The Nintendo Switch ports of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen released today following the 30th anniversary Pokémon Presents showcase. Players can now transfer caught Pokémon to modern titles via Pokémon Home, though crude naming options have been restricted. Dataminers have uncovered hints of potential future ports for other classic games.
The ports of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen, remakes of the original Generation 1 games, became available on the Nintendo eShop today for £16.99 or regional equivalent. This release coincides with Pokémon Day 2026, marking the 30th anniversary of Pokémon Red and Blue. The games were announced earlier in the week and went live immediately after the Pokémon Presents livestream, which ran for about 25 minutes and featured various updates.
A key addition is support for Pokémon Home, allowing players to transfer Pokémon caught in these classics to contemporary titles. The Pokémon Company confirmed this feature, addressing fan concerns about accessibility across the series. Without it, the re-releases might have felt isolated from modern gameplay, as Home has become a standard interconnecting tool in recent Pokémon games.
However, the ports include changes to naming conventions. Long-standing community traditions of using crude names for characters or rivals, such as 'DICKBUTT' or 'ASSGOBLIN', are now blocked. The game overrides profane inputs like 'dick', 'pussy', 'shit', and the f-slur with random generic names such as 'Gary' or 'Janne'. Milder words like 'hell' and 'damn' remain allowed. Kotaku verified this censorship, noting it prevents screenshots of untoward interactions, such as Professor Oak commenting on a rival's name.
Dataminers quickly explored the ports' internals. Within hours of launch, user Yakumono/LuigiBlood reported that the emulator, named Sloop and used in Nintendo Classics, supports ROMs for Pokémon Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald alongside FireRed and LeafGreen. The ROMs appear heavily modified and rebuilt. LuigiBlood shared: "The emulator explicitly recognizes ROMs of Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald alongside FireRed and LeafGreen. I found this alongside the initialization code that is related to enabling emulator hacks for specific games."
In a follow-up on Bluesky, LuigiBlood cautioned against speculation: "What we see is a snapshot of current code at the moment it was built. It’s not an oracle. Maybe it means RSE is next, maybe it’s never actually happening. It just means they had intentions at one point and nothing else." Other discoveries include banned profanity in naming and the inclusion of limited-time items like the Aurora Ticket and Mystic Ticket for shiny-hunting Deoxys.
These ports have already climbed Nintendo Switch sales charts, with pre-orders live prior to launch.
