Pokémon as a series has seen some remarkable
changes since the late 90s. No more is it about two trainers striking
out on an adventure to challenge the Pokémon league, to befriend Pokémon and trainers
alike, to catch them all: it’s about wormholes, parallel universes, world-ending stakes, and
mantine surfing. It's humbling to travel back and imagine a
simpler era, one less tainted by feature creep. Not to say everything about modern Pokémon
is bad; there is simply a difference in design philosophy that's a little hard to fully understand
until you turn back the pendulum. Pit the latest Pokémon game up against the
first, the latest season of the anime up against its debut, the current designs up against
the originals: so much has changed in over 20 years. Generation 1 is primitive by comparison, but
no less iconic. What it established for the series going forward
can't be adequately explained in a few paragraphs. Which is why this video exists: because I'm
weird and want to make huge videos dissecting each generation of Pokémon in an effort to
convince you I'm smart. This will be the first part in a larger series
discussing the debut games of each generation. I have elected to ignore the remakes for now
in favor of not letting my thoughts get too out of control. This video in particular would be three times
as long if I tried to cram in both of its remakes, and I just don't think that's necessary
to get my points across. At some point, I'll be making a video on every
single Pokémon remake, evaluating their best and worst aspects, so don't worry: these remakes
will get their time to shine one day. For now, though: I'd like to focus on the
premier titles. In this video, we'll be discussing the generation
that started it all: Red, Blue, and Yellow. You're watching A Pokémon Retrospective:
Generation 1. --GOTTA CATCH 'EM ALL-- To say the series exploded in popularity upon
the release of Red and Blue in the States would be an understatement. By the time they released, the incredibly
successful Nintendo Game Boy was nearly ten years old. Games like Super Mario Land, Tetris, and Kirby’s
Dreamland ensured this long lifespan, and remnants of this success can be felt in the
Switch today. For as great as these games were, however,
none of them necessarily fit the system. Super Mario Land was Mario on the go, who
could argue with that? It was successful, it put the Game Boy on
the map, but couldn’t you theoretically get that same experience on a home console? Same with Tetris and Dr. Mario: great puzzle
games for short, on the go bursts, but do they necessarily take advantage of their hardware? Is there anything inherently you lose when
you play Tetris or Dr. Mario on a home console? Even games that saw their debut on the system,
like Kirby, have since been translated to home consoles seamlessly. While Kirby is and always has been popular
on handhelds, at the end of the day it’s still a 2D side scrolling, single player video
game series. Then, out of seemingly nowhere, Pokémon:
on the surface, a single-player RPG where you catch and train 150 battle monsters to
defeat other trainers and challenge the powerful endgame League. It spread like wildfire from the word GO. You've got over a hundred unique creatures
to find. Charizard is a cool fire-breathing dragon,
Jigglypuff is a cute pink puffball that likes to sing, Pikachu is an adorable mouse that
shoots electricity from its body. These designs are memorable for different
reasons; people would want to catch them for different reasons. These creatures not only exist in the same
universe, they can battle alongside each other. Collecting Pokémon is special because there
are so many to call your own. Ultimately, it's your decision which monsters
you'll bring with you on your adventure. Right down to your first Pokemon being framed
as this big event in your small town, picking from three iconic starters: you might have
vague ideas about what they’ll turn into from the box art, you might not have any idea
until you train them up and watch them evolve from a cute water turtle into a beast with
water cannons on its shoulders. The idea that there are 150 different creatures
out there to catch, to train, to love: is nothing short of exciting. Why do you think the anime was so centered
around “catching ‘em all.” Yet, it’s the decidedly multiplayer aspects
of Pokemon that make it a handheld game. See, Nintendo aren't dumb. They knew the Game Boy had a huge install-base,
which meant dozens of kids across the world primed for the Pikachu heroin injection. They paired this knowledge with a devilishly
genius idea: split the game in two, list both at full price, and create very small differences
between them. You can only catch Growlithe in Red, and you
can only catch Vulpix in Blue. If you wanted to catch em’ all, register
every Pokémon in your Pokédex, fulfill both Professor Oak’s and your desire to catch
them all: you’d have to trade with another human being. It’s very unlikely you own both Red and
Blue, with access to two Game Boys and a link cable. Let’s say you’re a youngin in the late
90’s with Pokémon Blue version. You’ve caught as many as you can possibly
find: you finally wrangled Ninetails, Magmar, Pinsir, but you can’t seem to fully complete
that Pokédex. Luckily, you’re a kid and you go to school
everyday with other kids deep into this nationwide Pokémon fever. Kids who bring their Game Boys to school,
who likely report their previous day progress not unlike a book club. It’s here you learn about the monsters you
missed: Arcanine, Scyther, Electabuzz; with a bunch of other kids learning the exact same
thing about your Ninetails, Magmar, and Pinsir. You get some deals going, you complete that
Pokédex and boom: you’ve actually caught them all! How did you do that? Outside of playing the game, where did you
