- I use the Elgato
stream deck constantly for my streams and
video editing. If you
want to pick one up from my amazing sponsor, Elgato, head to the link down in
the description below. Greetings Pokefans! Michael here, and before
the new generation of Pokémon gets started, I thought it would
be fun to look back on all the past generations and amuse ourselves by
checking out some of the worst and just awful
sprites and 3D models from the past seven
generations of Pokemon. Obviously what constitutes
the worst is subjective, so these will be based on
my opinions of the sprites and no one else's. Also there's no ranking
associated with these. I'll just be progressing
in generational order. So with all of that covered, lets start with generation one, which is kind of infamous for
having a lot of bad sprites. I'll start by looking
at the sprites from the Japanese release
of red and green. In case you didn't know, the sprites in the Japanese
release of red and green are different from the sprites in the western red and blue. One of the first sprites that
looks really off is Venusaur. Its body looks super
squished flat like a pancake, while its flower's
stem is super tall. To be fair, the official
Sugimori art was created after the sprites were, so it's not like
this design is wrong. It's just kinda bad. Sugimori altered Venusaur's
design to improve it. The sprite for Ekans
is another weird one. The open-mouth seems
to be much larger than the rest of its head, resulting in it looking
like it has a duckbill. It's very strange. Wigglytuff is a
seriously bad one. The uneven eyes make
it look deranged, so instead of being cute, it looks like something
that would kill you in a horror movie. The sprites for
Gloom and Vileplume are bad because they don't
make anatomical sense. For both of them, the
viewing angle of the flower is almost top-down, but the viewing angle of
their bodies is straight-on. Additionally, the attachment
points for their bodies to the flowers is far too low. It looks like the
flower's lowermost petals are where the body
connects to them, making it look like they almost just have flower
windmills coming out of the top of their heads. They look ridiculous. The sprite for Mankey
looks more like a blob that sprouted tentacles
rather than a distinct body with limbs coming out of it. Seriously, those are not arms. They are wiggly worm limbs. Machamp and Machoke's sprites
just look plain creepy. Those smiles and wide faces
are just kind of disturbing. The sprite for Farfetch'd
has its duckbill curving up into a smile, which
I admit is charming, but also looks pretty goofy. I should probably
cover Gastly's sprite, which obviously does not
have the typical ball of gas in the middle. But, I don't consider
this a bad sprite. It's just an early
version of Gastly's design that was changed later. The sprite for Hitmonchan
is just plain awful. You've probably seen that meme saying it looks like a
Doduo squatting down to poop with a Togekiss creepily
peeking out from behind it, which is definitely true. Plus the proportions
just look so off, and the fists covering
most of its body make things just
look really strange. You can't tell what it
looks like behind its fists. Its just a truly awful sprite. The sprite for Moltres
looks very different from Moltres nowadays,
but remember, the sprite was created first
and then Sugimori made his art. Even so, this Moltres
doesn't look very good. It's extremely rotund, plus it's eye looks
like it's half closed, so therefore Moltres seems
to be either falling asleep or very sad. The final bad sprite
from red and blue is one you've
probably seen before, 'cause it's made
its rounds in memes. That sprite, is Mew. The weird bulbous head with
the tiny curled-in arms and flipper feet make it
look like it's on drugs. Now onto the sprites
for red and blue. Blastoise for some
reason got really fat. It looked totally
fine in red and green, so I don't know why
they made it look so bad in red and blue. The sprite for Golbat is an
infamous one, as it should be. That weird tongue thing
is deeply uncomfortable. You can see the spit drop
off of it and everything. It's gross. Gloom looks far better than
it did in red and green, but while Vileplume improved, the positioning of the attach
point for Vileplume's body to the flower still isn't right. It still looks too
low and even appears to be off to the side this time. Mankey has the same problem
that it did in red and green, that being it looks like
a blob with tentacles. Machop and Machoke
again look weird. Machop especially. It looks flat like
a gingerbread man. Between these
