Speculation General Remake Discussion

[FelipePR]

False. We had back to back generations with remakes in Gens 3 and 4, and the Switch was hardly new when BDSP came out (BDSP wasn't even the first remake on the Switch, that was LGPE). There is nothing saying they have to wait until Gen 10 for Unova remakes. If they want them now, they can easily do them now.

True, but if the rumors of a new Nintendo video game coming late next year are true, I don't believe we'll get new Pokemon games for the Switch.

Anyway, Unova is the only region to have two games with different plots and different protagonists. So I'm curious what the producers will do with the region remakes, and how they will encompass it all.

As for Johtho, I believe they will try something different, such as Let's Go and Legends. I don't believe in a conventional second generation remake.

 

[Bolt Strike]

True, but if the rumors of a new Nintendo video game coming late next year are true, I don't believe we'll get new Pokemon games for the Switch.

Game Freak tends to be somewhat slow in transitioning to new hardware, typically not debuting on the new hardware until its 3rd year on the market and releasing new games on the older hardware until that point. If there's next gen hardware coming next year, don't count on a Pokemon game being on it, they could release a Switch game despite the new hardware.

Anyway, Unova is the only region to have two games with different plots and different protagonists. So I'm curious what the producers will do with the region remakes, and how they encompass it all

Considering how they've basically ignored Emerald in ORAS and Platinum in BDSP, probably nothing and we mainly just get BW1 content in a BDSP-style remake.

As for Johtho, I believe they will try something different, such as Let's Go or Legends. I don't believe in a conventional second generation remake.

Let's Go is probably one and done, their design philosophy seems to have shifted since LGPE and I don't think they'd make a game like that again. Legends Johto, or some kind of spiritual successor, is more likely, but I don't think they would release a Legends game of an old region by itself. They'd want to release a more traditional Johto game following the story of GSC alongside it in the same way that LA accompanied a more traditional BDSP. And I'm not so sure they want to release 2 Johto games when we've seen a lot of Johto over the years (2nd only to Kanto in terms of the number of appearances). Furthermore, I think they want a way to get both Johto AND Unova on the Switch (again, then you would have the potential to experience every region in some way on the Switch except Kalos and Alola) and the easiest way to do that is with GSC NSO port + Unova remakes + Legends Unova.

 

[RileyXY1]

I don't think that any of the main series Pokemon games are coming to NSO.

 

[JollyYoshi]

It feels sort of weird to put them on the NSO app because there’s data of like the Pokémon that wouldn’t be fun if you lost it. Though, I’m not sure if Nintendo would really care when looking at things like shutting down the eShop and stuff. (The eShop had to die but it’s the attitude towards it where some good games were no longer legally obtainable)

And it’s be sort of weird to just release it standalone because there isn’t really any virtual console on there. Though, I could foresee them doing a limited time availability (ugh) like they did with Fire Emblem and the Mario 3D Collection. Or even they could do a Pokémon Game & Watch like thing. Though, I’m not exactly sure what they’d be celebrating. Old games are usually released during a series’ anniversary. (Not just a games’ anniversary though the only exception is Mario but that makes sense as Super Mario Bros is a big influence)

 

[Pigrider09]

I know that I said we shouldn't look too far in the future but I wanted to bring up something from a possible alola remake that would be fun:

I think it would be interesting if Kahili was made canonically bisexual. This could be represented by changing her toucannon club grip to toucannon's shiny form, which is extremely close to the bisexual flag colors. Maybe her toucannon could always be shiny as a nice touch? Just a fun idea that would bring more representation in the games.

 

[Poke Dragon]

The info here will be spoilers, so I will mark it as such.

Spoiler

It seems that there are more signs pointing toward Unova returning before Johto. In the DLC leak for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, all of the starters are confirmed to come back except 2 of the three Unova starters (Samurott is the only Unova starter to come back). This is very similar to what happened with Fossil Pokemon back in the Crown Tundra DLC for Sword and Shield, where the only Fossil Pokemon who didn't come back were the Gen 4 Fossils. So if anything regarding which remake is next, we should actually be looking at which Pokemon were deliberately chosen to be excluded rather than looking at references to what region is most present./SPOILER]

Anyways, just throwing this idea out there.

 

[RileyXY1]

We've now gone 14 years without a new Johto game. And by next year, it would be 15, which is the same amount of time that passed between DP and BDSP. Right now we're overdue for Johto to get a revisit. Honestly Unova can wait as Johto is far more out of date, considering that we last got a Johto game in 2009 on the original DS.