learn about the location of certain Pokémon in a game with random encounter rates? Some as low as 5%. This was before Bulbapedia, by the way. You didn't do it by yourself, that's for sure. You went to school everyday, you traded both
Pokémon and information with other kids, until you saw it all. This is the secret sauce: Pokémon is a social
event masquerading as a single player video game, and that’s exactly why it’s still
a big hit. If it had attempted to appeal to any other
demographic during its debut, it wouldn’t have become the monolith we now recognize
it as. The majority of Gen X parents didn’t play
video games at all, let alone on Game Boys with colorful little battle monsters, and
they certainly didn’t bring their games to work or social gatherings. Spare time likely existed in brief pockets
of sleep and television. This is an idea that only works under a specific
set of circumstances that just so happen to repeat themselves every generation, every
10 year age gap, every one year age gap: every kid can get behind Pokémon and its social
aspects. Let’s think back again for another example. You’re that kid who owns Pokémon Blue. What else do you spend time with after you’ve
defeated your rival on the Indigo Plateau? Well, there are still battles to be had: with
other kids. Pitting your most powerful Pokémon against
your friend’s most powerful Pokémon, locking eyes day after day, getting to see new moves,
new Pokemon. Imagine if you went to Cerulean Cave one night
and found Mewtwo. Your best friend has no idea what a Mewtwo
even is, but you have one now, and you show it off; you brag a little. You battle them with it and completely mop
the floor with them because Mewtwo has godlike stats. This feeds into a sense of both game created
and player created Pokémon mythology. Finding Mew under the truck near the SS Anne,
wondering what the hell that flying bird was in the first episode of the anime, and attempting
to decipher whatever a Pikablu is supposed to be. Those are just the popular ones; popular myths
before the internet/communication age. Countless other stories, rumors, and legends
existed across the world that some of us still don’t even know about. This is the wrong generation, but I remember
reading a Pokémon Emerald strategy guide with my friends back in the day, and we thought
that some coffee stain was actually a Manaphy Egg hidden at the Battle Frontier: these games
were so mysterious to the underdeveloped mind. This is a story that only my friends and I
remember fondly. Imagine just how many different stories like
that exist? How many hundreds of thousands across the
globe. It’s magical. Early Pokémon enjoyed several years of uninterrupted
wanderlust, with kids obsessively playing Pokémon, talking Pokémon, collecting Pokémon,
trying to find Pokémon that didn’t even exist. These are powerful nostalgia agents. I’m fairly certain the design goals for
Pokémon were to create a game that allowed for this social intimacy at its core, surrounded
by an RPG crust, and it was a resounding success because their priorities were extremely well-placed. --THIN CRUST-- That’s just it though: Pokémon was a game
designed to be a social experience from its very inception, with just enough endearing
designs and barebones rock-paper-scissors gameplay to carry the experience for children. Red and Blue don’t strike me as games that
were meticulously designed or tweaked for a single player campaign in the same vein
as a Final Fantasy. Part of this might be due to the limited memory
available to Game Boy cartridges, but I’m sure just as much consideration went into
the potential primary demographic. Each Pokémon can only carry 4 moves, trainers
can only battle using one monster at a time, and can only carry 6 in a party. Most of your potential strategy comes via
a set of 15 types that each have individual matchups. The elemental trio is a fine example: fire
beats grass, grass beats water, and water beats fire. Easy to understand and perfectly balanced
across the three starter Pokémon. It’s when you venture onward that it isn’t
nearly as clear-cut. Some of them are natural, like fire burning
grass, water putting out fire, the earth grounding electricity, and because of that those are
the easiest to learn. The more ethereal types, stuff like Psychic
and Ghost, are more confusing because they don't follow any logical throughline. Why is Psychic weak to Bug? Simply because Psychic needed a weakness. Through this vast array of strengths, weaknesses,
and immunities: we reach what is, on paper, a balanced in-game meta. Except, rarely is anything as good as it is
on paper. Psychic and Dragon clearly dominate the type
chart with virtually no matches because they were weak to types that that were simply no
competition. The Dragon type is a less severe example since
it only affects the Dragonite line, but I’m going to use it to demonstrate a larger issue. Dragon types were weak to both the Dragon
and Ice Type, with the caveat being that the only damaging Dragon type move in Gen 1 was
Dragon Rage, a set damage move that never changes its attack power even when it’s
super effective. In reality, then, Dragon became the most defensive
type because it resisted Fire, Water, Electric, and Grass, with only the ice type as a weakness. The Ice typing is held by a whopping 5 Pokemon,
with Ice type moves learned by level up obtained at or around the level 50s. That means there are only 5 Pokémon that
benefit from same type attack bonus with ice type moves (a concept which means that if
the move you’re using is the same type as the Pokémon using it, the move does 50% more
damage). Only two of them learn ice beam or blizzard
naturally, two of the strongest ice type moves. Aurora Beam exists for decent damage, but