games and the last, somehow Cloyster's clamping
direction rotated 90°. That's weird and I don't know
why that change occurred. Both Exeggcute and
Exeggutor's sprites are pretty bad in this game. One of Exeggcute's
eggs is far larger than the other ones
which makes no sense, and the facial
expressions for Exeggutor just really creep me out. Koffing for some reason now
has the skull and cross bones above its face instead of below. I don't know why
this change occurred. The top of Chansey's body
looks like it was grabbed and stretched off to the right. It's really weird. Now on to yellow version, which definitively
has the best sprites in all of generation one because it came out a
little white after the anime had started airing. Therefore they could base
the Pokemon's appearances on how they look in the anime, rather than the older sprites. Which is good, because
the Pokemon in the anime definitely look better than
they did in the sprites. Look, they finally
fixed Vileplume! There are only two
yellow version sprites that I have a problem with. The first is Venusaur, which looks very different
from its previous sprites because they were
trying to emulate how it looks in the anime. However as a result, its head looks too big compared
to the rest of its body, plus the flower looks too small. And the other Yellow
version sprite I don't really like is Mewtwo's, because he looks like he's in
the middle of a pelvic thrust. It's just kinda weird. Now onto generation two, which has a lot of
different sprites because they vary between
all three versions. I'll start with gold
version sprites. The sprite for Chinchou looks
like it's been stepped on, and its eyes almost
seem like they're coming out of the top of his
head, rather than the front. Slugma's eyes are placed
further up on its head than most other Slugma
interpretations. I find this look to be
much more off-putting, but I suppose this could be
classified as an earlier design, not an issue with
the sprite itself. Corsola's sprite puts the
coral branches in weird places. Rather than having
all four of them come out of the top, two of
them come out of the top, and two come out of the side. It definitely
doesn't look as good as other Corsola designs do. I think Igglybuff's
eyes are too small, which makes it look
more creepy than cute. Smoochum looks like a
murderous Chucky doll, and I don't like that. Not one bit. None of the other
sprites really bother me, but I did want to point out
that Spinarak and Sneasel are colored completely
differently in their
gold and silver than they are anywhere else. Even crystal version. I don't know if this was a
design change mid generation, or just a severely
overlooked mistake, but it's just a strange
thing that happened. Now onto the sprites
for silver version. Vileplume unfortunately
seems to have regressed a little bit, now appearing like its
head extends much further above its eyes than it should. Weezing's head now
looks like it's tacked onto the top of the
bigger Weezing's head, like we've seen before and it's just a
really strange change. I don't know why
they keep doing this. The sprites for Chinchou,
Igglybuff, Slugma, Corsola, and Smoochum, all have
the same issues in silver as they do in gold. And finally for Crystal, virtually all of the
sprites are taken from either gold or silver
and then animated. So any sprites I
would discuss here are ones that I've
already covered. Now onto generation
three, starting with Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald. As you might expect, the later we go into
the generations, the fewer bad sprites
we're gonna see because they got a lot
better at making sprites, so therefore, some of my
critiques from here on out might get a bit nitpicky. Nidoqueen's sprite looks
just a little goofy, like it's about to sneeze. Weezing again has that weird
placement of the smaller head on top of the second
rather than on the side. Is this just some like,
alternate Weezing design? That they took a
while to give up on? Like, what? Lugia's head seems
like it's too big. I know it's closer to the camera
than the rest of its body, but the same is true
for Ho-Oh's sprite, and Ho-Oh's head looks normal. In FireRed and LeafGreen, the only sprites that differ from Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald are the ones for
the Kanto Pokémon, and I must say I don't
really have a problem with any of them. Nice work. Next up would be
generation four, but I looked through the sprites and I think all of
them are well done. Again, nice work. But then we get to generation
five, and (grunts). Gen five made it so sprites
