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Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen rebuilt Kanto with modernized systems and made nostalgia safe for the GBA era.
Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen launched in 2004 on Game Boy Advance. It rebuilt Kanto with modernized systems and made nostalgia safe for the GBA era. It sits on the canon-defining RPG backbone that decides regions, monsters, battle systems, and the assumptions every other Pokemon project eventually reacts to.
Example
Its 2004 release on Game Boy Advance immediately became part of the benchmark fans used to judge its whole generation.
Why it matters
Mainline Pokemon releases are the load-bearing beams of the franchise. If you want to understand why the rest of Pokemon looks the way it does, these are the games that set the rules.
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