it can only be learned by either Seel or Dewgong and there isn’t even a TM for it. Here are your options against Dragon type
Pokemon: one of 5 ice types, or one other type that can learn ice beam or blizzard. Only once, because TMs are single use items. Use up ice beam or blizzard on the wrong Pokemon? You’ve just lost a crucial weapon against
the Dragon type. Again, even though that means Dragonite, paired
with its near legendary tier stats, has virtually no weaknesses, this at least isn’t a problem
that spans multiple Pokémon. In fact, as future games would come to show,
Dragon types are supposed to be limited in number, extremely powerful, and kinda rare. Their sheer strength can be dismissed on that
front alone. No, the more blatant problem, and the reason
I feel this whole type system was maybe cobbled together haphazardly, is the psychic type:
by far the most comically overpowered type of any game in the series for a myriad of
reasons. Like the dragon type, it only has one weakness:
bug. In this case, there are far more bug type
Pokémon than there are Ice type Pokémon, though here’s the kicker: bug types usually
have horrendous offensive stats. Bug types existed mostly to give the player
an early look at how evolution works, and to give them a bit of an edge early game with
a strong, fully evolved Pokémon. Beyond the second or third gym, their usefulness
often wanes. In Generation 1, there were three offensive
bug type moves. Leech Life with 20 base power, Twineedle with
25 base power plus a potential second attack, and Pin Missile with 25 base power plus a
random chance of hitting anywhere from 2 to 5 times. There is not a single bug-type move with more
than 50 guaranteed base power by these calculations, so you basically need Pin Missile and a lot
of luck. Problem: only two Pokemon are capable of learning
Pin Missile by level up: Beedrill and Jolteon. Beedrill learns it at level 30, and Jolteon
learns it at level 48. Beedrill is also the only Pokemon of the two
that benefits from same type attack bonus. What about Twineedle then? Seems like a safe second, right? The only Pokemon that learns Twineedle is
Beedrill. It’s cool, Beedrill has a signature attack,
but this means that Leech Life is the most common bug type attacking move: and the fun
doesn’t end there, oh no. Not only is there not a single bug type TM
in Generation 1, two of the objectively strongest bug type Pokemon, Scyther and Pinsir, cannot
learn bug type moves: I am not joking here, they are bug types that, for no discernable
reason, don’t learn a single bug type move. Psychic types though? Oh they have Confusion with 50 base power
plus a chance of confusion, psybeam with 65 base power plus a chance of confusion, psywave
which does damage based on level differences, Dream Eater which does 100 base damage to
sleeping Pokemon, and Psychic which does 90 base power and can be learned by Venonat,
Venomoth, Kadabra, Alakazam, Slowpoke, Slowbro, Drowzee, Hypno, Staryu, Mr. Mime, Mewtwo,
Butterfree, Clefairy, Clefable, Jigglypuff, Wigglytuff, Poliwag, Poliwhirl, Poliwrath,
Gastly, Haunter, Gengar, Exeggcute, Exeggutor, Chansey, Starmie, Electabuzz, Magmar, Lapras,
Porygon, and Snorlax. Fighting and Poison types have it very rough
this gen. Must suck to be a Team Rocket grunt. Oh yeah, remember good ol’ Beedrill, your
front-line fighter against psychic types, your stalwart defender against the most broken
type in the first generation? It has a dual-type shared between Bug and
Poison. Bug types do not resist Psychic at all, but
Poison is weak to Psychic which means… the best defense against Psychic type Pokemon
and moves is itself weak to Psychic. The mere existence of the Psychic type throws
the type chart into complete disarray, however well balanced the idea may have initially
been. This discourages certain types of Pokémon,
and in a way, it kinda defeats the purpose of having such a wide selection in the first
place. These first two games only really have battles
in them: there’s no contest side-mode or anything like that, making a team is integral
to the experience, and when there’s such a clear imbalance, it makes some choices far
more appealing than others. Though, it isn’t wholly the fault of the
type chart, it’s also down to how the game uses it. Unfortunately, good designs do not necessarily
equal good utility. I love the design of Ponyta and Rapidash:
they’re your average horse, except their manes are on fire. Simple, hilarious in a way, but I’ve always
connected with them as a pyromaniac. I wanna ride one. Sucks then that Ponyta and Rapidash are physical-based
offensive fire-types, just about the worst thing you could possibly do to these poor
bastards. Types are broken into two groups: physical
and special. Entire typings are given classifications for
the calculations that go on behind the scenes with clashing stats. For instance, fire type attacks will be special
by virtue of their fire typing, so the power of the attack will be based on the attacking
Pokemon’s special stat, and subtraction occurs based on the receiving Pokemon’s
special stat. Let's take a level 40 Rapidash using ember
against a level 40 Kadabra. Through a set of calculations that are super
fun and interesting, we come to the conclusion that Kadabra will lose a miniscule amount
of health due to the special stat difference. Now, if fire was a physical type, Rapidash
would rely on its base 100 attack stat, which would help it far more: alas, many Pokemon
were cursed with this mismatched type to stat ratio. Flareon has the exact same problem: high attack,
no fire type moves to take advantage of it. You can't have a psychic type that is primarily
a physical attacker. I mean, you can: no one is going to stop you,
