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25 Awesome Facts About

FireRed And LeafGreen Only
True Pokémon Masters Know
BY ADRIANO VALENTE – ON MAY 17, 2018 IN NINTENDO

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The first generation of Pokémon games were

released over twenty years ago, and are still
remembered fondly by many fans as a
gateway into the wonderful world of
Pokémon. Though the games have well gone
past the initial entries’ limitations and
expectations, they will always be a milestone
effort in the eyes of many. The influence and
popularity of the Gen I games can probably
best be described by referencing their Gen III
remakes. Despite only being around eight
years old at the time, the games received
updated remakes allowing players to
experience the franchise's origins with the
current technology – and they were great.

FireRed & LeafGreen were some of the best

selling and well-received games in the
franchise at the time of their release. Though
they weren’t as popular as Ruby & Sapphire
the games introduced a younger generation
to Gen I and put the original 151 back on the
map. Despite being remakes, the games have
their own unique and interesting history and
are chalk full of interesting gameplay aspects,
rumors, and various other trivia. Though they
might’ve not had the same impact on the
franchise as their predecessors did, FireRed
& LeafGreen offered up a polished – and in
many ways better – way to experience Gen I
for all fans.

With that being said, here are 25 facts you

didn't know about Pokémon FireRed &
LeafGreen

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25
Pokédex Error

via cerulean.cursecdn.com

The Pokémon games have had a history of

being a little technologically limited,
especially in the earlier installations. These
aren’t really major restrictions that we’re
talking about here, but were always
somewhat noticeable to the astute fan.
Things have changed significantly from the
first generation of Pokémon, where these
things were much more noticeable – but
there are still some things that fly under the
radar. As it stands, the games are far more
polished now than they used to be but there
were still problems going as far back as Gen
III. While it isn’t all that noticeable, there’s a
slight error that occurs with the Pokédex
when displaying a Pokémon’s category. The
Dex will only show the first word of any given
Pokémon’s category. So for example, it’d only
show Imitation for Sudowoodo – where as
any other entry will have it as the Imitation
Pokémon. It might not seem like that big of a
deal – and it isn’t – but man, it must’ve been
weird for players to see such a minimalist dex
entry. We can’t really imagine why this
problem occurred, as the original games had
issues with space but still didn’t run into the
same problems.

24
Art Imitating Life

via vgfacts.com

It’s a pretty widely accepted fact that the

Pokémon universe is one that is set in an
alternate world from ours – with many
similarities between the two and even more
differences. Of course, the most immediately
recognizable difference is the presence of
magical, battling animal companions roaming
the world. But the games make some
allusions to the real world every so often.
Some are more subtle than others. If you find
yourself in Pewter City then you may very
well be in for a bit of a history lesson. In the
Pewter City Museum, you can find an NPC
around the special space exhibit on the first
floor. If you talk to this NPC, they’ll talk about
July 20th, 1969 being the day mankind first
stepped on the moon. Of course, this is the
actual date of the moon landing – making this
a fun little historical reference. You can find
plenty of things in the games that mirror our
world, and it’s not all just historical bits
either. The most noticeable things we have in
common with the Pokémon world are found
in everyday life; things like cars, mobile
phones and ships are all a huge part of the
Pokémon world as well.

23
What’s On The TV?

via youtube.com

There are plenty of smaller interactions and

easter eggs thrown into Pokémon games that
you might not catch on to due to how
obscure they are. While the games tend to
follow a tired and true formula, it’s the little
things that change that sometimes catch out
attention. There are typically a good amount
of real life references to be found as you start
your journey, and one of the easiest to spot is
on your TV, where a film is playing. Many
veteran players might skip this early game
stuff, but there’s plenty of interesting things
to be found, especially in the players home.

The film changes depending on

the gender of the protagonist.

If you’re playing as the male protagonist then

you’ll read about a movie about four boys
walking down railroad tracks which is a
reference to Stand by Me. In the case of the
female protagonist, the film is about a girl
walking down a yellow brick road – which is a
reference to The Wizard of Oz. These are
two pretty famous films, but they might’ve
gone over the heads of some of the younger
players at the time – and because of that, it
might’ve taken some players a while to notice
these references.

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22
Cool Room, Bro

via youtube.com

It’s the starting point of nearly every game in

the Pokémon franchise, yet it’s probably the
least used and visited location as well. It
makes sense, seeing as the games consist of
going out into the world and exploring
throughout your adventure. All in all, the
player’s bedroom is a pretty boring place that
isn’t all that noteworthy. There’s been a
tradition of having a Nintendo game console
in the room that changes in each generation.
While FireRed & LeafGreen do technically
belong to Gen III, the console isn’t the same
as it is in Ruby & Sapphire. Being remakes,
they mirror the originals in a way. But while in
the Japanese version of the games the player
has a Famicom, the North American version
has a front-loader NES. It’s a pretty small
difference, sure but is yet another example of
small localization differences in the Pokémon
games. Regarding the consoles, there’s
nothing all that special about them in game.
Just another case of Nintendo product
placement in one of their biggest and most
successful franchises. But it is very cool for
Game Freak to have gone the retro route
instead of plugging in the Game Cube like
they did with Ruby & Sapphire.

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21
Two In One

via vgfacts.com

While it doesn’t happen all that often, there

are still some pretty weird glitches found
throughout the Pokémon games. As you’d
expect, these have become less and less
common as the games have progressed. But if
you look hard enough, you can still find some
pretty obscure ones hidden away –
sometimes in plain sight as is the case with
our next entry. It might’ve flown over many
gamers’ heads at the time, but there’s
something funny with Pokémon Mansion on
Cinnabar Island. The abandoned residence
and former laboratory is one creepy and
eerie place to be. Perhaps the people in
charge of programming the game were a little
too fastidious and ended up overlooking this
one crucial detail. See, if you go into the
mansion you’ll notice that there’s only one
way in: the entrance. However, if you look at
the layout of the building it actually has two
exits – both leading out the exact same way.
The initial entrance can serve as an exit from
the inside sure, but the second one is on the
complete other side of the building. It makes
you think that they planned on having two
entry and exit points in the map but in the
end, scrapped the idea and weren’t all that
sure of what to do with the second door they
made.

