Heartgold and Soulsilver

Take a look at the eShop charts in any region and you'll see that the Gen 1 Pokémon games still consistently take the top spots, proving that there is still a market for the older Pokémon games. Over the past few years, Game Freak has also sprung to remake the first 3 generations across the most recent Nintendo handhelds, though this has largely been an effort to make it easier to access the Pokémon from each respective generation. Considering that the Gen 4 Pokémon games are still somewhat recent, some have wondered if Game Freak would continue the tradition.

IGN recently talked with Junichi Masuda a bit on the subject and he confirmed that Game Freak isn't ruling out remakes anytime soon. Here's what he had to say:

I think the remakes, like Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen, is still an approach we're interested in. With the Virtual Console releases of the original games, specifically there had never been a way to bring those Pokemon over to the latest generation. It had always been that you couldn't get those Pokemon out.

While on the topic of the VC, Masuda was asked about the possibility of seeing the Gen 2 games on the eShop at some point. He said there are no plans for this, mentioning that the Gen 1 games were largely put on the VC as a 20th anniversary celebration,

With the 20th anniversary, it was the right timing to release the original games. I think that we really want to give people the experience of bringing these Pokemon from the original Game Boy and seeing what they look like in Pokemon Sun and Moon. That is something that I want people to enjoy.

Finally, Masuda was asked how the Pokémon from the VC games will transfer into Sun and Moon, considering that there have been several changes to training and battle over the generations. Of course, he was quite coy on this topic, so it still remains a mystery,

I wonder how they're going to change. I hope that's something people will look forward to seeing how it works.

What do you think? How long will it be until Diamond and Pearl get remakes? How do you think Gen 1 Pokémon from the VC releases will function in the new games? Drop us a comment in the section below.

[source ign.com]