but it will be incredibly ineffective. Similarly, you can't have a rock type that
is primarily a special attacker, not even a dual type between rock and ground. This is fine in and of itself, but how about
we further scramble this mess of a type chart. Take Kadabra again with a 120 special stat. We aren't even talking about Alakazam yet,
bear in mind. Compare Kadabra to a physically defensive
Pokemon like Onix. Kadabra is so, so much better than Onix for
so many reasons, but let's focus in on one particular disparity. Onix has a very respectable defense stat at
160, while everything else is pitiful at best. Kadabra is in a similar boat with its 120
special stat. The difference here is that Onix only has
one good stat, while Kadabra technically has two. Onix will tank physical hits like they're
nothing at all, with the tradeoff being that it can't fire back. Kadabra doesn't have a trade off, because
it fires off special attacks at 120, while also defending special attacks at 120. Let's say you use a physical move against
Onix: yeah he can tank it, but he won’t be sweeping you anytime soon because his attack
stat is so low. If you use a special attacker against Kadabra,
it will tank the hit and then decimate with a counterattack based on the same stat. What this essentially means is that special
typings are objectively superior to physical typings. Types like Water, Grass, Electric, did somebody
say Psychic? These types have more going for them than
Normal, Flying, or Ground, and it limits your Pokémon choices quite a bit. It isn’t to say you won’t use a physical
attacker, since it can bypass special Pokémon fairly easily, just that special Pokémon
end up being more useful in more situations, and since types are classified as either physical
or special, that means entire typings will end up more useful than others. There's a reason Alakazam is so good. There's a reason you don't see a lot of Onix
or Golem. There's a reason you see Starmie and Cloyster. There's a reason you don't see Beedrill or
Butterfree. All of this is child’s play compared to
the many other issues that exist in gen 1. Speed being proportional to your critical
hit rate, meaning that faster Pokemon get more critical hits; moves like focus energy
cutting your critical hit rate instead of doubling it; moves like wrap and bind preventing
you from attacking, easily stun locking you; moves that raised your stats so high that
your numbers would roll over into lower numbers: this stuff is insane. I understand that bugs and design quirks are
an inherent part of the process, and you're never going to be able to eliminate them all. I'm more surprised by the sheer quantity and
severity of these issues. Take Wrap and Bind, for instance. They can attack anywhere from 2-5 turns, dealing
a small bit of damage over time. Neither Pokémon can do anything until wrap
runs its course, except that the opponent is still doing damage all the same. It's like an extended variation of Fury Swipes
or Pin Missile. Not only can it be frustrating to sit back
and slowly watch your health drop, if your Pokémon is slower than the opponent, there
is absolutely nothing stopping them from deathlocking you. Erika's gym has a ton of Pokémon in it with
the move Wrap, and there were several points where one of my Pokémon simply couldn't act
out of this broken wraplock. This issue could potentially get even worse
when sleep enters the picture, which in generation 1 takes away your entire turn to wake up. Theoretically, this means that you can be
sleeplocked and subsequently wraplocked at the same time. It punishes you severely for having slower
Pokémon, and a surprising amount of trainers throughout Kanto have the move on at least
one of their Pokémon. These problems often branch out into the overall
level design. --ROCK HARD WALLS-- I wanna take a look at the first area, which
I count as the length of time spanning from when you first get a Pokemon all the way up
to obtaining your first gym badge. Your first choice is between Charmander, Squirtle,
and Bulbasaur. For this first area, the only two sane options
are Squirtle and Bulbasaur unless you wanna have a really bad time. What Pokémon can you catch before going up
against the first gym? Pidgey, Rattata, Nidoran female, Nidoran male,
Spearow, Caterpie, Weedle, and Pikachu. What are the good options against Rock type
Pokémon? Well, Pidgey and Pidgeotto are Normal Flying
types, so all of their attack moves are resisted by the rock typing. All of Rattata’s moves are once again resisted
by the Rock typing, Caterpie and Weedle are in pretty much the same boat. Pikachu’s not only extremely rare, but I
mean… have you watched the anime? Not a great pick. Butterfree is realistically the only option
that makes sense because it learns Confusion and PoisonPowder for some reliable special
damage and status ailments to whittle down Brock’s team, but even then there’s no
guarantee that Butterfree will even last that long with its pisspoor defense. Plus, I recently learned that status ailments
don't mean anything because gym leaders can instantly heal them on a whim. Moral of the story here is that your early
game difficulty choices are: easy, easy, or grind until it becomes trivial. Squirtle learns super effective moves against
rock types and so does Bulbasaur, leaving Charmander in the dust. Now, I don’t expect Pokémon games to be
perfectly fine-tuned with a smooth difficulty curve as that’s practically impossible. Unlike other RPGs, Pokémon has an unprecedented
amount of variables to account for: 15 different types, even more type combinations, type matchups,
150 different Pokémon you can control, and the player chooses to do whatever the hell
they want with those Pokémon at any given time. Asking any team of human beings to perfectly