are constantly moving, rather than just
having an animation at the start of a battle, and I really don't
like this decision. For a very large chunk
of the gen five sprites, a lot of the movements cause
the lines to look broken or dotted or staticky and
they just look really bad. Plus some movements
warp the body parts in certain ways that
look really unnatural. I'm not seriously
not a fan of the gen five moving sprites. They look fine if
the don't move. But when they're
moving, (grunts). All though I must say, the
fire in the animated sprites, looks amazing, like consistently
if there's an open flame on a Pokemon in the
gen five sprites, it looks pretty cool. Like I said, I don't
like the gen five sprites as a whole, but I'm
gonna list off several of the sprites that I think
are the worst offenders. Fearow's beak looks like
it breaks into segments when it moves. Electrode's smooth outline
becomes spiky when it rotates. Mew's tail looks
awful when it moves, like it's turned to static. Houndoom's tail is in
a similar situation. It seems to have
distinct segments. Phanpy's trunk seems to break
in half when it brings it in. Like, that legit looks painful. Lombre's lily pad turns to
static when it turns its head. Azurill's tail turns to a
complete mess of nonsense when it moves it. Sharpedo looks fine
up until the moment it opens its mouth farther
and turns its body, at which point every
line goes to crap. Deoxys-Speed's arms are
in the same situation as Mew's and Houndoom's tails, where they seem to be segmented when they're actually
smooth and continuous. This sprite animation really doesn't see to
do very well with long, skinny, thin limbs. Kricketune's arms and
antennae just look awful. Luxray's tail is
another long skinny limb that gets really messed up. Ambipom's tails have
this problem too. Watchog's tail is a
really bad example of it looking segmented. I distinctly remember
thinking its tail looked bad back when I played White
version for the first time ever. Sigilyph's are a
mess of pixelation. Yamask's arms look broken
and again, pixilated badly. Escavalier looks fine if
it's in its neutral position, but when it moves its
lances and spiral shell, both end up looking awful. And finally Lampent's
arms always look horrible because it's constantly moving. This is not every example,
but these are the ones that I think are truly awful. They look totally fine
when stationary though, and I wish they had stuck
with just stationary sprites. So that covers all
of the bad sprites in the main series, so now it's time to
talk about 3D models. However, before we talk
about the main series ones, I wanted to cover some
of the Pokémon 3D models that were used in console
games prior to generation six. In games such as Pokémon
Snap, Stadium, or Coliseum. A lot of them look bad, especially the older
generation Pokémon, because the later
generation Pokémon had their models
made, well, later. But while a lot of
them look not great, here are a few that really
stand out to me as extra bad. One of the most memorable
for me is Kangaskhan. Its movements are
wild and erratic, and its body parts seem
strapped together uncomfortably. It does not look good. Another is Nidoqueen. Its torso is freakin' cubic. It looks ridiculous. And then there's Lickitung, whose eye placement
looks like hellspawn. And now let's talk about
the main series 3D models. Since the same models are
used in generation six, seven, and eight, I'm gonna talk
about all of those generations with this one segment. For the most part, I think
the 3D models are good. They seem to do
a really good job of representing Pokemon in 3D and it was the proper
step to take Pokemon into the more modern
generation of games. However, there are a few models that make the Pokémon
look way less cool in 3D than they did in 2D. One of the more infamous
examples is Typhlosion. There are a lot of
problems with this model. The most obvious is that
its fire is not always lit. That's true for this
entire evolutionary line, and it's a mistake. Its fire is constantly lit
in literally every other main series sprite
prior to this, and it looks way cooler. Having it sit there
with its neck naked just does not look good. I understand that Typhlosion
only really lights its fire when its in combat, but
where do you see this model most of the time? Frickin' combat! Additionally, the
pose isn't good. It's standing super upright, which makes its neck
look so much shorter. Compare how Typhlosion
looks in this model versus any other sprite. What happened to the guys neck? The pose is also pretty boring. This is actually a problem
for a lot of 3D models. Because more Pokemons'
