Why Are Classic Pokémon Games Not On Switch? 

What’s your favorite Pokemon game? Comment below! ❤

so that they can sell you the eventual remakes for full price 70$

short answer: nintendo sucks

Because GameFreak don't want people playing 25 year old games and realizing they have more fun with them than they do with the latest titles on Switch.

I'm so happy I still have all my old Pokemon games and orginal hardware. But it is terrible there aren't easy ways for the fans who don't, to play them. New fans are missing out on not only great games but also pieces of Pokemon history.

Greed is truly something else

The 3DS versions of Gen 1&2 had the savestates and rewind disabled so that could absolutely do it the save way on the switch.

In fairness, BDSP was likely not meant to be a thing. They were pretty slap-dashed together because more time was going to be needed for Legends Arceus, but it does still run back to the point that the remakes were meant to be a holiday release to make sure they could get money from that big rush of sales. That said I don't actually think retro games rereleased on Switch would even hurt modern sales. The Virtual Console releases of Gen 1 and 2 sold relatively well for what they were but nowhere near the sales of the actual 3DS mainline titles. I *would* like RBY and GSC on NSO though, specifically because it's been shown you can connect them to Stadium on NSO through unofficial means and it would be great to have that connectivity again.

To be fair, if they hadn't built up such bad will with the new games then the "Awesome classic releases might take away from modern sales." idea wouldn't be a worry. Also, I personally really love the idea of keeping every Pokémon I care about and grow attached to. If they don't allow me to transfer up a Shiny Rattata I find and I have to just delete it for a new file then it's a No Purchase from me.

Well, time to emulate!

I’m glad you made this video, we were talking about this during your livestream chat and it really puts into perspective Nintendo’s current meta and how the OG Pokémon fans should move forward instead of hoping Nintendo gives us what we want. As long as they don’t start copyrighting emulated games, there shouldn’t be a big issue. We just need to make it more easily accessible and convenient to play classic games.

I mean, transferring Pokémon from older games to Pokémon Home isn’t impossible. We could transfer Pokémon from the Gen 1/2 games to Pokémon Bank back in the day.

I hate all the pokemon games on switch, this time will be remembered as the "Dark age of Pokemon"

Because if you could catch certain legendaries in them they wouldn't sell you DLC that's only purpose is making them available.

I mean, DPPT EShop release that's sold for like 5 million copies and sold for 15-20 bucks each, or two brand new games that's sold for 30 million copies in total for 60 bucks each It's just too simple to answer this question Look up VC releases of RBGY and GSC if you think that I'm underestimating things

My cope is that they're waiting as long as possible to release them on the eShop, that way they maximize profits. If they release them too early, people will be busy with those and take away attention/sales from the mainline games. However, the way they released them on 3DS was Gen 1 eight months before the switch was announced, and then Gen 2 six months after it had launched. They're banking that the majority of people that'll buy it are the hardcore fans that'll buy it regardless of when they release it (which would probably be right). With 2024 being late into the switch's lifespan and all of the Scarlet and Violet DLC being finished, I think this coming Presents is a great time to announce them coming to either eShop or NSO over the next year or so.

Your brought up some really good points, this is some underrated content, keep it up!

I think it would be very simple to make it work by disabling rewind and only allowing you to save manually

I feel like at the very least they could add gen 1 and maybe gen 2 games. It could be a way to reinvigorate interest in the series and provide a simple way for new generations to experience the games. Plus, people could trade and battle without having to buy a link cable.

I never thought of that... Makes a whole lot of sense 😢

The optimist in me hopes that they’re waiting to announce them for the Switch 2. The realist in me knows they haven’t and they won’t because money from new, rushed, soulless remakes is what makes more money.

Also, the 3DS pokemon ports don't have rewind or save states, and that fixes the issue with exploitation.

yo where is that goldenrod city border from?

One thing is that even tho the pokemon ip is shared by the 3 companies, nintendo is a big share holder of both gamefreak and creatures inc, so if they really wanted they could add them to nso at any time

They could be saving them for 30th anni like they did for the 20th on 3DS, but also Nintendo hasn’t treated their eshop the same. Old games are relegated to NSO, while the eshop gets remakes and remasters and bundle collections but I can’t think of just an old title on its own being resold, so the Switch’s treatment of old games has changed. And with how underwhelmingly profitable old games are when made legally available, I dont think Nintendo feels any warrant to push them out faster. They’d be nice as a consumer even if I still own my old cartridges and a DS to play them on, but from the business side, they probably think its better served as a celebration release than just an addition to the market.