 

[Poke Dragon]

We've now gone 14 years without a new Johto game. And by next year, it would be 15, which is the same amount of time that passed between DP and BDSP. Right now we're overdue for Johto to get a revisit. Honestly Unova can wait as Johto is far more out of date, considering that we last got a Johto game in 2009 on the original DS.

The data doesn't lie, deliberate exclusivity has everything to do with which game is next in line.

 

[RileyXY1]

I'm at this point not expecting any remakes this gen, or at least not in the traditional sense.

 

[JollyYoshi]

I'm at this point not expecting any remakes this gen, or at least not in the traditional sense.

I sort of agree with you on this. A reimagination like Legends Arceus is possible. But there’s always the chance there’s going to be a remake like BDSP.

 

[RileyXY1]

I sort of agree with you on this. A reimagination like Legends Arceus is possible. But there’s always the chance there’s going to be a remake like BDSP.

And I believe it will be for Johto due to it being the most out of date region and the region we've gone the longest without seeing (outside of the VC releases that are now inaccessible following the recent shutdown of the 3DS and Wii U's eShops). It's been 14 years since a new Johto game came out and there's really no way to get your hands on a Johto game outside of emulation. Actual GSC cartridges are mostly dead by now, HGSS is extremely expensive on sites like eBay, and the VC releases can't even be obtained anymore.

 

[Bolt Strike]

We've now gone 14 years without a new Johto game. And by next year, it would be 15, which is the same amount of time that passed between DP and BDSP. Right now we're overdue for Johto to get a revisit. Honestly Unova can wait as Johto is far more out of date, considering that we last got a Johto game in 2009 on the original DS.

If they keep making remakes based on which games are the most outdated, things are going to get unmanageable with remakes and re-remakes and even re-re-remakes. Think 10-15 years from now when they've done remakes of Johto, Unova, Kalos, Hoenn, and Alola. Then you would have Kanto, Galar, Sinnoh, and Paldea in need of remakes and it could take a good 5-10+ years to get through all of that in which case they'll fall even further behind and they'll have a backlog of remakes that keeps growing and growing. Bottom line, that line of thinking in deciding what to remake is unsustainable. They can only remake so much.

They might just have to rely on emulation services such as VC or NSO to provide those outdated experiences going forward. It'd be much more manageable to simply port Johto to NSO to satisfy the void of Johto games on the market than to go through the trouble of remaking it every decade. I think Game Freak is more interested in getting as many games/regions as they can on one device so they have more games the fanbase is willing to pay for, and for that they'd have to make some sacrifices like having Johto and Hoenn be represented by NSO ports instead of full remakes. If they do that and give Unova the remake then they could have every region except Kalos and Alola playable on the Switch.

 

[RileyXY1]

If they keep making remakes based on which games are the most outdated, things are going to get unmanageable with remakes and re-remakes and even re-re-remakes. Think 10-15 years from now when they've done remakes of Johto, Unova, Kalos, Hoenn, and Alola. Then you would have Kanto, Galar, Sinnoh, and Paldea in need of remakes and it could take a good 5-10+ years to get through all of that in which case they'll fall even further behind and they'll have a backlog of remakes that keeps growing and growing. Bottom line, that line of thinking in deciding what to remake is unsustainable. They can only remake so much.

They might just have to rely on emulation services such as VC or NSO to provide those outdated experiences going forward. It'd be much more manageable to simply port Johto to NSO to satisfy the void of Johto games on the market than to go through the trouble of remaking it every decade. I think Game Freak is more interested in getting as many games/regions as they can on one device so they have more games the fanbase is willing to pay for, and for that they'd have to make some sacrifices like having Johto and Hoenn be represented by NSO ports instead of full remakes. If they do that and give Unova the remake then they could have every region except Kalos and Alola playable on the Switch.

I don't expect the main series games to come to NSO until 2026, the year of the franchise's 30th anniversary. And I don't expect them to come to NSO due to issues with Home, so I expect them to be a separate limited release like the Mario 3D All-Stars collection that Mario did for their 35th anniversary.

 

[Bolt Strike]

I don't expect the main series games to come to NSO until 2026, the year of the franchise's 30th anniversary. And I don't expect them to come to NSO due to issues with Home, so I expect them to be a separate limited release like the Mario 3D All-Stars collection that Mario did for their 35th anniversary.

Hard to say for sure, but if they could make VC compatible with Bank, would it really be that hard to make NSO compatible with Home? I suspect it is absolutely possible to allow NSO Pokemon games to transfer Pokemon to Home. I also don't think they'll wait until an anniversary year for this. The Switch and NSO may not even exist by that point, we'll likely have a new generation of hardware by that point and there's no guarantee NSO will even continue by then (I suspect it will, but who knows). If they don't strike now we may not get them at all. And I also don't think a 3D All-Stars type of collection will work for Pokemon because there are multiple versions and you need to be able to trade between them. It's just better to let you mix and match as needed and let you trade with friends.