neutral position is them just standing there
in a neutral position. You know, looking
straight forward. Now this isn't terrible,
because you know, it's better at observing
the Pokemon as to how it would stand normally, but a lot of times it
can make the battles feel a bit bland because
they're just standing there rather than poised,
ready to strike. DJTHED on the Smogon forums
altered Typhlosion's model to make one that looks far, far better than
the existing one. Because the fire is always lit and its in a much more
interesting, dynamic pose. I hope for Typhlosion's
next appearance, it gets a better 3D model. Another Pokémon that I
think became way less cool from the transition from
2D to 3D is Archeops. In its official art and its
gen five sprite, it looks cool. The proportions are proper. Its got big wings, it looks like a cool
raptor, Archeopteryx hybrid. Its dope. But then they gave it a 3D model
that screwed everything up. They made its arms
and wings way smaller, so it looks like it's
struggling to stay afloat rather than being the
completely effective flyer we know it is. Additionally, rather than
having the eyes look forward, they both look out in
opposite directions. It makes it look
soulless and brainless. Archeops's 3D model looks so bad that if it had been introduced
in 3D rather than 2D, it may not have ended up as
my favorite fossil Pokémon, heck I may not have ended
up liking it at all. There are other
examples of Pokemon getting bad 3D models, but these two are the
most egregious to me, potentially because I
really like them as Pokémon. So them getting shafted
in the 3D model department offends me more. Before I wrap up,
there's another problem
with the 3D models that I wanted to cover, and that is color. The 3D models often times
have dramatically altered colorations from previous
generations sprites, and most of the time
that's a bad thing. The primary issue
is color saturation. A lot of Pokémon's 3D models have colors that
are far less vibrant and looked really washed out compared to the previous
generation sprites. One of the most notable
examples is Starmie. The 2D sprites of Starmie show
it as a deep vibrant purple, but it's 3D model is so pale
that it looks like it's dying. So that's one issue, but another issue is that
a lot of shiny colorings were completely ruined in
the switch from 2D to 3D. One notable example is Lanturn, who had both it's
regular coloring and it's shiny coloring ruined. The regular coloration
lost a lot of saturation, but the shiny
coloring lost so much that it almost looks like
the regular coloration. Prior to gen six, shiny Lanturn
is a deep, pretty purple, clearly distinguishing
itself from the blue of the regular coloring. But then in the 3D models, you almost can't
tell the difference between the two colorations. Another shiny that was ruined by the new colors of the
3D models was, Fearow. This one is near
and dear to my heart because Fearow was the
first shiny Pokémon that I ever captured. In FireRed and LeafGreen, the
game in which I caught it, it's a bright pretty yellow. It has this coloration in
gens four and five as well. But then in the 3D
models it's barf green! What? Why? Why did they do this? I will admit it's closer
to the shiny coloration that Fearow had in gen two, but they changed a lot
of shiny colorations from gen two to make them
look better in gen three. Why would revert to
that awful shiny? It seriously sucks. Thankfully, it seems
as if sword and shield are taking a big leap forward in making all the
colorations of the 3D models really vibrant and
saturated again. Let's go certainly did that
with quite a few Pokemon. But a lot of the colorations
in gen six and gen seven are just plain bad. So that almost
wraps up this video, but before you go I
want to let you know that I am doing a giveaway
for a copy of Pokémon sword or Pokemon shield,
winner's choice. The winner will be
announced on the day before sword and shield come out, and it will be an
electronic copy. So if you are the winner,
you'll be able to play the new game immedietally,
as soon as it comes out. If you're interested
in entering, which I don't know
why you wouldn't be, the link is in the
description below. Thanks so much for watching, and an extra special thanks
to my patrons on Patreon. If you wanna help support
the channel and support me and get some cool
perks in exchange, the link is in the
description below. If you're interested in
watching some more of my fun Pokémon content, I
recommend this video here. All right, that's
all I have for now, so until next time Pokefans. Gotta catch them all.