They will be available on the switch successor

I believe they are saving it for the 30th anniversary. That would be the best way to give us a master collection of most, if not all of the hand held games that currently are not accessible in the Switch. And it would give them time to plan for the compatibility of the master collection of the old games with Pokémon Home and other potential Pokémon projects they might be working on for the Switch 2.

Great conversation here. It really worries me that they've begun signaling to users that Transporter and Bank are invetiably going to be discontinued applications. I fear sooner than later. They are only thing keeping us connected to the Nintendo DS era (including Virutal Console), and by greater extension, the GBA+Gamecube era via Pal Park and other methods. It's annoying to think that without new virtual ports, it will be impossible to source a HOME living dex from the original Kanto, Johto, Hoenn, Sinnoh, and Unova. Even though old hardware has shown us that it's possible, I sadly can't see them being bother to both give us back these games and make them HOME compatible.

teacher: what is the definition of greed? student: nintendo.

It may be also that they want to have working Pokemon trading and multiplayer battles, but they have issues getting it work within NSO.

Good video and interesing points but what about the Casino ? During the 4th generation a topic around game addiction in video games appeared in the European Union, it affected Pokémon in the way that while Diamond/Pearl had an operational casino, Platinium did not and HeartGold/SoulSilver got the Voltorb Flip game (at least in Europe). After this no more functional Casino in Pokémon games anymore... Maybe it has an impact as why we did not see these games (during the release on 3DS Red/Blue/Yellow/Gold/Silver and Cristal got a Pegi number higher than usual).

It’s obviously so they can sell us them in a “classic Pokemon” bundle or something.

I just started playing the fan games and other than keeping some bizarre choices from the original games, I am having a blast with them.

5:46 WOOOO i feel represented

I’d love to see a Let’s Go version of Gold/Silver. Gold/silver/crystal were my absolute favorites in the series.

It this point I’d be more excited for ports of the old games more so than the new games or remakes themselves. I do wonder how much work adding a trading system (preferably Gen 6’s system) and Pokémon Home compatibility would be.

Nintendo as a whole, not just Pokemon, have a massive game preservation issue. It's no coincidence that Nintendo games are the most emulated games on the market. They simply have awful backwards compatibility, especially for the games that were originally released on their handheld platforms. While Nintendo always had a mainline console, their handheld platforms were on a separate ecosystem. Games like Pokemon were originally Game Boy exclusive and only begun appearing on their main console in spin off titles like Pokemon Stadium. It wasn't until the Switch that Nintendo finally merged their console and handheld ecosystems together into a single platform and ecosystem. I don't discount the greed aspect, as all parties involved in the Pokemon franchise, have a proven track record of being excessively greedy, even by the incredibly low standards set by the gaming industry as a whole. Yet I don't think greed is the answer here, at least not on its own. Nintendo, as a company, simply changed. We have to remember that Nintendo used to be *the* home console company after beating Atari in the original console war which catapulted them to industry leader status. Only to than be utterly, and unexpected at the time, crushed by Sony and their PlayStation which forced Nintendo to reevaluate their entire company. Pokemon, like most of Nintendo's other incredibly famous IPs, were a product of that early era where Nintendo was *the* industry leader. It was simply a product of another era, of a completely different company at this point. I do agree with something you did mention in this video, which is the internal competition factor. Basically Nintendo doesn't want to compete with itself, old titles vs new titles. Not necessarily in terms of sales per se, but also simply in straight up comparisons between the old and new Nintendos and nipping expectations that their new products will resemble their old ones. I feel that this is the main reason Nintendo is willingly leaving a lot of money on the table by refusing to sell their old titles anywhere, fully knowing that people who still want to play them, again as you said in the video, resort to emulation. Emulation, which again, isn't supported by Nintendo and therefore is obtained by alternative means. Again Nintendo is not blind, they fully know this is going on and are apparently perfectly ok with it. They rather lose money from selling these older titles than having the weight of all these older titles crush their newer titles which most people agree are simply not on the same quality and passion level as a whole.

I also hate how classic game fans are dismissed as ''old'' 😤

wish they would bring them to switch if they did something like Super Mario 3D All-Stars with pokemon old games i would buy it

Look, I just want my classic Pokemon red and I’ll be happy. I want my nostalgia childhood memories back and want to relive them again.

If they sold the OG games for like 20$ people would eat it up, and if they allow you to transfer pokemons from within the same console to the new games along with creating new pokemons that are actually cool they'll sell the current game easily.

You have a point, but look at it this way they still can come out with them on switch. The pokemon home has quest to have pokemon from older games and now with ds servers shut down only way we could complete it is modding or forced to buy them again on switch

I was thinking exactly this.

