One of the most mysterious and vaunted secrets of game development has long been the mysterious 1997 build of Pokemon Gold/Silver (back then known only as Pocket Monsters 2). You see, Pokemon Gold/Silver (often considered as the best games in the Pokemon series, and indeed, among the best games ever made, period), had a very turbulent development cycle- and they changed a lot from what they were originally envisioned to be to what they ended up turning up as in the end.

The 1997 Space World demo was one of the earliest looks anyone ever had at the game, but that demo has long since been thought to have been lost to time- until now. Apparently, it has ben found, and within has come a whole lot of insight into what the game was originally going to be. For instance, it now seems that the plan was to have Johto be far bigger than it ended up being (the intention, apparently, was to cover all of Japan), while Kanto at one point was all crammed into a tiny town- I… don’t quite know why. Old trainer sprites seem to have been recycled from Red/Green, and some of the Pokemon we had in the game were significantly different from what we finally got.

You can check out some images from these leaks for yourself below. It’s fantastic, and this is a significant piece of gaming history that now, thankfully, will forever be preserved. If this has made you nostalgic for Pokemon Gold/Silver, there’s some good news- while the original games, released on Gameboy Color, are a bit hard to track down, you can either pick up their remakes, HeartGold/SoulSilver, on Nintendo DS (also playable on Nintendo 3DS), or you can pick up the original Gold/Silver on Nintendo 3DS via Virtual Console.

Nintendo’s Virtual Console label, which has been used to label their initiatives of bringing classic games digitally to modern consoles ever since its debut on the Wii, will not be coming to the Nintendo Switch, the company has confirmed in a statement to Kotaku. This makes the Switch the first Nintendo system since 2006 that will not have the service in some form.

“There are currently no plans to bring classic games together under the Virtual Console banner as has been done on other Nintendo systems,” Nintendo’s statement to Kotaku reads.

The frustrating thing here is that Virtual Console would be absolutely perfect for Switch- the hardware lends itself to enjoyment of retro games (just look at the success of Neo Geo’s titles on the system, for example), and is more than powerful enough to emulate most Nintendo systems ever made. There seems to be no acceptable reason as to why Nintendo might want to skip Virtual Console on Switch.

In the same statement, they did make it a point to emphasize that retro games can still be enjoyed on Switch, especially as part of Nintendo’s Switch Online service- but those are NES games only. What about SNES? N64? Gameboy Advance? Gamecube? Nintendo has a rich legacy catalog going back almost 40 years, and it is frustrating to see them not use it better.

One of Nintendo’s key strengths over any and all other companies in the industry – after probably its first party catalog – is its legacy catalog. Nintendo has such a long and rich history of classic games, games that people have a lot of nostalgia for, games that influenced the entire industry, games that have held up amazingly well, that it is surprising the company has dropped the ball so often on leveraging it properly.

The Virtual Console has been hit or miss (more miss than hit) across the Wii, Wii U, and 3DS. Incredibly enough, it is entirely missing in action on the Switch so far, and it is uncertain if it will ever even be added to the system. Meanwhile, Nintendo mishandled the NES Classic Mini last Fall pretty badly. However, speaking at a shareholder meeting, Nintendo’s Satoshi Yamato highlighted that the company is looking into alternate ways of leveraging its classic lineup- including by potentially selling them via retail channels.

“We have been thinking about a lot of different ways to make use of Virtual Console titles, and not just Game Boy Advance titles,” he said, in response to a shareholder’s question. “Similar to these software titles we have made available on a variety of platforms over the Internet, we consider the Nintendo Classic Mini: Super NES Classic Edition scheduled to be launched in Japan this October (and September overseas) to be a type of Virtual Console. It would be possible to sell these titles as packaged software or via download cards, but if we were to start selling products like this in the future, I think we would first have to consider whether we can establish that kind of business model, and do our due diligence in finding out if there is sufficient demand for it.”

