Potential Switch Online GBA Emulator Leaked
Yesterday, on the 18th of April, Twitter user Trash_Bandatcoot took to the platform to seemingly leak Nintendo’s next big push into their online service. The tweet claims that its “just a matter of time” until Game Boy Advance games will be added, due to a series of leaks originating on 4Chan.
The supposed games include the several Mega Man games, Mario Kart Super Circuit, and Kirby and the Amazing Mirror. This would certainly be quite a plus for Nintendo Switch Online and may persuade some more critical of the platform to join up. This is also on brand for Nintendo, who offered big names such as The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap for the Wii U’s virtual console line-up almost 10 years ago now. However, it is important to keep in mind that this is just a leak, and nothing is confirmed (or will likely be confirmed for a long time). A more sceptical stance comes from Twitter user ModernVintageG, who had this to say:
Of course, this casts a large shadow on any optimism that fans might be having for this project. Furthermore, there is one aspect of the leak that extends this even more. Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire haven’t been rereleased ever. At all. There were the remakes, but they deviated so much from the originals, they should be considered vastly different projects. If Nintendo was to rerelease these games, would they really do so, essentially for free? Unfortunately, this doesn’t sound too Nintendo-like to me.
However, the first and second generation of Pokemon were indeed rereleased towards the tail end of the 3DS era, so it isn’t impossible that they would be released on NSO, but the money-making potential for Nintendo seems too good to pass up. And if there’s anything we know for sure about Nintendo over the past few years, they never pass up any opportunity to maximise their profits.
All in all, while this would be a grand addition to Nintendo’s Online Line-Up, I’d wager it is best to remain cautious, even if optimistic. Only time will tell if there is any weight to these rumours and if we will finally get a first rerelease of these titles- both huge and forgotten.
