Pokémon Bank Shut Down Marks the End of 24 Years of Support
Tucked away at the bottom of Pokémon FireRed Version and Pokémon LeafGreen Version Link with Pokémon Home This October, The Pokémon Company and Game Freak has announced the end of Pokémon Bank:
Pokémon Bank, a Nintendo 3DS application that lets players deposit or withdraw Pokémon they have befriended in Pokémon titles on that system from online Boxes, will be ending service on Thursday, February 25, 2027, at 7:00 p.m. PST.
As a result, transferring Pokémon from Pokémon Bank to Pokémon Home will also no longer be possible. If you have Pokémon stored in Pokémon Bank that you wish to carry over, please move them to Pokémon Home prior to Pokémon Bank’s end of service. Please note Pokémon Bank is not currently available for download.
I guess I have a deadline now for all that trading I want to do from Chapter Select Season 6.
For those unfamiliar with Pokémon Bank, it was a service on the 3DS that allowed you to store and move around Pokémon caught on the 3DS. This would be replaced as the pocket monster storing service by Pokémon Home in February 2020. You can take your Pokémon from Bank and send them down the one-way digital highway into Home and all future Nintendo Switch titles.
And that's what makes this end of service bittersweet.
You see, because of the 3DS connectivity back to the Nintendo DS and the DS's connectivity back to the Game Boy Advance meant you could trade Pokémon from the likes of Pokémon Sapphire Version and Pokémon LeafGreen Version all the way up to the most modern titles. If you engage with some save data shenanigans, you can even trade creatures from the original Game Boy cartridges all the way into Pokémon Home thanks to Bank support being integrated in the Virtual Console releases of those games on 3DS.
By the time Bank's servers shut down, 24 years of support will be coming to an end.
But really, that support is just being modernized. If you read the main announcement from The Pokémon Company, Pokémon Home support is being patched into LeafGreen and FireRed on the Switch. The day before this news, a leak broke that Gen III is making the same digital debut on Switch this fall, no doubt with Home support.
If we just pause for a beat and think about this, it makes perfect sense. They get to sell me old Pokémon titles for the umpteenth time and the ability to bring forward classics in modernized (and digitized). New consumers today aren't going out and buying old Pokémon carts to get these old creatures in modern titles. They'll buy the ports or remakes. Paying $20 for LeafGreen or Sapphire is much more appealing than $112 or $86. Heck, Pokémon Emerald costs $225 today! This is unsustainable for the average or new consumer, difficult to swallow for the collector, and makes The Pokémon Company zero of those dollars.
It also helps The Pokémon Company clamp down on hacked creatures and the cheaters that make them. If everything has to go through digital copies and Home, then I assume fewer illegal 'mons enter the proverbial marketplace.
The real loss in this decision is the games not currently available by any modern means. That's the bulk of the DS and 3DS lineup, which is arguably the best run in the entire game series. I wager the prices on those titles will continue to spike this year on top of the 30th anniversary fervor. I am very glad I snagged Platinum two months ago. Here's a list of that run of games and their current loose prices on Pricecharting for both posterity and a possible future comparison to see how this news impacted the used market.1
| Game | Price on August 14, 2026 | Price on February 25, 2027 |
|---|---|---|
| Pokémon Platinum | $122.25 | |
| Pokémon SoulSilver | $137.75 | |
| Pokémon HeartGold | $150.38 | |
| Pokémon Black | $79.22 | |
| Pokémon White | $79.99 | |
| Pokémon Black 2 | $132.50 | |
| Pokémon White 2 | $135.00 | |
| Pokémon X | $32.50 | |
| Pokémon Y | $32.02 | |
| Pokémon Sun | $20.83 | |
| Pokémon Moon | $19.99 | |
| Pokémon Ultra Sun | $39.99 | |
| Pokémon Ultra Moon | $40.00 |
This loss isn't forever though. Eventually, these games and generations will be modernized in one way or another. I suspect plans are in motion for all of these generations down the line.
I have always marveled at Game Freak's continued support and compatibility with older Pokémon and the games they came from. It's a testament to the franchise. This promise of bringing your Pokémon with you has been upheld for decades. It has only been broken when the series went from the Game Boy to the Game Boy Advance and that was remedied in a way with those 3DS Virtual Console ports.
This conscientiousness of older titles, Pokémon, and the fanbase is why you see younger audiences in Japan playing Pokémon, but not other titanic JRPG franchises. It's why I have three DS carts on my desk staring me down to trade them off their antiquated format into the promise of "the cloud."2 The structure reenforces the idea in each game that the trainer goes on a journey with their Pokémon and forges an unbreakable bond. No one else has teams like the ones I built to battle my dear friend. The cross-console trading for evolutions and moves sequestered away in versions. There's the Garchomp I farmed eggs for or the Skarmory I hatched for a specific move. I will forever be indebted to the Excadrill that gave me the tie.
I could always bank on moving my Pokémon forward from these original versions. I've taken a comfort in that generational guarantee. But now, when I go back some day and start a new save (after backing up the original save, of course), I'll know that journey will be locked in the hardware of the past. We are losing something more than just a suite of 3Ds severs and tools for copying bits and bytes across hardware. And by we, I mean me and all the original trainers. the ones that were there at launches, who had PokéWalkers clipped to their hips, whose minds were blown by the marvel of wireless trading and Wi-Fi. I am heartbroken to see the end of a generational run. When faced with introducing my own kid to Pokémon someday, it's probably best to make sure it is the current and accessible versions. I was so excited to hand her a Game Boy Advance and a worm light too...
Game Freak and The Pokémon Company always seemed able to balance modernity with support for their legacy—for your legacy. This is a reminder that it can't all last forever.
It is also a reminder that Game Freak and The Pokémon Company do balance modernity and legacy. The legacy markers have just shifted. I am old now. My ways and methods are old now. New generations need to forge their own Pokémon memories and they'll be doing that on Nintendo Switch consoles for the foreseeable future. I hope they can trade their childhood Pokémon forward in 20 years like I have been so fortunate to be able to do.