahead of a likely Generation X. Otherwise, they may have revealed additional games (such as Ruby and Sapphire Versions) or even a compilation of classic Pokémon games. Then again, maybe there will be further rereleases anyway, simply trickled throughout the Nintendo Switch 2's lifespan. It will be interesting to see what these releases mean going forward.
 
I forgot to mention Home Access is super important because I want to use the mons via Pokemon Champion

(That and try emulator specific glitches / Glitch Mons.)
 
Alright, I’ll bite. The real reason I said these were a good deal even though they’re… really not as good as I made it out to be was because of two reasons. For starters, I initially projected this to be set at $30 U.S. a piece if these even happened at all. The other reason is because I was comparing this when I wrote my first post to the Super Mario Galaxy ports which are $40 U.S. each and $70 for the bundle. I guess what I was trying to say was that this is a decent deal relative to what it could have been, but I’ll admit I can see why some people are upset about this. I apologize for the confusion.

FireRed & LeafGreen are definitely not the worst games though, I can tell you that :worrywhirl: I can think of at least four games that are all worse lol
 
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