Do you think it’s cool that they figured out how to send 1st generation pokémon to generation 7? Too bad it’s a decade too late for my Silver and Crystal buddies =(

Well, I would assume that this is something they planned for when they were putting together the 3DS versions of Red and Blue.  So it’s not so much that they figured anything out, more that they had the opportunity to sidestep all of the problems that ever made it an issue in the first place.  My understanding (and I’m vague on exactly how this works so take it with a grain of salt) is that the reason Pokémon couldn’t be transferred from II to III is because the earlier games stored Pokémon data in a different format to the later ones.  So all they would have had to do for these new versions of Red and Blue is… not do that.  There aren’t even any issues of hardware compatibility because they’re being released as 3DS apps and can be programmed to interface directly with Pokébank.  So like… I think it was a good idea for marketing purposes, and it’s nice that we can do that, but it’s not like it would have been particularly difficult, as far as I am aware.