Early this morning, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company stunned the world by announcing that Pokémon Fire Red and Leaf Green would be made available on the Switch eShop next week. Likely an announcement meant to coincide with next week’s Pokémon Presents stream, which is set for February 27th, 2026, at 6 a.m., PT, it surprised most people for one simple reason: shouldn’t these games be on the Switch Online’s GBA app? To get ahead of questions like that, Nintendo released an FAQ that “clears” up some of the confusion.
We won’t reiterate the pricing or bizarre decision to not include multiple languages with each purchase here. Rather, Nintendo explains that it decided to sell these games individually because it, “thought it would be fun to return to the ultimate versions of the original Pokémon adventures in the Kanto region with these special releases.” Similarly, Nintendo decided on the GBA versions because they represent the “ultimate” ports of the original Red/Green/Blue/Yellow games.
On the one hand, it’s nice to be able to own these games instead of having to rent them from Nintendo via a subscription service. On the other hand, it’s a bit strange to not offer other mainline Pokémon games via NSO, such as the Game Boy originals. There are a load of Pokémon games already on NSO, but they are all spinoffs from the Game Boy, N64, and GBA. We aren’t likely to ever see Fire Red and Leaf Green added to NSO, either, as Nintendo writes, “These games are being offered as standalone software and are not planned for release as part of the Game Boy Advance – Nintendo Classics collection.”
Where things get a little iffy is that the FAQ outlines that there is no online support, save data backup will not be available, and Pokémon Home compatibility is potentially not included. The game listings had originally included Home in their descriptions, but that has since been removed. These re-releases will still include wireless communication support for local play, but they are otherwise GBA ROMs with a price tag and some bizarre segmentation of language options.
For now, this seems to be a 30th anniversary celebration more than anything. I guess diehard fans will be pleased, all the same.
Check out more Pokémon content
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Written by Peter Glagowski
Peter has been a freelance gaming and film critic for over seven years. His passion for Nintendo is only matched by the size of his collection.