 

[Poke Dragon]

Porting the DS games are also out of the question as most DS games, which include Pokemon, are heavily reliant on the double-screen feature, thus porting them to the Switch would require a heavy rework of the source's code. There's a reason why only one or maybe two DS games were ever ported to the Switch.

This is especially true for the Gen 5 games, whose cutscenes were specifically made to be shown on two screens at once.

 

[Bolt Strike]

Porting the DS games are also out of the question as most DS games, which include Pokemon, are heavily reliant on the double-screen feature, thus porting them to the Switch would require a heavy rework of the source's code. There's a reason why only one or maybe two DS games were ever ported to the Switch.

This is especially true for the Gen 5 games, whose cutscenes were specifically made to be shown on two screens at once.

Which is all the more reason they need to be the games remade instead of the GB/GBA games. Now hopefully in a future console generation they'll bring back the dual screen clamshell design (I do think that's a major omission from the Switch in terms of the claim that it "contains the DNA of all past Nintendo hardware") and then we can start talking DS and 3DS games on NSO, but for the time being they will need actual remakes instead of porting them to VC/NSO/whatever.

 

[Norzan]

Nintendo made Skyward Sword work with regular controls when the original is pretty much nothing but motion controls, i'm pretty sure they can figure out a way to port DS games into a system that doesn't have a dual screen.

This is just another case of Nintendo being of Nintendo and not doing something incredibly obvious. Same reason why they haven't started to release Gamecube games for the NSO.

 

[Poke Dragon]

Nintendo made Skyward Sword work with regular controls when the original is pretty much nothing but motion controls, i'm pretty sure they can figure out a way to port DS games into a system that doesn't have a dual screen.

This is just another case of Nintendo being of Nintendo and not doing something incredibly obvious. Same reason why they haven't started to release Gamecube games for the NSO.

The difference is that Skyward Sword was already a single-screen game, so a change to the controls wouldn't take anything away from the game. Whereas something like Phantom Hourglass for example, which is a Zelda game on the DS, it would take too much away from the game since it's reliant on having the map displayed all the time on the top screen while using the bottom screen as the core method of control, porting DS games to the Wii U (via Virtual Console) is completely different than porting to the Switch, as the Wii U still has some semblance to having two screens, but the Switch simply doesn't have that kind of luxury.

It's the biggest reason why the Switch hasn't gotten backwards compatibility with either 3DS or Wii U games despite backwards compatibility being a core feature of Nintendo handhelds since the Game Boy Color and Nintendo consoles since the Wii. The only way DS games would be able to be ported to the Switch is via a second screen accessory, but given there's nothing to connect to the Switch directly without taking up its charging port, then there's no point in doing that because the battery will inevitably need to be charged if used a lot in handheld mode.

In contrast, the Wii U games that were ported to the Switch had things that were easily adaptable via button mapping.

There are a lot more complications to porting a game than just the controls.

 

[Norzan]

Whereas something like Phantom Hourglass for example, which is a Zelda game on the DS, it would take too much away from the game since it's reliant on having the map displayed all the time on the top screen while using the bottom screen as the core method of control, porting DS games to the Wii U (via Virtual Console) is completely different than porting to the Switch, as the Wii U still has some semblance to having two screens, but the Switch simply doesn't have that kind of luxury.

Giving the game regular controls and having a dedicated button to switch screens is not really hard. Specially when the other screen most of the time it's just the map, really what all these games did was move the map from a dedicated button to its own screen.

Let's not pretend that the majority of the DS games touch controls aren't superflous, and in a lot of cases flat out just use regular controls. Final Fantasy Tactics A2 is best played with just the face buttons.

And last but not least, the Megaman ZX games, which were DS exclusive, were ported to the Switch, PC and so on. So there is DS games already ported to the Switch, meaning they can do it for a lot of other games.

In contrast, the Wii U games that were ported to the Switch had things that were easily adaptable via button mapping.

Wonderful 101 heavily relied on the controller screen (which the Switch doesn't have) for a lot of its gameplay, but still got ported to the Switch. Something having two screens originally doesn't mean it can't be ported to the Switch.

All the devs need to be is creative with the port, that it is. It's not rocket science.

 

[RileyXY1]

Tons of Wii U games were ported to the Switch. I think that they could find a way to get the dual screen functionality to work on a console with one screen. Although I'm not expecting them to add DS titles to NSO. I only expect one more console to be added, that being the GameCube.