I think right now now is the perfect time to put the games on the switch since legends z-a is not releasing until 2025 and I don't thing we are gonna get anything new this year

It's probably that they just want to sell the games as near full-price separate titles, but Nintendo is probably wanting to throw them on NSO. It may also be that they want to cut off the route of creating hacked Pokemon in the older generations and transferring forward to bypass the extra security they've been adding to keep hacked Pokemon out of newer generations. The consistent stream of cloned legendaries coming in from Gen 1-7 is probably something they really want to stop even if they aren't sure how.

Vimms lair is OP lol

Gen 3 is still pretty good, even compared to current gen and the formula for main games is still really similar with recent new features being poorly done. This make them direct competition to the newer games (compare Platinum to BDSP) and I think that's why they're not available. The games not being available gives Nintendo/Game Freak more room to release games and make profit.

I hate how it seems like the classic games are becoming forgotten in place of the badly made ''scarlet and violet''. 😩

Don't pay, just play

Hey, I quickly wanna add something: In the middle of the video you dismiss the idea that ports to NSO should be compatible with Home. However, the 3DS re-releases on Virtual Console were compatible with Bank and had trading capabilities through local wireless communication. The transferability mattered a lot, as it was the easiest, and sometimes only way to get Pokémon with their Hidden Ability or certain movesets for competetive Pokémon. Drought Ninetales or Chlorophyll Venusaur are good examples of this.

Laziness because everyone knows people would pay $60 for the first 3 gens unchanged.

Long time between releases? Like November 2022 to sometime in 2025?

I think that they're just saving them for this year because of last year they had the DLC and and if they also announced at that last year present the Game Boy games on Game Boy online it would effect the sales of the DLC so I think that they were just waiting for the DLC to get its sales and for 2024 we will get the Game Boy games

U can even play old school pokemon with multiplayer with PokeMMO available on ios, android, pc, and Mac it's awesome!

Maybe once they run out of ideas for new generations, they'll start rereleasing hard copies of the classics, with their corresponding hardware even if we're lucky. They might even make ports that can connect link cables with Home. Not saying they'll do that but it'd be awesome if they did.

im actually pretty convinced they will come with the switch 2 release, they seem to be scraping every single game to be in the lineup for that release, maybe even restrict them to be playable on switch 2 only and bring them to switch 1 later on. regardless i think playing them on the switch on the tv is a better experience than playing it on an emulator on pc, i would love for them to come out sooner

I did buy an anniversary game pack if they had all the games in one

It’s wild to me that they put the Stadium games on there. Those games were designed around the assumption that you’d be using your RBY and GSC Pokémon. There’s really no point to them being on there, besides the mini games.

Maybe, they are waiting for the 30th anniversary. Thats how they were released on the 3DS they waited for 2016 even though the 2DS virtual console has been available since 2011. Red Blue and Yellow were added in 2016. Gold and sSilver were added in 2017 and Crystal in early 2018.

Because gamefreak has been making terrible pokemon games for a while now. If they rerelease the old games, more people would play them and prefer them over the new games. This means that if gamefreak released another terrible pokemon game after porting over the old good games, people's taste would be accustomed to a level higher than the slop gamefreak pushes onto shelves. A lot of people may still buy it, but the reviews would be so terrible that they would be forced to put work and effort into their games.

The optimist in me subscribes to the Pokémon home theory.

They're going to resale it at some point like how they did Gen 1&2 on the 3ds

Greed is one hell of a drug.

The way I would suggest going about the gen 3 games is to sell each one and for the mythical events a dlc

I recently bought a gba and pokemon red in ebay, its so pricey but worth it. I should have kept my consoles and games when i was younger.

I love the remakes of pearl and diamond idk if I’m only one but I want one new remakes that are legit

If they rereleased emerald exactly how it was, it would make more money than any of the games that came after

Simple answer is, the old games were released on the 3DS so you could trade up to the newer games easily. Which they do not need to do for the Switch yet until Bank goes down. And even then, they seem set on releasing new games that will give you those old mon instead of throwing ports onto a subscription service

I think we just need to wait it will come at some point but I wouldn’t be surprised if had to pay to use Pokémon home to vc

Soul silver is all I’ll ever need

I'm sure they are launching old games again on the Switch 2 to force people into buying their new console.

The would make a gold mine. I would literally go buy a switch and all the games right now.

There are people that up to this day, play the older games because they want to transfer the pokemon caught in there up to the modern games. If these games are in the swotch and if they'ye compatible with home, transfering would be so much easier.

Red/Blue/Yellow were released on 3DS eshop on their 20th anniversary. I could see them getting a release on their 30th anniversary on Switch. That would be 2026. Timing is everything for Nintendo/GameFreak. They dont just throw their Games on NSO for fast money. They wait for the perfect Timing.

