Why does no one seem to care about FireRed and LeafGreen?

While I do think there are multiple reasons for this dilemma, persay, I think the major factor that this problem derives from is that the people who played through Kanto, and thus fell in love with those games, are much older now. The original Pokémon games were realeased in 1996, 22 years ago. FR/LG was subsequently released in 2004. When you take into account that the target audience for the original games were younger kids, many of the people who played through Kanto and would subsequently love FR/LG are now well into college, have families of their own, and lead adult lives. For goodness sake, the avaerage 10 year old Pokémon player in 2004, when FR/LG was released, is now 26 years old. They’ve left the franchise, and with it, the passion and discussion for those games.

Now, of course, there are exceptions. Thousands of college-aged students and parents still play the games and keep up with the series, but it’s nothing when it’s compared to what it used to be. I remember trading Pokémon around the basketball courts at recess in elementary school. Nowadays, if you even admit to playing Pokémon in highschool, you’re labeled as weird. Again, there are exceptions, such the popularity of Pokémon Go, but majority wise, the people who played the original games have moved on.

Newer generations of Pokémon have been played by a different wave of kids. The children who play Pokémon currently remember Sinnoh and Unova from their early days, not Kanto. And while it’s always fun to play through older games, the magic isn’t there anymore. There isn’t thousands of people going through the same experience with you. Additionally, newer features exist in more modern games that didn’t in past ones. Online battling, trading, and connecting have never been easier, while as in FR/LG, the same way to connect with others is absent. It’s a sad idea, the nostalgia of Kanto isn’t competing with the technology of newer games.