Pokemon Alpha Sapphire and Omega Ruby

Well, it's been confirmed.

Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire are going to be released for the Nintendo 3DS/2DS system on November 2014. They are going to be enhanced remakes of the 2003 Game Boy Advance games Pokémon Ruby and Sapphire. (For the release years, I'll be using the years they were released in America).

This isn't the first time that games in the Pokémon series have been given the enhanced remake treatment. In 2004, the original two games for the original Game Boy, Pokémon Red and Blue, were given enhanced remakes for the Game Boy Advance in the form of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen Versions.

I believe the names "FireRed" and "LeafGreen" were chosen because in Japan, the original two games were known as Pokémon Red and Green.

In 2010, the Game Boy's sequel titles, Pokémon Gold and Silver, were given the enhanced remake treatments for the Nintendo DS as Pokémon HeartGold and SoulSilver.

The cynical would say that the purpose of the remakes was only to get more money out of gamers. After all, if one owned Gold and Silver already, for example, why on earth would you pay more from essentially the same game released on a newer platform?

Well, I may have an answer for that. Look at the time between the releases. Pokémon Red and Blue were released for the Game Boy in 1996. FireRed and LeafGreen came out in 2004, almost a decade later. Gold and Silver were released in 2000. HeartGold and SoulSilver came out in 2010, ten years afterward. Ruby and Sapphire was released in 2003, so it was about time an enhanced remake of those two games came about. 11 years, a new record.

In the case of the Pokémon series, a whole new generation of Pokémon games can arise between original and remake, bringing about not just new Pokémon, but also new aspects and new features. For example, in Gold and Silver, Pokémon had genders (Well, all the Pokémon did have genders now, not just the Nidorans) and a real-time feature that took advantage of the time of day. For example, some Pokémon could only be caught at night, like Hoot-Hoot, and some events only happened on certain days.

These new features made the sequels more fun, and kept people coming back for more. Every new Gen had new features. Kinda makes you wish the older games had the new features, huh? Well, the enhanced remakes take care of that. The Pokémon remakes were also a great way for new fans to enjoy the older games, and still have the features they were used to. So, enhanced remakes are a good thing to me.

I've been wanting a 2DS for a while now, and now, I definitely will get one for these remakes. I just hope a player of these new remakes can trade with the regular DS Pokémon games. They should be able to, hopefully, as the Pokémon remakes have a history of backwards compatibility.

You know, in a couple years...it'll be the 20th Anniversary of the release of Pokémon Red and Blue, the games that started this whole franchise. New remakes of those two games would be a great way to celebrate it. Maybe Game Freak is working on that.