I Ran 1,000,000 Simulations to Rank EVERY Gen 1 Pokémon!

I simulated over 1 million Pokémon battles by pitting every generation 1 Pokémon against every major trainer in red and blue we then calculated their performances to scientifically rank each one from worst to best and today we're going to be looking at that list and so before we can get to the number one spot we're going to start at the very bottom of our list with ditto who we have scientifically determined to be the worst Pokémon in Generation 1 this is probably no surprised as I'm sure anyone who's ever used ditto before knows just how awful it is like this placement just makes intuitive sense even before I explain how our simulation actually works it's in the second lowest spot where things get a little confusing as of the 83 Evolution lines ranked the legendary bird Moltres takes 82 now from the outside that probably doesn't make a lot of sense so before we can start climbing towards that juicy number one spot I'm going to explain our ranking criteria which is basically just that this video is determining a Pokémon's total usefulness through out a playthrough of red and blue we're asking of the eight gym leaders Elite 4 and three different Champion battles how many fights does this Pokémon actually help you in and in the case of Moltres that number is actually quite low due to its late availability Moltres has locked all the way in Victory Road so it's the last Pokemon available before you beat the game so it's not that Moltres is strictly bad it's that Moltres is bad in the context of a playthrough because it doesn't provide a lot of opportunities to help you and a totally get it if you're still not sold so I'm going to use a basic example to make it make a little more sense I want you to think about your 8-year-old self who set off on their first journey to become a Pokemon Master in red and blue I was always a squirtle enjoyer and I have very fond memories of Blastoise leading my team to Champion Hood now after meting the game and going on to catch Mewtwo I definitely had fun going back to Sweet beeld Elite 4 but despite that there's no world where I would say that Mewtwo did a good job of helping me beat the game because Mewtwo wasn't there to help me beat it at all all meww was off chilling in a cave contributing nothing whereas Squirtle was the one taking hits and helping me get the wins we're not saying that Mewtwo is bad this video is simply trying to determine what Pokemon helps you beat the highest number of opponent Pokemon across the course of a game not only does this mean for a ranking that you should definitely not catch ad ditto it means that Moltres is also not a very reliable option either the same could be said for tangle up who's taking the third lowest spot tangler is available after you beat Koga and get surf so it's not super late but it is super bad bad you can see here in its performance chart that running Tanga is just going to give you a really bad time the same can be said for fourth lowest hitmon Ley who only misses the first three gyms but then goes on to deliver an absolutely pathetic performance throughout the rest of the game this can be explained simply due to its horrible learn set unlike Machamp who you'll later see scored much higher because it had access to earthquake and rock slide hitmon Lee actually has to use fighting moves to get wins which are terrible in gen 1 next at 79 the fifth worst ranked Pokémon was magn who has a later game encounter and suffers from only learning Electric in normal moves and this sadly won't be a one-off case so if you're an electric enjoyer you may want to brace yourself for what's to come now next up 78 sees far-fetched as the six worst Pokémon which I got to say I find really funny because there is a whole community of people who would stake their lives on farfetch to be some underrated God but now it turns out the meme Pokémon is in fact just that now the game's seventh worst Pokemon is Pony toop who like Magnemite suffers from a late encounter and has no diverse moves or impressive stats to make up for it and similarly located Magmar then takes the eighth lowest spot which is then very sadly followed by Scyther now despite its great stats scyther's laughably shallow learn scent meant all it was capable of doing was Landing high damage crit slashes while its bug flying type meant it got stomped by pretty much every trainer left in the game and then finally capping out our 10th lowest we actually see a tie between Muk and wheezing despite having different stats spreads and the learn sets these two poison types performed the exact same after being picked up in the Pokémon Mansion but this part of the list really just scratches the surface and as we climb towards that number one spot we're going to see even more shocking results and in order for the gravity