021: Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6czIFDnCmyTdfweg5Y9wex

For the first time in the franchise's history, Game Freak remade one of their past games from the ground up. Pokemon FireRed and Pokemon LeafGreen. These versions were a technical necessity since trading or battling between the games on the original Game Boy/Game Boy Color and the new games on the Game Boy Advance were impossible, thereby trapping a good amount of Pokemon that did not appear in Ruby or Sapphire on antiquated hardware.

The resulting games did a lot to push the franchise forward while being held back in other ways. It was an odd choice to not allow for evolutions that were introduced in Gold and Silver to occur in this game until after the game was completed (granted, reasonably early game Crobat would have been broken) but the graphics and the introduction of the Sevii Islands were a fun addition.