balance a game with that many options would be hell on earth and I will never demand perfection
of any Pokémon game. I actually like the idea that your Pokémon
selection affects each game’s difficulty organically, meaning you struggle at different
points depending on what team you build. I started with Charmander on my most recent
playthrough, caught a Caterpie and trained it up to a Butterfree so I could stand a chance. The fight itself was refreshingly challenging,
and even got me to develop more interesting strategies to survive; but I do have limits. There is a point at which I draw the line
and this is one of those cases. This is the beginning of a video game, where
you’re meant to learn and absorb the mechanics in order to use them for the rest of your
20 or so hours beating gyms. An especially salient point given that this
was the first game in the series. To not have a single worthwhile option outside
of your starter against a typing that is primarily physically defensive is frankly absurd, and
means that any poor soul who picks Charmander is in for an unholy amount of grinding. The worst part, though, is that there are
only 3 or 4 trainers in Viridian Forest to fight for a sufficient amount of experience,
the rest of your grinding will be done against wild Pokémon which give less experience because
they’re wild, and even less because they’re much lower leveled than anything in Brock’s
gym. I had no idea what I wanted to use against
Brock so I just had to grind up all of the Pokémon I had that wouldn’t die in five
seconds so that they could hopefully lower Onix’s attack faster than they’d die trying. Fun fact: did you know that critical hits
disregard status changes? When I lowered Onyx’s defense around 5 times,
critical hits were suddenly a huge detriment to my attack power, because the calculation
is done on the base power of that attack, disregarding all defense or offense changes. You can bet this lead to my death in more
than one endurance battle. This is a cyclical frustration until you’re
high enough level. You start off with a limited amount of money,
there are only 3 or 4 trainers which are currently your only source of money, and whenever you
lose a battle, some of that money just disappears. Maybe you can cheese some of the fight with
potions when Brock’s Pokemon aren’t one-hit-KOing you, but those potions are finite use items
that don’t respawn after a team wipe, and if you lose enough times, you won’t have
enough money to buy more potions. When you’re out of money, you’re out of
options: this is when the grind kicks into high gear. Grinding to absurdly high levels outside Pewter
City, running back and forth from this patch of grass to the Pokémon Center: yeah I think
there might be a problem here. It’s not even just that your Pokémon take
a lot of damage, it’s also that they do little to no damage thanks to the type matchups. When a move is not very effective against
a typing that is highly defensive, that health bar will not budge, while they naturally coast
through the fight with normal damage even when they’re a lower level than you, because
type matchups matter just that much to a battle. The solution, I feel, would be to not start
the game out with such a highly defensive typing. Instead, perhaps using the normal type would
have been a good compromise. While it may not teach you right away about
type advantages, it means that no matter which starter you pick, the early game won’t be
split between two radical difficulty extremes. As a base single player RPG it still works
past Pewter City since there are a lot more Pokémon and thus a lot more options. Your Charmeleon is also gonna suck against
Misty: the difference here is that you will then have at least some reliable options. Unfortunately, you kind of have to put up
with a lot of uninteresting filler in between gym leaders. The stuff you do in between Brock and Misty
is on rails, you go from point A to point B. Trainer battles are rarely, if ever, challenging,
so what you quickly realize is that all you're doing in between gyms is walking through hallways,
getting interrupted constantly by wild encounters and trainers, until you finally, maybe get
challenged by the gym leader. That's a scant maybe. Making monotype bosses will railroad you into
learning type matchups, for sure: it just doesn't always make for a challenging fight. If you have an answer to a gym leader's defined
typing… you win. Lt. Surge is located in Vermillion City, right
next to the Diglett Cave. Diglett is a ground type, meaning it resists
all of Lt. Surge's Pokemon, and so if you go catch a Diglett: the deed is done before
you've even begun. The fights that often matter are the ones
that don't follow the rules of their own supposed skillset: Lance, the final member of the Elite
Four, is supposedly a master of the Dragon type. Is he though? Two of his Pokémon aren't even Dragon types,
they merely resemble dragons. This is obviously because the Dragonite line
are the only Dragon types in the first generation, but this also made for one of the coolest
fights in the entire playthrough. Why? Because his team was unpredictable: all of
a sudden there was a Water type, a Rock type, no longer could you sweep him with ice type
moves. Compare that to Blaine: a team of four pure
fire types, gee I wonder what I should use to beat him? The only time in Generation 1 that I've ever
struggled against a gym battle is against Brock, at a time where my options were severely
limited. Even Sabrina can be challenged after you've
already completed most of the other gyms, giving you time to raise your levels. Despite how much I've rattled on about this,
I don't mind too much because I've never exactly needed these games to be Omega Shenron Dark
