Pokemon Crystal’s Virtual Console Re-Release Was Possibly Leaked

A British game store may have leaked that a classic Pokemon game is coming to Virtual Console.

The Twitter account for the Bournemouth location of the UK-based GAME retail chain recently made the following tweet:

Pokemon Crystal is the companion game to Pokemon Gold and Silver and puts the Legendary Beast Suicune in a starring role. While it ranks as one of the most popular Pokemon games, Nintendo didn’t release it alongside Pokemon Gold and Silver‘s Virtual Console versions earlier this year.

However, there’s plenty of evidence that Pokemon Crystal would eventually come to the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console. A dataminer found several bits of code related to Pokemon Crystal inside the code to the Pokemon Gold and Silver‘s Virtual Console editions.

Of course, it seems a bit strange that a random British game store would just randomly leak some major Pokemon news. There’s also a lighthearted follow-up tweet from a second GAME location that hints that this could just be some sort of prank. We should also note that neither GAME nor any other retail store currently has a way to pre-order Pokemon Crystal on their sites.

A surprise Pokemon Crystal release for the holidays would be great, but take this rumor with a big grain of salt. We’ll see if Nintendo makes any sort of announcement later today.