If you've been online this week, you've probably seen the discourse. Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen arrived on the Nintendo Switch eShop on 28 February, and the Pokémon community immediately split into two very predictable camps: those excited to revisit Kanto on a big HD screen, and those loudly questioning why a pair of Game Boy Advance games from 2004 carry a price tag of AU$30 each.
Let's be real: the pricing deserves scrutiny. These AU$30 versions of the games are available as digital-only downloads on the eShop. Buy both and you're up for AU$60 with nothing physical to show for it. The games will not receive physical releases. For Australian gamers, the catch is that the Switch Online + Expansion Pack subscription — which already includes other GBA classics — runs at a comparable annual cost, making these standalone purchases feel like a steep ask for 20-year-old software.
The community response was, in a word, predictable. Pricing complaints flooded social media within hours of the announcement. There has been a lot of conversation online about the eShop versions, with some players still questioning why Nintendo didn't make these classics available via the Switch Online service, or give fans both options. It is a fair question. Nintendo has historically added GBA titles to the NSO + Expansion Pack library, making the decision to sell FireRed and LeafGreen separately feel like an escalation of the franchise's premium pricing tendencies.
The counterargument is harder to dismiss than the discourse suggests. A Nintendo Switch Online membership is not needed to purchase or play these games. Owning them outright means they won't disappear if you let your subscription lapse, a concern that is not hypothetical given the fate of digital libraries past. And despite the complaints, at the time of writing, these GBA titles had already topped the Switch eShop charts in the US, UK, Japan and Australia. The market, it seems, has voted.
Beyond the price debate, what's more interesting is what Nintendo has quietly done to the games themselves. These are not straight ROM dumps. Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen's biggest bug has been fixed over 22 years later: Game Freak has removed the infamous "roaming roar bug" that would delete Legendary Pokémon from your game. Specifically, the roaming roar glitch is a problem with the original release that can make Legendary Pokémon permanently disappear. During the post-game, the Legendary Pokémon Raikou and Entei roam around the map. If you don't catch them during a battle, they swap locations, and you need to track them down again. If either of them uses the move "Roar" during an encounter, however, they become unavailable permanently.
The discovery was first reported by user OmegaJarrodX on X, who posted gameplay footage of Raikou using "Roar" but still being available to catch after the battle ended. This is a significant change, as previously the Legendary would be gone forever. Nintendo has not officially confirmed this fix, but multiple player reports and datamines back it up. Interestingly, what hasn't been fixed is the IV bug involving the Legendaries, suggesting the roar fix is a deliberate correction rather than a general code overhaul.
The ports also include a notable quality-of-life addition for completionists. Players unlock the necessary tickets to catch Ho-Oh, Lugia, and Deoxys upon defeating the Elite Four and entering the Hall of Fame. In the original GBA release, obtaining those tickets required attending specific real-world events, often held only in Japan. Making them universally available removes one of the more frustrating barriers in the franchise's history of artificial scarcity.
There is one change that has generated its own share of online heat: a profanity filter that blocks offensive trainer and rival names. Players have noted it is hardly airtight, but the reasoning behind it is sound. Players will be able to transfer Pokémon from FireRed and LeafGreen to Pokémon HOME, which then allows migration to modern games with features like Wonder Trade. Nintendo understandably does not want a Hypno named something unprintable appearing in a child's trade. It is a family-first call that aligns with the brand's longstanding approach, even if it rankles purists who remember naming their rivals accordingly at age ten.
The Nintendo Australia eShop page for the titles confirms local wireless play is supported, preserving the original game's trading and battling functionality for modern hardware. The Pokémon Company has described the release as part of the franchise's 30th anniversary celebrations, with the original Pokémon Red and Green having launched in Japan on 27 February 1996.
The honest assessment here sits somewhere between the camps. Charging AU$30 per game for digital-only GBA ports is a pricing decision that merits consumer scepticism, and Nintendo's reluctance to offer a bundled option is genuinely frustrating. At the same time, dismissing the release as pure cash extraction misses what is actually on offer: a 22-year-old game-breaking bug silently corrected, event content made accessible to all players for the first time, and Pokémon HOME compatibility that gives these classics a connection to the modern game ecosystem. For returning fans who never got to catch Raikou without burning their Master Ball, that is not nothing. Whether it is worth AU$30 is a question each trainer will have to answer for themselves.