I… don’t know how I feel about that. I mean, it’s not a bad idea to sell them via retail additionally, of course, but I do think the Virtual Console model has a lot of merits for Nintendo to consider these alternate channels an entire replacement for it. We’ll see what Nintendo intends to do.

Pokken Tournament DX and Pokemon Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon were not the only two announcements that The Pokemon Company made today. They also confirmed that Pokemon Gold/Silver, the beloved second installments in the Pokemon series, and still widely held to be the best games in the franchise by the fanbase, will be re-releasing on the Nintendo 3DS via the Virtual Console on the Nintendo eShop.

Pokemon Gold/Silver take you on a journey through the Johto region, thwarting the evil plans of Team Rocket, until at last, you become champion and find yourself then journeying through the Kanto region, for another eight gym badges, and another Pokemon League, and the most epic final boss battle in series history. It will be great fun to play through these games again- especially since they will be compatible with Pokemon Bank, meaning you can now transfer all your Pokemon caught in these games to the modern titles. With this, every single Pokemon generation ever is now compatible with the modern titles.

Pokemon Gold/Silver launch on the Nintendo 3DS on September 22.

While the Nintendo Switch is due to launch in less than a month, there’s still quite a bit we don’t know about the console. One of the things that has been long talked and wondered about is how the company will support the Virtual Console service on its console.

Nintendo have previously said they will announce these details closer to launch- and now, new rumors have surfaced and reported on by WCCFTech, which say that we’ll learn more about the Switch virtual console a couple of weeks before its March launch date.

The rumors don’t end there. Apparently, we will also see a brand new Metroid game announced at E3 this year. A new Metroid game is something Nintendo have been teasing for a while now, and in fact have outright discussed for the Switch before. Considering Metroid is one of Nintendo’s most beloved series, this would surely be appreciated by fans. The source also states that we’ll get to see the next Assassin’s Creed at this year’s E3, which doesn’t sound like much of a stretch, honestly.

As usual take this report with a grain of salt but given that the source was the one who revealed LA Noire Switch port there might be some credibility to this report after all.

What are your thoughts on this rumor? Let us know in the comments section below.

Between the eShop and the Virtual Console, Nintendo have some of the best digital content on handhelds- it’s just a shame that they make it so hard for most users to enjoy that content, with their regressive, backwards policies when it comes to digital content ownership. Unlike literally everyone else in any industry, Nintendo have chosen to tie purchases to your device instead of your account in the past.

With the Switch, the expectation was that that would change- but Nintendo never actually confirmed that at their event. However, now, speaking in an interview, Nintendo’s Reggie Fils-Aime has laid all speculation to rest. He has explicitly stated that purchases will now be tied to Nintendo accounts.

‘We will be sharing more information at a later date. What I can tell you is that with the introduction of the Nintendo Account, we now have the capability of tying consumer purchases to their particular account. So that opens up a range of executions for us to address that consumer desire and need. So, we hear it, we’re working on it, and more information will come.’

Reggie also confirmed, explicitly, that Switch will have no Friend Codes. ‘There are no friend codes within what we’re doing,’ he said. Of course, Nintendo had already done away with Friend Codes on the Wii U, so this was to be expected.

Nintendo Switch is due to launch worldwide on March 3.

Last year, well known Nintendo insider Emily Rogers revealed that Nintendo were working on releasing the legendary cult classic RPG Mother 3 in the west, via their Virtual Console service. Mother 3, which is the sequel to NES’s Earthbound Origins, and SNES’s Earthbound, had released in Japan on the Gameboy Advance in 2006, but had never been released in the west.

Mother 3 had been highly praised, and is often considered to be one of the best Nintendo games ever made, as well as one of the best stories told in a video game- not getting to play it in the west, then, really bothered a lot of people. A fan translation for the game exists, but there was never any official release. Therefore, you can imagine that people were extremely happy at the news of Mother 3 coming over after all last year.