of these results to really make sense we're going to dive a bit deeper into the specifics of the simulation process and we'll do this by taking a look at our 11th worst ranked Pokémon which I need to pour one out for as it is sadly aod so as you now know the simulation process begins by seeing which fights Aerodactyl is available for and because Kanto can be played nonlinearly we based availability in terms of a relatively timec conscious and sane player situations where you're just jumping ahead two routes to grab a Pokemon for a gym were fine but doing crazy skips like fighting Erica as the seventh gym leader were not considered and yeah you heard me right it is possible to fight Erica as the seventh gym leader as the Act was acquired on cinear we had it avail ailable fights include Blaine Giovani the Elite 4 and Champion Blues three different battles The Next Step was to pit Aerodactyl against these trainers Pokémon individually so for example we would first have each member of lauraly Team square up against Aerodactyl in a 1V one we would then run battles with every combination of Aerodactyl level up moves and TMS that were available in that point in the game as long as they had at least one damage dealing move this process was repeated for every move set until Aerodactyl was able to get a win or all move sets for tested Aerodactyl would do this against each one of Laurel's team members and the first part of its score would then be calculated now in laurelai 1 v1s Aerodactyl beat dugong Closter Jinx and Lapras but lost to slobb bro which would give it four wins out of five but there was one last simulation where Aerodactyl would be scored on and that would be testing for the sweep after running the five 1 v1s Aerodactyl would then fight Laury's full team just like how it plays in the actual game now looking for an optimal learn set that beats her flat oat after this results were recorded it would then be these six simulations all waited equally that would determine Aerodactyl score out of one now in this case Aerodactyl beat four of five Pokemon individually and could not sweep so it got four out of six which works out to a final score of 0.66 for laureli and I just need to make a note that this was done for every single Pokemon against every single major trainer in the game like the chander Bulbasaur and Squirtle lines alone saw 8,649 sets of M moves so really all I'm asking is that you just show the team some love for all the hard work on this one now to give you another example we'll look at Brock single available Point who only has three simulations being scored Brock's point was divided on results from a 1 V one against Geodude a 1 V one against Onyx and his actual full fight the results saw Butterfree Squirtle and Bulbasaur being the only three Pokemon able to sweep Brock yielding perfect scores of one now Charmander was able to just beat Geodude so that one out of three converted to a brock score of 0.33 or 13 and as for the rest of the early game Pokémon they couldn't beat Geodude or Onyx so they all received zeros so for Aerodactyl you give it zero for the first six fights it's not available in and then total the scores it got from every other fight you then divide that total score by the 15 fights we evaluated it on to get what is a performance score of 0.527 and what the score effectively means is of the 53 gym leaders in Indigo Plateau Pokémon Aerodactyl helps you against 52.7% of the game for context Moltres helps you against 41.6% of opponents ditto helps you in 15.8% of the game's fights whereas the number one ranked Pokemon helps you against 88.7% of the whole game and there's one more really important detail I need to iron note before we start working our way up there you may have noticed that this system tends to wait sweeps more in the early part of the game Brock gives you 33 where sweeping lur Li only gives you .16 the reason we did it like this is that as the game goes on and enemy team size starts to grow we didn't want Pokémon to be penalized so much for not being able to sweep this weits it so Pokemon that provide help in the most amount of situations are favored but on the other hand it does slightly undervalue a Pokémon that can sweep a team of six the reality is there's no perfect way to do it but we went with this rope because it seemed most important to prioritize consistency and reliability and so now that you finally understand the weight that this list holds I think it's time we start moving towards that number one spot at number 71 we see Voltorb immediately followed by the legendary bird Zapdos we then have Kabutops followed by Electabuzz at 76 we have Lord Helix followed by pincer and then finally the game's first early Pokémon appears with the Weedle line and what's surprising upset here was that Beed actually received a score of zero against