Souls Hard. I'm only mentioning it because so many people
insist that the original games were challenging and that the new ones pale in comparison. Generation 1 is certainly buggier and far
more frustrating, but that doesn't really make it more difficult. Enemy Pokémon have really odd move pools
that don't take advantage of their strengths, and I can't even begin to discern how their
AI is programmed. Sometimes they come across stupid, and other
times it's as if they cheated. Which is probably because they can actually
read your inputs in this generation, meaning they can basically read your mind. But I guess that's offset by them selecting
"Agility" for the 18th time in a row because it’s a Psychic type move and they’re programmed
to use super effective moves, even if those moves don’t do damage. Playing for footage, instead of building a
team, I decided to just use Pokemon as I got them to encourage myself to experiment, and
even without creating a team that would cover my weaknesses, there weren't any in-game challenges
that made me want to pull out my hair. That’s all I can really ask of any Pokemon
game, really. I want a majority of the encounters to at
least make me think about what I’m doing on a deeper level, I don’t need constant
team wipes or anything. Unfortunately, Generation 1 has just never
struck me as a particularly thought-provoking entry in the series until late-game. It’s especially grating in some of the long,
confusing dungeons you’re forced to slog through. It’s one thing to plow through a place like
the Pokemon Tower, a fairly short set of rooms with a few trainer battles. It’s over and done with before you know
it, and there’s even a neat little story about a dead Marowak. On the other hand, Silph Co. is a frustrating
nightmare of a dungeon built around memorizing warp tiles and battling trainer after trainer
after trainer. In most future Pokemon games, I would be okay
with a long dungeon like this, but in Red and Blue it’s difficult to defend due to
the myriad of weird issues it has. Trainer AI is unremarkable, meaning that any
fight you get into leads to an audible “groan.” A limited inventory means you’ll constantly
be deciding which of your valuable items to throw away, leading to a bunch of time spent
in the inventory menu. Since you usually have to fight most trainers
in these games to keep all of your Pokemon at a sufficient level, that means you’re
going to have to battle around 30 brain dead trainers that almost all have the same Pokemon. I can at least commend this dungeon for having
an interesting gimmick, unlike Mt. Moon and the SS Anne, but it’s hard not to notice
that Silph Co. is just a longer, more tedious rendition of the Rocket Hideout in Celadon. That dungeon was three floors long, had a
decent spin tile gimmick, and still had the boss battle against Giovanni at the end. You don’t really need Team Rocket to do
much more than that: they’re already spread across the Kanto region causing trouble, and
the gym leader fight with Giovanni is a good end to his story. I don’t think you needed to fight him on
three separate occasions to drive the point home that they’re troublemakers. We don’t need hours of useless trainer battles,
we don’t need hours of wandering around in caves that have nothing in them but Strength
puzzles, dear lord. The act of playing through Red and Blue is
sometimes akin to trying to shave your beard by plucking out each individual hair one by
one. --POKEMON ARE PRETTY COOL I GUESS-- It’s clear that Red and Blue weren’t trying
for anything new in terms of typical RPG design. As I just mentioned, there’s a limited inventory,
a frustrating trope of pretty much every older RPG; progression is often halted in strange
ways like a guard who needs a drink to prevent you from entering Saffron City before you’re
supposed to; then again, there are interesting roadblocks like the sleeping Snorlax, because
it allows you to fight and catch a new Pokemon you can’t find anywhere else. It seems like anything you do regarding these
colorful creatures is always gonna be an inherently interesting roadblock. You run into a flaming horse and why the hell
wouldn’t you want to catch and raise it? The design of Ponyta or Rapidash are appealing. This classic design philosophy is key to the
success of the first generation. I have a lot of favorite designs: Pikachu
is a pretty popular one, but I think Raichu’s design goes a bit underappreciated. Its tail is a sharper thunderbolt at the end
of a wire. It uses its tail to ground itself and protect
it from the higher voltage that’s taken into its body, most likely as a result of
it being more powerful than Pikachu. I like the moodier color choices accentuated
by the darker orange and brown. It creates less of a contrast than Pikachu’s
pure yellow, black, and red: but I think it just makes it cuter. Sandslash shares this same kind of brown to
offset the darker yellow, and you’ll find that most Pokemon in this generation weaponize
this simplicity in their design. Sandshrew is an Armadillo, Meowth is a cat,
Haunter is a ghost, Vulpix is a fox. I guess you could look at this design philosophy
as a little too tame: I mean, there’s a bird, a rat, a bat. It’s no secret that lots of these designs
are based off our real world, just as Kanto is based off a real region of Japan. I can sorta understand that complaint, but
I think we’d lose a connection to these monsters if they were too far removed from
our reality. Personally, I’ve never had a connection
to Digimon precisely because their designs felt too imaginative and busy. Without even the smallest connection, like
Ponyta’s horse body shape, or Zubat’s bat wings, I don’t think I would connect
as strongly with the original 150. One could certainly argue that level of restraint
