>>47474952That's a good one. My own that RS came after GSC so there was no need to hide Johto since people remembered it and your character did come from there. At this point in the series they seem to d call backs a lot like this like meeting Red or going to see Kanto.
However RS at the time was a dexit with no way to transfer over. The rage from genwunners is what made them create FRLG. Remakes were never an idea until people were pissed at the cut mons so they remade their first games which was a good choice. However gen 2 mons were incredibly rare with the only way to really get them is if you had colo. So it felt like in gen 3 they just sorta portended that gen 2 did not exist except in rare instances or references.