Does anyone know the Name of the theme in the beginning ?

If we ever got them, it would be from an alternative app. This way save states/rewind are removed. But even that is too good to be true due to, you guessed it, CANNABILIZATION.

If they released the pokemon games with national dex and veteran difficulty i would buy it in a heartbeat. Plenty of ROMs already do it! Such a wasted opportunity

indeed im already taking it into my own hands with my practice and firered tails fan game work in progress Tails Pokemon Adventure and Firsty his female vulpix companion!

I mean, fans were also asking game freak to hand off remakes so they could make other Pokemon games. Fans got exactly what they asked for.

I would prefer a collection of every game from Gens 1-5. They can even sell it at full price if they want. Honestly, given the current Pokemon Go situation, a Pokemon collection would be the only new Pokemon thing I would buy until something changes.

i sold my switch and bought the best console they ever made: the DS Lite, along with pokemon white, white 2, Emerald, HeartGold, and Platinum. The only games I'll ever need.

I would give my right kidney to have these on switch with Pokemon home

It looks like remakes are gonna be a thing on a side and the main games will the focus point

I’m done waiting. I hacked my DSi and am now playing Storm Silver on original hardware.

What’s the music starting at 1:57?

As much as I myself hate Gamefreak I wouldn't say their recent products come from laziness, especially from the developers. For all we know it could be the exact opposite and the developers are overworked, underpayed, and understaffed. The developers have passion as seen by the good thats in Scarlet and Violet. They just have little to no time to make the games they wanna make because the people on top just want more and more money. It's much less laziness, and more just greed unfortunately :( I'm really hoping the developers are given time to finish ZA because ScaVio could've been special games but we were robbed of that opportunity. The fans aren't the only people getting robbed of amazing games, the developers are too, think about all these people working on a game for 2 whole years. 2 years of pouring your heart and soul into this humongous open world Pokemon project only for them to not be able to finish it because their boss needs a 3rd yacht. It's horrible. Amazing video btw, great job!! :D

They are doing a proper damnatio memoriae to the older masterpieces as to rewrite their entire franchise as if they never existed. They split the fanbase in two: older fans playing older games, outside of the market, and newer younger fans, buying the latest products not knowing the past.

By the time these games get added to the Switch (if at all), Nintendo and TPCI would be too slow to release all of them and implement Pokemon HOME support. The newest console would be released by then.

and they also try to take down fan made games because they know the community makes better games then whatever the pokemon company spits out these days

As someone who's forcefully ran these games on switch through modding my system, I can confidently say they run at a buttery smooth 3.2 fps, specifically the ds and 3ds games I don't see why they don't. The games run perfectly!

They could release all the old Pokémon games for 20-40 bucks and people will still buy them and I’d be one of those people

i also think gamefreak doesn't really want to be associated with nintendo too much. many think of them as essentially a nintendo sattelite company, but they want to be seen as an independent developer (that just so happens to have a close partnership with nintendo). none of their other games besides pokemon are ever published by nintendo even on nintendo consoles. so adding the old pokemon games would solidify the thought that pokemon is a nintendo first party franchise, and one that majorly defines the character of nintendos handheld systems instead of a gamefreak game, published by nintendo but yeah greed probably plays the biggest role

The only real way to deal with this issue now in days is just to homebrew all of your Nintendo consoles. Since they’ve been closing everything left and right, recently with the 3DS and the WiiU, now the only thing that can realistically save their own consoles is the homebrew channel and other similar alternatives. You can’t come up to me and say that the remakes are just as good as the originals when, that’s genuinely not the case.

why arent the pokemon pinball games on gameboy NSO app tho lol

I never realized that the old Pokemon games aren't on the currently supported console (RIP Wii U and 3DS support). They've really done all they can to prevent people from playing them short of sicking their lawyers on DeSmuME, mGBA and RetroArch. Also RIP Citra.

I'm sold

My theory is Game Freak/ILCA can't figure out how to make them compatible with Pokémon Home

Yeah, Nintendo definitely misstepped. They could have released the retro games, prompting more people to buy a Switch to play the retro games. Now that more people know how to emulate, I wouldn't imagine people returning to the consoles when they know that they can play any retro Pokemon game they want at the cost of a 2-minute download. Nintendo just gave the emulation community a spotlight.

Someone needs to come up with a mod that connects a GB/GBA cart reader to the Switch USB C port or Switch cart reader, allowing the Switch OS to recognise and run the carts.

Let’s hope we see it with Pokémon presents Feb 27th 2024