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20
Fair Trade

via geocities.ws

Gen III is when the technology being put into

making the Pokémon games really started to
grow and get more and more ambitious in
regards to the features being added and how
they’d tie into the gameplay experience. Gen
III was also the first generation that saw two
separate mainline entries to the series, with
Ruby & Sapphire being the ones to usher in
the generation, and FireRed & LeafGreen the
ambitious remakes. Not to mention Pokémon
Coliseum in the GameCube. What this did –
other than offer players a bevy of choices –
was create a lot of opportunities to trade
between these games and acquire a wide
variety of different Pokémon. At this point,
there were already quite a lot of different
Pokémon out there, making the initially
gargantuan task of catching them all that
much more difficult. But things were made
easier with Nintendo giving players the
ability to trade in between games. That
meant that you could own a copy of
LeafGreen and trade for Pokémon with a
friend in other Gen III titles like Ruby and
Coliseum. It really makes getting a wide
variety of different Pokémon easier.

19
Wasted Assets

via youtube.com

The weather was first introduced to the

Pokémon games in Gen II and was a great
way of further immersing gamers into the
Pokémon world while adding a new and
challenging gameplay mechanic to strategize
with and play around. As you’d expect, this
mechanic was expanded upon in future
generations and has remained a quiet staple
of the series as the years have gone by. Gen
III contained a number of various weather
effects, each being activated by different
abilities and environmental battles. There
were a ton of them and we wouldn’t blame
you if you didn’t quite remember them all.
Seeing as it’s a Gen III game, FR & LG contains
all the same data for weather effects used in
its predecessors. However, many of them
aren’t even used in the games and are simply
somewhere in the code. The cloudy and mist
weather effects are the only ones used. So,
rain, snow, thunderstorm, sandstorm,
volcanic ash, and underwater textures are
essentially wasted in the game as they’re
lying dormant somewhere in the code, but
are never really put to use. We’re not entirely
sure why this is the cases, but one interesting
thing to note is that the games exclude the
snowflake falling overworld effect – which
we’ve seen in the beta – the same as Ruby &
Sapphire do.

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18
“I Like Shorts”

via youtube.com

Having been around for over two decades at

this point, the Pokémon series has spawned a
number of notable moments, quotes and
other pop culture notabilities. It seems like
every entry brings its own addition to the pop
culture landscape and this was especially
true in regards to the first games. Being the
catalysts for the franchises early success,
plenty of things from Gen I stood out and
stuck with players – some of these things
were actually pretty obscure. It ranged from
Pokémon rumors to memorable in-game
moments and even obscure bits of dialogue.

What was a seemingly ordinary

bit of dialogue took on a life of its
own.

In the original games, you come across a

Youngster trainer who tells you “Hi! I like
shorts! They’re comfy and easy to wear!” It’s
kind of a random comment and something
that has stuck with many fans of the games,
despite just being idle chitchat from an NPC.
The dialogue actually makes a little more
sense in the Japanese version of the games,
as the Youngsters are known as – and this is a
rough translation – “shorts rascals” in the
east. Well, this line reappears in the Gen III
remakes, and is something of a nod to gamers
who played the originals.

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17
Continuity Error

via wikia.nocookie.net

The Pokémon games are some of the most

popular video games out there, and have a
loyal and dedicated fan base that rarely miss
anything having to do with the franchise.
While the people at Nintendo and Game
Freak tend to have a pretty good eye for
detail, we’ve seen that even the pros can
overlook the simplest of things, and there are
plenty of fans out there who are obsessed
enough to actually scout anything and
everything Pokémon related to the point that
they’ll pick up on some of these missed
details. For our next entry you needn’t look
any further than the box art to spot a pretty
glaring continuity error – though it’s one
most of us have seen dozens of times and
likely one that went unnoticed by many fans.
On the cover art for FireRed there’s
something weird with Charizard. Something
that only the most OCD, detail oriented fans
would pick up on. The cover image of
Charizard differs a little from its original
design – and we’re not talking about angles
here. The wing shape is actually completely
different on the box. It’s a very modest detail
we know, but fans actually spotted it out and
then took the time to spread the word about
it online. That’s one very – if not too –
dedicated fan base right there.

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16
Don’t Scare The Puppies

via finni.deviantart.com

They’re arguably the hardest and most

elusive Pokémon to catch and they’ve given
plenty of gamers fits when it comes to
tracking them down. Catching legendaries
has always been something of a challenge in
Pokémon games, and these three really take
the cake for being some of the most difficult
to add to your collection. As if it wasn’t hard
enough to get your hands on Entei, Raikou,
and Suicune – there’s a glitch in FireRed &
LeafGreen that makes these legendary
hounds unobtainable. The trio becomes
available to the player once the main
storyline is completed and the National
Pokédex is unlocked. The following steps are
pretty similar to how you’d go about catching
them in Gen II, with a random encounter
followed by some very tedious tracking. But a
certain combination of moves can make
these coveted Pokémon disappear for good.
If the player uses Mean Look and one of the
trio follows up with a roar then the battle will
end – as per usual. However, this
combination of moves makes it pretty much
impossible to encounter that specific
Pokémon again in the current save file. When
checking the Pokédex to track the Pokémon