 It's time to talk about the Don fan in the room. When will Pokemon Game Boy and GBA games come to Nintendo Switch online? Oh, just before we get started, I'm doing something I've never done before in offering commissions, details at the end of the video and in the comments. Now, Pokemon GBA and GBA games. These games are without a doubt the most sought-after Game Boy family games, a casual glance at the extortion at eBay prices for genuine Ruby Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed and Leaf Green cartridges makes abundantly clear. These games in particular have only ever been available on the Game Boy Advance. Unlike other GBA games, they weren't even brought over to the Wii U Virtual Console, nor were they given to 3DS early adopters as part of the Ambassador program. As such, there's no precedent for these games getting a re-release. There is a precedent for Pokemon Red, Blue, Green in Japan, Yellow, Gold, Silver and Crystal getting a re-release though. When the first generation of Pokemon games came to 3DS, they did so five years after the first Game Boy games to arrive on the system. For much of those five years, fans asked, much as we're asking now, what's the deal with Pokemon? For a long time, it seemed as if these games weren't ever going to get re-released. In the case of the GBA games, they still haven't. To a certain extent, I do understand why the Pokemon company might be hesitant to make their earlier games too widely available. It was when playing Pokemon Blue on the 3DS that I suddenly realised that I had been chasing the feeling of playing this specific game for 20 years, and that nothing since has really superseded this as the definitive Pokemon experience. It's my opinion, and this is obviously hugely coloured by personal nostalgia, but it's my opinion that this series peaked early and has been on a steady decline for, well, at least a decade at this point. Re-playing Pokemon Blue made me realise just how unsatisfying modern Pokemon games are by comparison. Again, this is only my opinion, and ever since Blue's re-release, I've stopped rushing out to buy every new annual release on launch day. The problem with making Pokemon games available on modern hardware is that the older games serve as competition for the newer games. Let's face it, not an awful lot of the core turn-based monster-catching experience is particularly different between Pokemon Red and Pokemon Scarlet. Yes, there are new gimmicks, new features, better graphics, and occasional games like Arceus Legends that attempt new approaches to gameplay, but fundamentally Game Freak has been remaking the same game for 25 years now. So if people could play Pokemon Ruby on Nintendo Switch Online plus Expansion Pack for free, why would they pay £50 for Pokemon Violet? Now obviously Nintendo Switch Online games are not actually free, but you get my point, right? People playing retro Pokemon games aren't giving the Pokemon company as much money as the Pokemon company might like. There's not a lot of incentive for the Pokemon company to make their older titles available again. But just as it once seemed like Game Boy Pokemon games would never come to 3DS, I imagine that eventually these games will come to Nintendo Switch Online. It's inevitable and somewhat necessary. Bear in mind that I say the following as a tremendous Game Boy fan, a huge lover of Super Mario Land and Wario Land and Kid Dracula and Tetris and Super Tetris and Shantae, and even modern games like Deadious and Swordbird Song. But for all the amazing Game Boy games that there are both new and old, no Game Boy library is complete without Pokemon, it is the crowning jewel of the platform. By all rights, everything that came after 1998, the success of the Game Boy color, and perhaps even part of the success of the Game Boy Advance, was only feasible because Pokemon revitalized the Game Boy's popularity. Breathe new life into hardware that was pushing 10 years old when these games finally debuted outside Japan. For many people at the time, Pokemon was the reason to own a Game Boy, the only reason you really need it. Writing this video as I have in the final apocalyptic countdown until the closure of the 3DS eShop, it's clear just how powerful these games still are. The first and second generation Pokemon games are at the top of the 3DS sales chart, as fans scramble to use this one final chance to purchase these games legitimately before they're gone, potentially forever. Even if Pokemon ends up on Nintendo Switch online before long, this is the last chance in the foreseeable future to own these games in some form without a subscription. Yes, I know a digital game purchases for a license rather than the game itself, so it's not true ownership, but again, you get my point, right? It feels more tangible than a subscription service you have to renew annually. Now I don't claim any insight into Nintendo's inner workings. I am, particularly in this video, just one ill-informed weirdo trying to make sense of a company that does things its own way, like an ant trying and failing to comprehend moves on a chessboard. But I do suspect that Nintendo and the Pokemon Company alike recognize the appeal of the Game Boy and GBA Pokemon games, and will make use of them on Switch when they feel that the time is right. There are people who haven't bought the Nintendo Switch online expansion pack yet who absolutely would buy it for Pokemon Emerald. It's an awful lot cheaper and easier than buying legitimate copies of these games physically. I imagine, and again I'm probably entirely wrong on this, but I imagine these games will get wheeled out during a lull when Nintendo needs a quick boost. We probably won't have to wait five years for their release, but if they don't come imminently, well. The looming possibility of a Switch successor will certainly inform this plan one way or the other. Game Boy has come to Switch late in the console's lifecycle for whatever reason, maybe