With the addition of Nintendo Game Boy games to Nintendo Switch Online, many fans are eagerly awaiting a new release of Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow. As it turns out, the upcoming re-releases will have new online functionality that will connect to Pokémon Stadium.
Spotted by users on the online forum Famiboard, new footage of Pokémon Stadium on Nintendo Switch shows evidence of connectivity between other Pokémon games. This means that new releases of the Game Boy Pokémon games may be coming soon.
Forum member Orbit noticed that the new footage of Pokémon Stadium has removed a prior disclaimer. Typically, footage of Stadium has a “Pokémon cannot be transferred to these games” message at the bottom of the screen. However, the game’s new trailer doesn’t feature that message anymore.
This means that an upcoming release of Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow could be just around the corner. Furthermore, if the games do get released, they will be able to transfer Pokémon back into the N64 game Pokémon Stadium for the first time since their release.
As pointed out by Twitter user LuigiBlood, the current emulator in the Nintendo Switch Online service does support connectivity with Game Boy games. Inside the emulator, every game has a title key that tracks every compatible game across the same and different systems.
Despite this, Nintendo has yet to incorporate connectivity in its first party games. Game Boy games such as Mario and Luigi and Super Mario Advance 4 do not have any connectivity features in the new Game Boy Advance emulator.
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With this in mind, it’s likely that Game Freak would handle the conversion of classic Pokémon games to switch itself, just like with the 3DS versions. As Pokémon Day closely approaches, these retro releases could be a way of adding more value to the Pokémon Home subscription service as Nintendo sunsets the 3DS eShop.
It would be fantastic to see Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow play with Pokémon Stadium again. With Stadium relying heavily on the original games for battles, we would love to experience the first 3D Pokémon battler on the big screen the way it was supposed to be for the first time in decades.