Misty despite its bug type having super Effectiveness over stery next was Doduo followed by the final and best performing legendary bird Articuno Articuno Uno succeeded over Zapdos similar availability mainly due to ice having a more favorable matchup in the end game Articuno was one of 32 Pokemon to sweep Giovani one of 11 Pokémon that swept Lance and only one of six that swept Blue's Blastoise team at 62 we see venonat then seal and finally Hitmonchan who due to Simply Having a more diverse learn set managed to provide more overall use than hitmon Le's shallow set 59 then sees Krabby followed by Pikachu who is the second worst performing Pokémon that can be caught before Brock from here it's lickong goldine Flareon Lapras Caterpie horsey chansy and then jolon at 50 and while flareon's low ranking is probably no surprise I got to say I was shocked to see how bad jolon actually performs jolon was able to sweep Sabrina Laurel and Agatha but was held back by unfavorable matchups against Erica Lance and especially Giovani I think we all expected a lot more from jolon and this is especially surprising when you consider that Vaporeon is ranking much higher from here we see Zubat Onyx Cubone Pidgey execute followed by tentacle and Jinx now 42 we then have Porygon pulling a surprisingly High placement given its stats and this one really came down to its learn set giving it amazing coverage now next is Poliwag then me Alf Kangaskhan ryhorn Vulpix and finally Machoke and I actually do need to note there that I said Machoke not Machamp as given the Rarity in access to trade Evolution Pokémon some players will not acquire the final members now this normally always leads to debates on whether you should count final trade Evolutions so we just decided to actually rank both you'll see a champ higher up on the list and this placement is the performance of Machoke alone for players that have no friends 35 is then Oddish followed by shelder Snorlax Sparrow and finally Tauros at 31 who is the highest ranking Safari Zone exclusive 30 then the Psyduck followed by Staryu Slowpoke and then the Evolve traded Machamp and it's kind of funny because ranking right after it is actually graler without its final evolution grow then takes 25 followed by and I'm really sorry to say this one Bulbasaur that's right the Pokemon touted as the greatest starter of Generation 1 actually provides the least overall benefit over a playthrough and when you consider that people tend to weigh Bulbasaur's early game quite heavily you can see why this starts to make sense looking at its chart we can see a great early game with a clear downward Trend in its overall performance and then at 23 we finally see the placement of the top performing EV line Vaporeon while vaporeon's bulk helped it out a lot the biggest reason it did so good here is that water types are just amazing in generation one water basically gives you a free stomp against the last two gyms and most water types can also learn an ice move which really helps against Lance and actually speaking of Lance after 22 with Haunter we actually see the Dragonite line now with actually quite early availability and decent mid-game performance Dragonite did a lot better than I expected most notably it's the only Pokémon to not just sweep all three versions of Blue's champion fight but actually sweep the entire Elite 4 now it is also important to note that this is a really optimal scenario for Dragonite given that it's a level 55 Evolution most players won't be running a Dragonite by the time they reach laurelai and so it's a lot more likely that players are going to still be running Dragon Aire as they head into the Elite Four now hilariously the next spot on our list actually goes to Parasect who is able to secure consistently decent scores with its 100% accurate Spore in a generation where sleep is utterly broken number 19 then sees ganger followed by Mr mime both being Oak class by Kadabra we then see the absolute mad lad radicate securing spot 16 with dig and stab normal moves this thing was able to provide very solid consistency even in the end game where Pokemon like Bulbasaur actually fell off at 15 we then have Mankey followed by ekins Diglett drowsy and Golem securing spot number 11 and Now ladies and gentlemen I present to you the 10 Pokémon that provide the most amount of benefit throughout a playthrough of Pokemon Red and Blue number 10 is Jigglypuff followed by B Sprout and then sandrew at number eight seven st's Clefairy followed by the huge upset of nid King at six and then nid Queen at number five number four sees the Charmander line three is Alakazam number two goes to Squirtle and the Pokémon that provides the most amount of benefit through a playthrough of red and blue is Gyarados all right let's just be honest here you you knew there was going to be more to this