because of the 3DS eShop closure? Maybe not. It does beg the question, will Nintendo Switch online in more or less the same format carry over to the company's next device? It would be weird to have a completely different subscription service for a second console platform. At the same time, it's in Nintendo's best interest not to replace the Switch, and I suspect they'll hold out for as long as possible, so this might actually not be as late in the Switch's lifecycle as some would like it to be. The ideal scenario for Nintendo right now would be, actually, another Pokemon situation. A new must-have game that entirely revitalizes hardware sales and turns a seven-year console into a 10-plus-year console. Either way, as long as Nintendo can convince saps like me to shell out for minor upgrades to the OLED model, they will definitely do that. Meanwhile, though, I strongly suspect that Nintendo has already started holding back certain system-selling games for the next generation. A true follow-up to Mario Odyssey, for example, would make a solid launch title, especially as Bowser's Fury worked as a decent stop-gap in the meantime. This being the case, and I have no proof that it is, but if Nintendo is beginning to enter a holding pattern, saving its biggest titles back for release on a future console, well then. Retro Pokemon games are just the thing to plug a gap and keep people emotionally invested in the Switch. These games won't make a lot of hard cash for Nintendo, not unless they take my suggestion of selling the games on cartridges again. Heck, I'd even take a Switch bundle like Mario 3D All-Stars or Metroid Primary Mastered. I know that's not exactly something I should get my hopes up for, though. Even though putting these games on Nintendo Switch Online won't be a big money-spinner, though, it'll keep the Nintendo Switch relevant while Nintendo waits for the very last second to ditch this popular hardware iteration. Then, presumably, unless Nintendo does a Nintendo and defies all logic, the next hardware generation will inherit all of the games already on Nintendo Switch Online. A nice big catalogue of games available day one to add something extra to the launch titles. So if we're trying to guess when the Pokemon GBA games will come to Switch, maybe it's best to consider when there'll be a lull in other software sales. What I'm about to say is perhaps the most speculative, completely random guesswork of the whole video, and that is saying something. This entire weird conspiracy theory rant should be taken with a pinch of salt, but this part should be taken with one of those giant salt rocks from Breath of the Wild. I doubt that Pokemon will come to Nintendo Switch Online this summer, the mainline Pokemon games not like Pokemon Pinball or the trading car game or what have you. Tears of the Kingdom will release in May, so this year's basically sorted. Nothing can be allowed to distract from that release because it's probably going to be one of Nintendo's biggest sellers of all time, all by itself. If we look at the release of the Game Boy Pokemon games on 3DS, Nintendo and the Pokemon Company picked traditionally quiet sales period to squeeze these out. Red, blue, green, and yellow dropped in February of 2016. Golden Silver arrived in September 2017. Crystal came out in January of 2018. The September release was the only one that fell during a relatively busy period for game sales in the run-up to Christmas, but unless you really like empty cardboard boxes, and I do, that game wasn't exactly on a lot of letters to Santa. As most of these games were released on 3DS in the first two months of the year, I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo makes us wait until January of February next year to give us retro Pokemon on Nintendo Switch Online. Long enough that the other Game Boy and GBA games on the platform don't get outshined, long enough to get a bit more subscription money from drip-feeding other games, and at a point both in the year and in the Switch's life cycle that these phenomenally popular games don't overshadow anything else. That said, I also won't be surprised if I'm entirely wrong in these games come out sooner or indeed later, because as I'm quick to point out yet again, I have about as much authority and genuine insight when talking about Nintendo's business decisions as I do when talking about how to land a spaceship on the moon. Smarter people than I have figured this stuff out in the past, but I am really just making my best guess and my calculations aren't exactly airtight anyway. So working on the assumption that I'm almost certainly wrong here, what do you think? When will GB and GBA Pokemon come to Switch? Let me know if your uncle works for Nintendo and you have some legit insight. I've decided that I'll take any such comments at face value because life is more fun that way. Now about my commissions. So to cut a long story short, for my day job I need to buy a new video camera. It's something that'll benefit this channel as well because I'll be able to film more stuff with relative ease. Unfortunately, decent cameras are expensive and there's no money in our family budget for me to go dropping hundreds of pounds on new equipment. So I thought it might be an interesting experiment to fund my new camera by selling art commissions. It's something that people ask for occasionally. I'm not going to pretend that I'm bold over by demand, but if I can raise even just a few hundred pounds, I'll be closer to the camera than I would be otherwise. These commissions will be available through the coffee store I just set up, so you can send me a tip if you want, but I'm happier earning your money. I've got two offerings, portraits and derpy animals, much like the pictures in this video, and being very lax about what counts as an animal, feel free to ask for whatever you like. Thanks very much in advance and thank you for watching all the way to the end of this video.