Nothing came of it, though, and people lost hope and interest. However, it seems that Mother 3 is being worked on behind the scenes- Nintendo just chose to withhold it from the Wii U, and launch it on the upcoming Nintendo Switch instead. Speaking on her Twitter, known Nintendo insider Laura Dale said that Mother 3 will be releasing on the Switch via the Virtual Console, and that we can expect the announcement for it next week, during the Nintendo Switch event.

If this is true, there will be many, many happy fans. We’re just over a week away from finding out- let’s see what Nintendo have planned.

It looks like Nintendo are planning on going all in on the Virtual Console on the Nintendo Switch, their new upcoming system- according to a report by Eurogamer, Nintendo will be putting Gamecube games on the Virtual Console for the very first time on the Switch, with three games – Super Mario Sunshine, Luigi’s Mansion, and the perennially successful Super Smash Bros. Melee – already apparently running on Switch.

The Virtual Console on Switch will support a host of different platforms, though specifics seem to be unknown for now- but it looks the like the geniuses at NERD, the guys who engineered the recent NES Classic Mini, which was a marvel of emulation, and sold out everywhere, will be the ones developing the Virtual Console on Switch. It looks like Nintendo is reluctant to have poor emulation quality, as on the Wii U Virtual Console, again.

Another thing in the works is apparently a way to have your Wii U and 3DS Virtual Console games carry forward to the Switch- a minor upgrade fee will need to be paid to enable them on the new console, similar to the case on the Wii U. While less than ideal, let’s not forget that this is still better than Sony with the PS4, who either don’t offer support for your old classics at all, or when they do, don’t honor your older purchases, and expect you to pay full price again.

These details, while coming from a very reputed source with an excellent track record of Switch leaks, still remain rumors- for now. Hopefully on January 12, all will be made clear.

There is further potential in the idea, too- PlayStation Now is theoretically hardware agnostic (and has been offered on Android phones and Samsung TVs already, with a recent rumor also pegging it for a PC release soon), which means that by offering people the ability to play these older PlayStation games without having to invest in dedicated proprietary hardware, Sony are theoretically winning more converts for their current generation systems. This is a strategy not unlike Nintendo’s with their smartphone games, actually (and we already know that it has been very successful for them).

Given all this, PlayStation Now, warts and all, must be admitted to be a rather prescient strategy- and it is one that I whole heartedly think Nintendo and Microsoft should look at embracing and emulating. For both companies, it will be a way to potentially attract more people into their ecosystem in the here and now, while also hedging their bets for the hypothetical cloud only future that is sure to come eventually.

"PlayStation Now, warts and all, must be admitted to be a rather prescient strategy- and it is one that I whole heartedly think Nintendo and Microsoft should look at embracing and emulating."

Take Nintendo, for example- is there any reason that they could not potentially offer a Virtual Console subscription service on PC, say, for $10 a month, and offer full access to NES and SNES games (at least the ones that would be supported on the service), playable via streaming? More than enough demand exists for old Nintendo games- it’s one of the reasons why Virtual Console has been so successful on Nintendo’s consoles and handhelds. By offering their old games on neutral platforms like PC (and smartphones) this way, Nintendo could kill three birds with one stone- they could earn extra revenue from their old games, which no longer by themselves add much, if any, value to their current hardware; they would potentially expand the number of people exposed to Nintendo’s games, and thus the number of people who could eventually purchase Nintendo hardware to play more of them; finally, they would be investing in cloud infrastructure, which will have the twofold benefit of improving their network and services backend in the here and now, while also giving them something to build off of should gaming ever truly move fully into the cloud.

From a usability perspective, too, a Nintendo Virtual Console offering NES and SNES games would be far better than PlayStation Now- unlike PS3 games, which can be dozens of GBs in file size, and therefore require a lot of bandwidth (and, by extension, come with the threat of a lot of latency), NES and SNES games are tiny- we’re talking maybe a few MBs at best. Not only would something like this not require a lot of bandwidth, it would also be accessible to a lot more people with poor internet connections that PlayStation Now cannot reach.

