Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen players are accidentally losing hours

The Switch ports of Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen add a soft reset: pressing all four face buttons on a Joy-Con at once sends the game back to the main menu. That shortcut is a useful time-saver for Shiny hunters, cutting several seconds out of the reset process and helping with scripted Legendary spawns that require interaction before revealing whether they’re Shiny.

For regular play, though, the same shortcut can be disastrous. It’s easy to hit all four face buttons by mistake, and without a modern autosave feature one misclick can wipe hours of progress, gym badges, and captured Pokémon. Players have even shared moments of losing progress with the plea to “save save SAVE your games.” You can avoid the problem by remapping your controller in the Switch’s Accessibility settings.

Turning off X or Y prevents the game from recognizing the soft reset command; because X and Y double as the plus and minus inputs for these GBA ports, you won’t lose any essential functions and can re-enable the button when you return to Shiny hunting.

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