It’s not just any Pokémon Day – today is Pokémon’s 30th anniversary. To celebrate, The Pokémon Company held its annual Pokémon Presents livestream, which includes news about new games and looks back on the series history. Midway through, it made an announcement that checks both those boxes: Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness is coming to Nintendo Switch Online. The game was first revealed as coming to the service during Nintendo’s April 2025 Nintendo Switch 2 reveal Direct, but we haven’t heard any news about its arrival in the GameCube library since.
Gale of Darkness is a GameCube exclusive, and like other games on the system, it’s been notoriously hard to play legitimately, with physical copies going for insanely high prices online. Now, it will be available to play on the Nintendo Switch Online expansion pack, alongside games like Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance or The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. Like other GameCube games in the expansion back, it’ll be exclusive to Switch 2.
The current release date hasn’t been fully nailed down, but today’s livestream said Gale of Darkness will come it the service in March, so it should be right around the corner.
For more Pokémon news, check out the bizarre new music player the company announced.