is a lost art. Just look at the Legendary Bird Trio. Zapdos, a lightning bird said to cause thunderstorms
and live amongst the clouds; Articuno, a bad omen to passersby within frigid climates;
and Moltres, a bird that's said to bring an early springtime in cold lands. Really, they're just birds, but the mythos
backing them is fascinating. It's fun to explore the world and happen across
them by chance. Zapdos and Articuno are in optional dungeons,
and Moltres is hidden away at Victory Road. They have extremely high catch rates, making
it an ordeal in itself to catch them all, but you're rewarded with incredible stats
to carry you through the rest of the game. You also get to speculate even more about
what these Pokémon are through your Pokédex entries and associated lore. How did Zapdos end up at the Power Plant? What is Articuno doing at the Seafoam Islands? The fact that you only get one shot to catch
them speaks volumes: they’re one of a kind, and that’s what makes them so special. Of course, these three birds pale in comparison
to the true powerhouse legendary of the first generation: Mewtwo. Here's a Pokémon built up within the game
itself, before you even catch wind of its location. The Pokémon Mansion on Cinnabar Island has
hidden journal entries about a Pokémon named Mew, and the efforts of a group of scientists
to clone it. It's not much, but it's enough to get you
wondering, and when you finally gain access to Cerulean Cave: there it is. Mew-two: arguably the strongest Pokémon in
the first generation, a failed clone of Mew that escaped captivity and now lives in isolation. It's not a huge set of legendaries, but they
each have their own dungeon (sans Moltres), and are easy to appreciate after reading their
Pokédex entries. Gaining more insight into the world of Pokémon
by catching them is a genius way to fill out the world. Lots of people prefer the original designs
to the newer designs, the region of Kanto to the region of Sinnoh, Team Rocket’s simplicity
to Team Galactic’s deeper motives. I wholeheartedly understand where those people
are coming from too. Kanto is a wonderfully designed region. I love how the map closes back in on itself
after Cinnabar Island. It has this magical effect where the Elite
Four are practically in your backyard, but you have to go prove yourself before you can
challenge them. Surfing up from Cinnabar, finally figuring
out where that little pond at the bottom of Pallet Town led to: it feels great. Red and Blue still have the most freedom in
terms of what gyms you want to tackle, which is kinda crazy. After the second gym, you don’t necessarily
need to visit gyms in a linear order. You could theoretically skip Lt. Surge and
go explore other cities. Hell, if you blitz your way over to Koga,
you can learn Surf and fight Blaine. Now, some of the gym leaders have comparable
levels. Sabrina, Koga, and Blaine are all around the
same level, and these are really the three that I alternate between on subsequent playthroughs. There’s really no point in skipping Surge
or Erika anyway, as their teams are so low level that you won’t exactly be coming back
to a challenging fight. This middle series of gym leaders is one of
my favorite parts of the entire region: there’s so much you can choose to do here. Will you take the cycling road, or the boardwalk? Will you challenge Sabrina right away, or
take on Koga? Which gyms are you more confident you can
battle with a lower level team? It might seem like a minor degree of freedom
to some, but you have to keep in mind that future games have taken away any semblance
of progression-based choice, so feeling any degree of freedom again, however flawed, is
pretty refreshing. Each route has its own set of Pokémon to
make sure that discovering new areas endows this satisfying feeling of adventure onto
the player. All of a sudden there are new monsters appearing,
and you get this overwhelming desire to catch them and see what they can do. With this recent playthrough of Red, I caught
a Clefairy in Mt. Moon, and a Drowzee next to Vermillion City, not because I ran around
planning to catch them, but because I found them by chance while exploring. That’s the other thing too, you won’t
just be roaming the tall grass: you’ll explore caves, seas, cities, power plants, and other
locations based off our real world. The groundedness of the setting and activities
lend to its thoughtful construction: there’s a cycling road, a tour ship, a Pokémon graveyard. In that sense, it’s reminiscent of Earthbound:
a fantasy JRPG rooted in modern visual aesthetics. Everything in Kanto revolves around Pokémon:
they help build things, they help make things, they coexist with humanity. The “plot” is that a team of thugs want
to disrupt that harmony. It's so barebones, but that doesn’t have
to be a bad thing. Team Rocket steal Pokémon like thieves would
steal from convenience stores, so naturally you step in and single handedly dismantle
their entire operation from the ground up. Why? Because they’re trying to stop you from
having fun! Giovanni isn't supposed to be this deep character
with unclear motives, he's just a bad guy. One who steps down after recognizing your
strength, and is revealed to be a gym leader! One of the only genuine twists in the entire
series. That’s not even the only twist: take your
rival. He plays a big part in making your adventure
feel meaningful; another person who has a team that evolves with you, a team that battles
with you at multiple points throughout your adventure, until the champion battle against
him at the end. This is a point of reflection for the player,
remembering past encounters, all the times this SOB told you to smell him later, it all
bubbles up to a champion battle that matters for more reasons than just the title. Think about it another way: your rival beat
