Pokemon FireRed and LeafGreen devs found that "the programming sucks" in the original RPGs, but needed Nintendo's help on the remakes because they "hadn't gotten any better at programming since then"

Pokemon games are often criticized for their poor technical states these days, but the lack of refinement goes back to the series' heyday. When remaking the OG Game Boy titles for the GBA, the devs at Game Freak had a rough time revisiting their previous work in part because the programming was so bad.That's according to a 2004 issue of Nintendo Dream magazine, which included an interview with director Junichi Masuda, lead planner Koji Nishino, lead programmer Tetsuya Watanabe, and graphics lead