Vol. 2, Issue 7 - Backwards compatibility with Pokémon titles
Reflecting on the backwards compatibility options for Pokémon titles after the closure of Pokémon Bank. We also have more Pokémon news and more from the Johto Times mailbag
It’s time for Vol. 2, Issue 7 of the Johto Times newsletter! This week, I want to reflect on the backwards compatibility of Pokémon titles and highlight the current landscape for connecting and trading between classic Pokémon games. We also have some great artwork submitted to the Johto Times mailbag, so be sure to check that out too!
News
Twitch Plays Pokémon, the social experiment which allows multiple users to participate in a single game of Pokémon, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this week. On February 12th 2014, the channel went live with a game of Pokémon Red, which exploded in popularity over its 16 continuous days of gameplay. Over 1.16 million people participated, and it won a Guinness World Record for "most users to input a command to play a live streamed videogame". The channel has continued to stream a variety of different Pokémon games over the years, including ROM hacks.
To mark the channel’s first decade, Twitch Plays Pokémon are going back to the beginning with Pokémon Red, which users can participate in right now!
Source: Twitch
Feature: Backwards compatibility with Pokémon titles
I’ve long admired The Pokémon Company’s commitment to their players. This dedication shows when they carry forward their Pokémon characters through generations of games and into cloud-based services (for a fee) so they can be stored and moved to modern releases wherever those Pokémon are usable. Until March 2023, anyone with a Nintendo 3DS could download Pokémon Bank and Poké Transporter from the eShop and purchase a pass so they could transfer Pokémon to the service. But the Nintendo Wii U and 3DS eShop was closed on March 27th 2023, so anyone who missed out on downloading them prior to the closure no longer has this opportunity.
This isn’t the first time fans have missed out on transferring their Pokémon. I remember being devastated that I couldn’t move Pokémon from my copy of Crystal to Ruby due to incompatibility between the two games, and because Crystal’s battery died a few years after release, it meant my Pokémon were lost to time. Since then, though, I was able to carry over all of my notable Pokémon to the most recent games, especially my beloved Latios from Pokémon Ruby. I was impressed that The Pokémon Company seemed to care about the fans and their Pokémon data, some of which could date back as far as 21 years as of the time of writing (2024).
When Pokémon Red, Blue & Yellow and Gold, Silver & Crystal were released on Nintendo 3DS, they were made to work seamlessly compatible with Pokémon Bank, making every generation of Pokémon game at the time compatible with the service. With the closure of the Wii U and 3DS eShops, trading Pokémon from 28 mainline games on Game Boy Advance, DS, and 3DS became impossible. This number grows further if you include titles such as Pokémon Colosseum and XD: Gale of Darkness on GameCube, and any additional games that contained bonuses. Perhaps I’m a bit more attached to my Pokémon than most, but it’s devastating to think that a lot of data is now incompatible with newer games moving forward.
Prior to the closure of the eShop services in March 2023, The Pokémon Company said in a statement that Pokémon Bank services will be available at no cost to players and that paid passes will be discontinued, with users still being able to access some of its features, including transferring their Pokémon to Pokémon HOME. They went on to state that there is no end date planned for the no-cost service and that any further changes will be announced in advance. In October 2023, Nintendo announced that online services for their 3DS console would end on April 8th, 2024, but it was confirmed by The Pokémon Company that Bank would still continue to function beyond that date. While this is good news in the short term, it does make me wonder just how long this opportunity will be available for.
I acknowledge that technology will move on, our old games will start to fail, and fewer people will have access to their old data. Keeping a server running for Pokémon Bank is a drain on resources, and will eventually become redundant as more players move their data from the service to HOME, and I expect it will eventually be retired. I further acknowledge that they decided to make the service free for users and gave plenty of notice prior to its closure to give as many people a chance to download it as possible. I wonder if any fan-created solution is currently being worked on in an effort to preserve this connection for future generations?
There is the possibility that in the future, Nintendo will make all of their classic Pokémon games available as part of an online service, including Game Boy Advance, DS, and 3DS mainline games with Pokémon HOME connectivity or whatever future cloud service they choose to create. Until then, we have to accept that the connection to our past has been severed, and that’s a poignant reminder that nothing can last forever.
Mailbag
Want to be a part of our newsletter? You’re welcome to submit content including (but not limited to) questions, fan-created art, short stories, cherished memories, photographs from your collection, and anything else you think we would like to see. This week, we have even more artwork from Poké Trainer Theo!
Volkner was one of my fave Gym Leaders and the Luxray lines are some of my favorite Pokemon
Poké Trainer Theo, Philippines
Hello once again, Theo! Thank you for sharing your awesome artwork of Volkner! I love the two sleeping Pokémon, especially the Pachirisu which I’m sure is having some pleasant dreams about berries. Overall, I find this to be a very cute piece of art. Keep up the great work!
It's just to sad to think we'll eventually stop being able to bring our Pokemon forward. But I have to agree that if the older games can be legally playable on newer devices and Pokemon thus transfer-able again, I wouldn’t complain! They have admittedly given us more than enough time to transfer all our old Pokemon by now.