you. He was always one step ahead of you, he became
the champion first, he realized both your dreams first, and even if he does end up losing,
it makes the final battle that much more of a grudge match. You’re forced to accept how diverse his
team is and acknowledge his strength, he is one of the best fights in the game because
of that diversity and unpredictability: but he also rushed through it all. He scouted out the toughest Pokemon and made
a beeline for the league so fast that he missed out on the legendary birds. In his quest to be the strongest he ironically
missed out on some of the toughest, and most fascinating Pokemon in the world. He was so focused on the destination that
he never got to experience the journey quite like the player did. Game Freak could have gone all out and crafted
a rich narrative I’m sure, it wasn’t unheard of at the time, but I think the theme you’ll
consistently run into with generation 1 is restraint. I don’t blame them either, for the record. It was a smart move to start simple, get everything
down that mattered, and clearly it worked. Unfortunately, a solid RPG it may be, there
are still some glaring holes in this thin crust that seemingly never mattered at the
time, and make these two games exceedingly difficult to revisit. A rough, but uncompromising vision. --AND THEN POKEMON YELLOW HAPPENED-- Though, I guess it is worth noting that another
game was released in this generation. In 1999, Pokemon Yellow would hit American
shelves, so I guess it’s worth briefly going over some of the changes: spoiler, there’s
not much. This would start the trend of definitive versions
releasing within the same generation, although this particular version continues to be a
strange case. Unlike Crystal, Emerald, and Platinum, Pokemon
Yellow is directly inspired by the anime. The main character is meant to be Ash and
not Red, you’re given a Pikachu to start with that never evolves, sprites now resemble
the anime, and Jesse and James appear throughout. This is the only Pokemon game, barring its
remake, that doesn’t allow you to pick from a set of three starters, and instead forces
a Pokemon onto you. It actually locks you into a Charmander choice
situation, where your main Pokemon is ineffective against the first gym leader. Despite its similarities to the anime, simply
brute forcing Onix with a Pikachu isn’t gonna get you anywhere, and there are no sprinkler
systems to cheat your way through. Thankfully, though: Pokemon Yellow has changed
a few things about Red and Blue, one of those being that you can catch a Mankey before Pewter
City, who learns the Fighting type move ‘Low Kick’ at level 9. Additionally, Pokemon like Nidoran learn Double
Kick. No longer will you be completely screwed early
game, which I appreciate. Another cool difficulty-related change concerns
your rival. He receives an Eevee from Professor Oak, and
he will evolve it based on your performance in your first two fights with him. If you win both times, he will evolve his
Eevee into Jolteon; if you win the first fight, but lose or skip the second, he’ll evolve
his Eevee into Flareon; and if you lose the first fight, he will evolve his Eevee into
Vaporeon. I really like the idea behind this: that if
you win both fights, he’ll resist your Pikachu, but if you’re struggling, he’ll be weak
to your Pikachu. It is a little unfortunate that your first
fight with him decides any of this, considering how luck-based these first fights always are,
but I really like this in theory, and the series would never attempt to do anything
like this again, which is a real shame. Unfortunately, for as much as Yellow version
changed, it didn’t exactly have the opportunity to shift everything that Gen 2 would eventually
overhaul. The Special stat still exists, almost every
bug in Red and Blue are still present (as far as I’m aware, anyway), there’s still
a limited inventory, etc. It’s probably my preferred version for the
little changes: the sprites actually resemble Ken Sugimori’s original artwork; Pikachu
follows you around on the overworld and you can interact with it; Farfetch’d and Lickitung
are no longer locked behind in-game trades; I think it’s kinda neat that you fight Jesse
and James before Giovanni, not that it really adds much; Pikachu can learn Surf if you do
the surfing mini-game, which is surprising, but not really necessary? It’s just a cool little bonus thing. Oh, also Charizard can finally learn Fly,
which is good because that never made any sense. I’ve exhausted Bulbapedia to find these
changes, and almost none of them even matter. I guess that just goes to show that the problems
with Red and Blue run pretty deep. Don’t misunderstand me, I still respect
Red and Blue, I love almost everything about them conceptually: the simplicity, the adventure,
the designs. Yet, that can only go so far. I’m not willing to put up with this stuff
for long periods of time, and I’d be lying if I said I revisit these games often. I’m sure there are those who swear by the
originals even with the bugs, the quirks, the imbalances: it was their childhood, their
Pokemon, and I get it. I’m not here to tell anyone off, I’m not
here to make anyone angry, I’m not here to invalidate anyone’s experiences, only
to share mine. If anything, playing the first generation
again, it’s impressive to me what Game Freak were able to pull off their first time. It proved to me that the core of Pokémon
is timeless, and has the ability to span multiple generations, multiple childhoods, to create
memories that we’ll treasure forever: and all of it started with less of a game, and
more of an event. That’s the ultimate strength of the Game
Boy’s most popular title, a social event masquerading as a time travelling video game.