In other words, there is simply no reason that Nintendo have not yet begun to look at opportunities in cloud gaming- indeed, a Virtual Console subscription service would be another line of steady revenue for them, and for the company which is looking at diversifying its revenue streams as much as possible, that can only be a good thing.

"A Virtual Console subscription service would be another line of steady revenue for Nintendo, and for the company which is looking at diversifying its revenue streams as much as possible, that can only be a good thing."

A case for Nintendo offering a PlayStation Now service is relatively easier to make- but what about Microsoft? Why would Microsoft want to offer a cloud gaming service? How would they make it usable, given that Microsoft’s oldest console, the original Xbox, has pretty big file sizes for its games?

For starters, one must remember a few things- Microsoft, as a whole, is a company that is moving towards a hardware agnostic future. Not even that- they are categorically making the move away to a platform agnostic future, and under Satya Nadella, their current CEO, their mantra is very literally ‘cloud first.’ Let us also not ignore that, long before Phil Spencer took on the Xbox One, and tried to turn the console around, Microsoft had intended for the console to be the standard bearer of cloud gaming.

Given all of this, the question isn’t why Microsoft would not have a cloud gaming service- the question is, how do they not have one in place already? It makes complete, total, and absolute sense for Microsoft from all perspectives. It furthers their strategy of moving towards the cloud, it furthers their shift towards a hardware agnostic future, it potentially shows off the utility of their Azure cloud offerings, and it even lies in line with their vision for the future of gaming.

But Microsoft are probably spooked by the backlash against the original Xbox One concept, which was predicated on the cloud- so that’s fine, we get that. And they probably feel that their current take on backwards compatibility with the Xbox 360, which has won them so much goodwill and accolades, is superior to a cloud service. We get that- that’s all well and good. But what about the original Xbox? What about Microsoft’s old PC games? Why are Midtown Madness, Knights of the Old Republic, Conker Live and Reloaded, Halo: Combat Evolved, and Zoo Tycoon not offered via a cloud streaming service, for smartphones, PCs, and even Xbox?

"There is no reason for Microsoft to not jump in with a cloud offering of their own."

This would allow Microsoft to monetize these old games that are all now out of print, and are earning them little to no money. It would act as a flagship offering for their cloud services. And it would also act as a very powerful demonstration of their cloud and network capabilities. And of course, they would attract more people into the larger Microsoft ecosystem, too. There is no reason for Microsoft to not jump in with a cloud offering of their own.

It comes down to the cloud being important- whether or not you like it, whether it is now or thirty years in the future, cloud gaming is ultimately the future. And unless Microsoft and Nintendo act to capitalize on the opportunity soon, they will be left behind in this new frontier, with only Sony having had the foresight to invest in this field ahead of time.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.

It looks like the leaks were true- Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon were announced today during the Pokemon themed Nintendo Direct, as all new Pokemon games that will be launching this year, the year of Pokemon’s 20th anniversary. Nothing is known about these games except that they will be coming to Nintendo 3DS systems, and that they will be launching worldwide later this year- though it does appear as though they are set in an all new region, with all new locations and Pokemon, making this, officially, the seventh generation of Pokemon.

“The Pokemon core series games are the center of the Pokémon universe and provide some of the most memorable Pokemon moments for our fans,” said J.C. Smith, senior director of Consumer Marketing at The Pokemon Company International. “I can’t wait to see what fans think of the new adventures they’ll find in Pokemon Sun and Pokemon Moon.”

Nintendo also announced that the Virtual Console re-releases of Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow (which will be made available at midnight tonight) will be compatible with Pokemon Sun and Moon via Pokemon Bank– ending the 16 year plus divide that has always separated the Pokemon games on the original Gameboy and Gameboy Color, and all the other titles in the series.

Pokemon Sun and Moon launch later this year on 3DS. Check out the announcement trailer for them below.