video than just that didn't you there's still a ton of time left in this video and it's possible that you like myself are just feeling a little bit unsatisfied with that conclusion so while this was a valid ranking and scientific results as we finished up this portion of the ranking I was just left with a feeling of needing more it felt like what we had just looked at was only half of the picture like sure the results of Alakazam Gyarados nid King and Blastoise at the top all do line up in my brain but there are some other Pokemon that just don't really fit there saying that sand slash provides the eighth most overall benefit to a playthrough is different from saying that sand slash is the eighth strongest Pokemon that isn't to say that its contribution isn't noticed but looking at just half of this only gives you half the picture and if we want to get the full picture we're going to have to look at the other side of that coin let's dive a little deeper shall we now because Mewtwo is caught in the post game of red and blue it didn't even show up on this list but to make an example let's imagine that Mewtwo could be caught after Lieutenant's search you beat the Sparky commander and Mewtwo flies down and says wow I am impressed I would like you a genius 10-year-old strategist to be my new master and use me for the rest of the game now in this 10-year-old fever dream Mewtwo would still score zero points in the first three gyms but from here it would go on a ramp page of Destruction receiving perfect scores for sweeping every single fight left in the game and to any player a performance like this would make it easily stand out as the best Pokemon in the game but with the ranking system we used Mewtwo would just score a 76.9% placing it at number 13 and the problem with using just this style of ranking system is that there's actually two ways to achieve a good score the first is to be like radicate and do a pretty good job throughout a full playthrough the problem is that a 77% across the whole game feels a whole lot different than a 77% that's achieved from sweeping every single fight you're available for so the availability approach is a valid way to grade Pokémon but I'm now going to provide you the second set of calculations we've run this time rather than judging a Pokemon over its total benefit we're going to calculate average scores for only the fights they become available this means that if a Pokémon doesn't have the opportunity to fight in a gym it doesn't get a zero and so while that means Pokémon like like the starters and N King won't have their scores changed at all Pokémon like Moltres who only get the Indigo Plateau to shine in will only be evaluated for those fights and so rather than looking at overall benefit instead this list will show how powerful a Pokemon performs for the time that you have it in other words how it actually feels in terms of play power and dominance and so starting off at our lowest spot and probably unsurprising to no one we once again have ditto dude like it is so bad this win rate of 21 1/2% is still pathetic when compared to even the next spot up who is no longer Moltres but now Weedle the next place then St far-fetched followed by hitmon Le with Pikachu capping the bottom five and Caterpie taking six these are Pokemon that are all genuinely very useful in the early game but their late game performance falls off quite a bit these Pokemon almost have the previous rankings problem but in Reverse rather than early game availability holding them back it's their late game performances now from here we have another horrible score from cyphon followed by Pidgey tangala Pinsir Sparrow Zubat Magnemite and wait for it are you ready Venusaur that's right the game's iconic starter with o its great early game to support it is now placing all the way down at number 70 69 is then Oddish followed by Hitmonchan and Doduo who I'm surprised to see did bad in both rankings now Doo is quite strong but It suffers from being a oneandone Pokémon meaning it was often good at taking on a Pokémon or two but it just couldn't find sweeps anywhere we then have rata who sees a 50 Place overall fall from here it's venomoth Flareon graler Meowth Paris voltor Electabuzz Kadabra jolon ekins Onyx Cubone Krabby Golem and then nid King sees 51 that's right ladies and Gentlemen Just As I said in my own personal top 10 n King is slightly overrated due to its bad late game now 50 sees Jigglypuff take a 40 Place drop followed by Ponyta nid Queen and then the Charizard Line This Again feels pretty spot on to me Charizard is nice in the late game but its early game definitely holds it back 46 se's Porygon then lickitongue goldine Bellsprout seal Machoke Vulpix Magmar sandrew Mr mime coughing grimer Mankey horsey Aerodactyl chansy and then Squirtle at 30 now Squirtle is seeing a 27 Place