Wes is going back to the desert. A lot of fans just wish he’d hurry up.
Nintendo has confirmed that Pokémon Colosseum, the GameCube spin-off from the early 2000s, is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 as part of the GameCube Classics library. The game’s return comes more than two decades after it first launched. On paper, that’s good news. Among the people who care most about it, the reaction is mostly impatience.
A year of waiting, and the sequel went first
The frustration showed up on Reddit. A user in the game’s subreddit pointed out that more than a year has passed since Nintendo first revealed Colosseum was headed to the Switch 2.
“It’s now a year since the Nintendo Direct where we were shown that Pokémon Colosseum would be added to Nintendo GameCube Classics on Switch 2,” the post said. “Wonder what the hold up is, especially as XD came out already. Hoping they’re somehow adding the extra Pokémon for all, or maybe Home compatibility?”
That XD detail is what stings. Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, the 2005 sequel, is already on the service. (Yes, the follow-up beat the original to the party.)
The fan theories are better than you’d expect
Other fans didn’t take long to come up with their own explanations for the delay. One user pointed to the order Nintendo used in the original presentation.
“XD was shown before Colosseum in that presentation. They definitely just felt XD was better to do first, whether that’s because of theming or mechanics/polish or being generally easier than Colosseum,” the user said, adding, “that’s my take, anyway.”
Another fan went somewhere more specific. Their theory has to do with how you save your progress.
“My theory is that it’s for something to do with the save feature. If you ever played the original, you know you can only save at PCs, and with the load state function in the glorified emulator, that totally changes how hard the game is. So I wonder if they are trying to find a way to circumvent it,” the user said.
Of the two, that’s the one I’d bet on. A difficulty curve built around saving only at PCs doesn’t hold up once you can reload whenever you want.
Why people still care about a GameCube spin-off
If you never played it, here’s the short version. Earlier Pokémon games had you running into random Pokémon as you traveled. Colosseum dropped that and let you “snag” other Trainers’ Pokémon instead, with both single-player and multiplayer battles.
You play as Wes, a former member of Team Snagem (yes, the pun is on purpose), working his way through the Orre desert region. His job is to rescue “Shadow Pokémon,” which are Pokémon whose hearts have been darkened by Team Cipher, by snagging them from fellow Trainers.
He gets help from Rui, who can tell which Pokémon have been afflicted with a darkened heart. Without her, the whole premise falls apart.
Colosseum was a critical and commercial success at launch. It did well enough to get a sequel, Gale of Darkness, in 2005.
Still no date
As of this writing, Nintendo hasn’t shared an estimated release date for the Switch 2 version of Pokémon Colosseum. So far, the delay has come with no explanation at all.
Fans are hoping the wait means Nintendo is improving on the original behind the scenes, whether that’s extra Pokémon, Home compatibility or a fix for the save problem. None of that has been confirmed.
So the sequel is out, the original isn’t, and Wes is still stuck in Orre.
