Pokémon FireRed & LeafGreen review for Nintendo Switch

We’re all familiar with Pokémon, right? It’s been an industry defining property essentially forever, stemming all the way back to the original release of Red and Green in Japan in 1996. Years later, as a way to get newer Pokémon fans to experience the originals, FireRed and LeafGreen released worldwide as a remake of Red and Green. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pokémon, Nintendo, GameFreak, and The Pokémon Company dropped an updated port of the Game Boy Advance games for Switch.

Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen’s re-release for the Switch was met with mixed opinions depending on where you looked and who you spoke with, but it does mean it’s available once more for players old and new alike. There was talk that maybe it should’ve been added to the Nintendo Switch Online GBA application, but that might hamper the ability for things like the Pokémon Home support that was spoken about. Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen also have each of their languages as separate versions of each game, requiring you to spend an extra $20 per language per title if you’re wanting multiple languages for your games. While this is the same game you may remember from back in the day, it does bring with it some modifications for a modern day re-release of a classic title.

Some changes to FireRed and LeafGreen include a pretty major glitch fix, a censor addition in line with modern Pokémon titles, and the inclusion of previously unobtainable event items. Pokémon Home support is planned as stated on the official game page on Nintendo’s website, but currently as of this article is not available. Status of Pokémon Home support can be seen on the official Pokémon Home website. When it comes to the bug fix, for those of us that have played the original release back on the Game Boy Advance, the frustrating interaction of roaming legendaries disappearing completely from your game when they use the move “Roar” has been patched out. This means no more trying to find the Johto legendary trio and having Raikou or Entei just disappear completely. It may not seem like a massive change but I assure you that if you were playing back then, it was extremely frustrating.

The censor addition is seemingly in line with the other modern Pokémon titles, so no naming your rival the things you used to as a kid. After some discovery, there’s still a weird issue with some actual names that I don’t fully grasp the reasoning for. There’s still some combinations of words that can slip through if you’re still determined to name Blue something goofy though.

The largest part of this release isn’t the bug fixes or the potential Home support (that last point is arguable) but the inclusion of previously exclusive event items only acquired from in-person limited time events. These items include the Aurora Ticket and the Mystic Ticket. The Aurora Ticket is how you acquired Deoxys back in the originals, but not everybody went to BestBuy, EB Games, GameStop, or whatever else was capable of hosting the item giveaways. This holds true for the Mystic Ticket as well, which enables you to get the box legends Ho-Oh and Lugia from Gold and Silver. Whenever Pokémon Home support is added for FireRed and LeafGreen, these items mean you can now transfer a legitimate Generation 3 version of Deoxys and the Generation 2 legendaries without needing a DS with the Game Boy slot, a copy of Pokémon Black and White to transfer them to Gen 5, and a 3DS with Pokémon Bank installed to be able to send them to Pokémon Home to finally be able to use them in modern titles. Even if you had all of those requirements checked, it’s still a tedious process. This all assumes you even had the event items on a childhood copy of the original FireRed and LeafGreen to begin with, of course.

All-in-all, these re-releases are the best ways to experience the Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen games. The censor inclusion is mostly whatever, and you do have to buy each language separately as a unique game, but you do get the upcoming support for Pokémon Home, access to legendary and mythical Pokémon not available anymore in the original games, and a significantly larger screen than the 2” screen of a Game Boy Advance to play the games on. Whether you’re a longtime fan looking to relive that nostalgia from when you were younger, a newer fan looking to experience the classics, or someone who’s just now looking into playing Pokémon for the first time, these ports are a great option. They’re priced at $20 each, so for both titles you’re looking at about $40 USD, or about the price of a new 3DS game when those were still released.

Note: Nintendo provided us with a Pokémon FireRed/LeafGreen code for review purposes.

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