drop but don't let that seem like it's bad like if we just take a look at its chart to see its raw fight performance data you can see that this is a Pokemon providing an incred incredibly high value throughout most of the game so stand proud Squirtle you are strong now from here we have some familiar faces in Diglett and Clefairy followed by Moltres drowsy Zapdos Kabutops alastar Machamp Arcanine and exeggutor at 20 tacol then takes 19 Follow by Jinx Vaporeon and Hunter at 16 which is cool to see because it tells us that like if you're running a base game of Pokemon red or blue you can use Haunter with odit trade Evolution and still get a lot of value almost as much value as Alakazam who takes the very next spot and I find this a bit shocking because people tend to rank Alakazam as being the most dominant Pokemon throughout the entire game even though it gains points in this ranking system it actually falls in the overall ranking and that's because others gained many more points from removing their early game battles now at number 14 we see a big jump for Dragonite followed by a very Stellar performance from best bird Aruna and shockingly it's actually Poliwrath that ranks next clocking great scores across the board with its diverse learn set poth has no bad fights as its hypnosis makes it able to 1 V one every opponent it matches up against like that's literally what this chart is saying Poliwrath wasn't able to sweep but it can literally take out any Pokemon you match it up against now Kangaskhan then sees a massive glowup followed by Ryon at number 10 at number nine we then actually have Gengar o performing Alakazam with access to hypnosis dream meter psychic Mead drain and Thunderbolt it's no surprise that Gengar did so good aan these Lapras followed by shelder showing how good water types with ice coverage are in this generation interestingly is number six goes to Snorlax immediately followed by Tauros at five now this next one was one of the biggest surprises to me as four actually goes to Gold Duck turns out the duck can uh do something that would get this video demonetized this didn't make sense to me until I realized the duck learned surf blizzard dig and submission and then when you also remember it has mono water as defensive typing you realize what consistency this Pokemon actually brings now at number three and probably most impressive of all we have Gyarados who only fell two spots in the ranking and next up was the Pokemon that I actually said I thought was the best overall in my own ranking which is star me comes a little bit later but as expected and as experienced it's just a dominant force of nature once you get it but finally as the sixth water Pokémon to secure a spot in the top 10 the most dominant gen one Pokémon for when you haveit is the water psychic Amnesia wielding slowo but uh I'm going to do the thing again where I tell you that that's not quite it because just like as it works out with total benefit ranking a Pokemon for its fights only also gives an unfair advantage and we can demonstrate the issue with this sort of ranking with a really simple example imagine if instead of joining you after a lieutenant surge meww flies down and joins your party right after you beat Lance meww is like I've seen the cards and I am sick of that cocky rival I'm joining the team for a last minute beat down in this case meww would join your team sweep blue and then also end up with 100% win rate so after we ran these sets of calculations for Pure in-game Performance we once again realized that this just isn't the full picture and we came to the realization that really the only way to get the full picture of what is the best Pokemon for a playthrough in terms of both feel and total benefit is to combine these two lists into one so we took the performance scores from each set of calculations and we average them together to give you one final score and I really do mean that this is the final list so ladies and gentlemen I give you without further Ado this is the most accurate possible scientific ranking for the best Pokemon for a playthrough in Pokemon Red and Blue and if you haven't yet please subscribe because this video took like over 100 hours to make I don't know while you're at it like maybe go donate to a food bank or something now starting out at our 84th spot missing out on the first rankings it is now apparent that no matter what way you look at it it is absolutely certain that Mewtwo should rank at the very bottom of this list whereas the uncatchable Mew will go a step further being undeserving of a rank at all now from here as expected ditto is once again going to take the true bottom spot at 83 followed by hitmon Lee as the second worst available Pokemon like that to me is probably one of the most shocking things in this entire list cuz from here it's it's a little