Gen 3 was remade because it's impossible to play the games on modern hardware, and RSE lack many modern features that we know take for granted (like the P/S split... many fans consider the pre-DS games to be completely unplayable just for that one reason). Problem is that FRLG are in the exact same boat as RSE, so what do you do about them? Should people just abandon Gen 1 and move on for good (whether to the newer games or other fandoms, entirely)?
I couldn't care less about RSE. It didn't deserve a remake IMO.
If we keep remaking the old games, we'll get to the ludicrous situation 20 years from now where games will have two or three versions of each other. I really don't mind that 1st gen becomes forgotten, because its most important feature, its Pokémon, will live on.
The only reason Pokémon games keep getting remade is because of connectivity, which makes the series unique, but even then you can't have all the regions represented in the same generation since we have six regions already. It's simply impossible.
And, the fandom pretty much only cares about the ones in the newest games or the older ones who keep on returning. It's no surprise that the franchise's
most forgotten characters are all almost entirely from Gen 1 (with one exception), most of which failed to appear in any of the DS games. GF never cared about them, so fandom doesn't either.
Let's be honest, most Pokémon characters have little characterization. I can barely remember the Kalos gym leaders and the Team Flare admins, and we're talking about the current generation. I've always felt like GF allowed other media to characterize the opponents better. Characters in Pokémon very rarely leave their games. The anime writers have also forgot a ton of characters from the early days, but their "crime" was much bigger because Misty for example was an integral part of the show for a couple hundred episodes, and to simply write her off like they did left a bad taste in many people. Still, I'm probably saying this more because of my favoritism towards Misty than because they were wrong in doing it. :P
I think that, except for Lorelei and Agatha, all of the 1st gen characters are in HGSS... And we even got Steven.
Didn't you say that HGSS was your favorite remake, and that FRLG were the "weakest remakes" at one time? HGSS changed a lot of things about the originals, while FRLG were barely more than an enhanced port (like you're describing). What changed?
Up to the League, HGSS was almost the exact same as GSC. The only differences were that it required you to make a trip to the Safari Zone, and also made you catch the box legendary before heading to Kanto, in an imitation of the plots in newer Pokémon games. HGSS never added Pokémon that weren't supposed to be there, for example, like you suggest for new Kanto remakes. Indeed, this meant the Pokédex was a little lacking in distribution, but that's what the original games were like, and they wanted to give the same experience of the originals. They didn't even fix the low level curve from GSC! Well, they sorta tried, but it was a half-assed effort.
Quite a few of the changes in HGSS, especially in Kanto, were motivated by the need to integrate legendary Pokémon into the overworld. They brought back the Seafoam Islands and the Cerulean Cave for Articuno and Mewtwo, respectively. HGSS had many additions but the game is played mostly the same way as GSC.
FRLG is not a port of the original RB. A port would mean it's the exact same game but for a different platform. FRLG was RB redone in a different engine, which is different. The problem with FRLG is that Kanto was so well-designed that it was a very "tight" region, making it hard to add something without breaking its "tightness". Therefore, they came up with the Sevii Islands, which I think they realized was a mistake since I believe they weren't referenced in any of the subsequent games. They were a nod to the Orange Islands from the anime, but they hardly had the same "charm".
If I may use an analogy, I believe the remakes should be like when you add chocolate syrup on top of the vanilla ice cream, instead of replacing the vanilla ice cream with strawberry ice cream. You build upon the original game, not change it.