more expected you've got farfetched followed by Weedle then tangala Scyther Magnemite Pinsir and then Pikachu capping out the bottom 10 and now given that I've probably taken up more of your time we're going to go through a lot of this list in a pretty rapid fire order at number 74 we have Butterfree followed by Moltres followed by Doduo Pidgey venomoth Hitmonchan Pony Voltorb Electabuzz Zubat magar the sparrow line then ranks as the strongest normal flyer next it's coughing grimer Flareon Aerodactyl steel Oddish Zapdos amonite Kabuto Krabby Bulbasaur jolon at 51 jolon ranks as the highest electric type and if you couldn't have guessed electric as a whole was the worst performing type in the game with water obviously being the strongest from here we have liong goldine meow Articuno Onyx Cubone Geodude Porygon Rattata horsey chansy Vulpix Machop Paris who um as the second worst type overall is the highest ranking bug honestly this is also one of my favorite rankings because people view Paris so bad with its three four times weaknesses I'm just I'm so happy to see it get a little bit of recognition then from here we have Lapras Abra and then Jinx who is the highest ranking ice type that doesn't have water as a secondary next is execute followed by tentacle and then ekins who is the highest ranking pure poison at 30 we have Poliwag followed by Golem Jigglypuff Kangaskhan and ryhorn at taking spot of highest ranking rock type Machamp takes 25 followed by Mr mime Snorlax and sheld dirt taking the highest ranking ice type Mankey then follows that up at 21 taking highest fighting type at 20 we have Tauros followed by Psyduck and then growth who will take the awkward ranking of highest ranking nonstarter fire type now at 17 Bev spro actually takes highest ranking grass type 16 is then Diglett followed by sandrew who is the highest ranking pure ground Vaporeon then takes 14 followed by gastley and Haunter at 13 this placement as the strongest unevolved Pokémon is even more impressive would you remember that it has no capable stab moves now at number 12 we have the game pseudo legendary Dragonite Then followed by an amazing placement of 11 for Hypno and then finally capping out our number 10 it's my personal favorite star me now number nine sees n King followed by nid Queen now given that I've hyped this ranking up so much you're probably wondering why nid Queen actually beat the king as expected these two obviously had very similar scores but because Little Queen takes a sweep over Sabrina and iani whereas nid King takes its two sweeps against Lance and blue Venusaur and so actually given the fact that they have the same number of sweeps the only difference was that not hitting a sweep was waited to be less punishing in the late game to put it simply they're very equal Pokémon it's just that n Queen is more consistent through the gyms while n King is better for the Elite 4 now Charizard is actually up next taking a very respectable seventh place while Gengar at six supplants itself as the overall second best trade Evo strongest Ghost type I I guess and also on a technicality strongest poison I say it's a technicality because Gengar doesn't actually use its poison in a way that helps it or a way that it identifies with poison exists on Gengar to Nerf it so really you should say it got to number six despite being poison type now next Slowpoke secures spot number five as best non monos psychic type another huge shock is the extremely early clefable actually taking spot number four as the game's best overall normal type then with its great early game and consistent performance through the endgame Blastoise takes third as the top starter and best mono water type then alak Kazam with its even better late game performance and great availability takes number two as best psychic but there's one Pokemon that when designing game freak was like you know what life's not fair and we're going to imbue that into this Pokemon because on Heaven and Earth Gyarados alone claims the title of honored one because with an incredible TM learn set legendary stats availability before Misty and the best type in the game Magikarp and Gyarados take title of best water type technically best flyer and overall best generation one Pokemon so there you go you you can now know what Pokemon to use in a 25-year-old game congrats but for real guys thank you so much for making it all the way through this was a very big one we appreciate the love we appreciate the support the YouTube algorithm is now recommending you another video to watch so go click that and I will see you later much love and peace

Channel: SmithPlays Pokémon

Views: 52,815

Keywords: pokemon, thesmithplays, smithplays, smithplays pokemon, pokemon crystal legacy

Id: yGaJr7cQ3Nc

Length: 27min 31sec (1651 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 09 2024