You were speculating that the Gen1 ghosts were poison type as a game balance thing, or maybe to prevent them from being poisoned, but I think it's a lot simpler than that. Gastly is concepted as being made of poisonous gas, so it gets the poison type. Then the rest of its evolutionary line inherits that typing. This raises the question of why Gastly was concepted this way, and apparently it's based on Japanese folklore analogous to the European Will-o-the-Wisp. So the Ghost/Poison typing is a reference to a phenomenon that was anciently believed to be the souls of the dead but is now theorised to be caused by decomposition gasses - I think that's pretty clever. Vanilla Gengar is poison type because it evolves from Gastly's line, and Gastly is poison type as a shout out to scientific investigation of folkloric phenomena.
Yeah, I can get it in the context of Ghastly, but there are types that change as they evolve, so it could have been Ghost/Poison changed to Ghost/Psychic via evolution. Cool background on the origins of Gastly though, I learned something new!
@RBYPokemonChallenges Haunter and Gengar's bodies are made from the same poisonous gas as Gastly. All Ghost Pokemon possess some worldy object or material. Most of them are very obvious such as Banette, Chandelure, Trevenant, etc.
Nice explanation! I think an additional factor could be that ghost was a relatively late addition to RG’s development, and Gastly was probably mono-poison until they added ghost-type (possibly to make the Pokémon Tower segment more memorable?) But that said, the Pokémon Tower segment would *definitely* have been way harder if the Gastly line got psychic-type. xD
@@RBYPokemonChallengesBack in gen 1 they didn't think of that, they only changed or removed a secondary typing starting with Bellosom in gen 2. If the Gengar line was made nowadays, i don't know if it would be psychic, but it probably would lose the poison type upon evolving from Ghastly.
@@dryhad9253 Huh. I always assumed it was either balance or because dark hadn't been thought of and implemented yet. Gengar's design gives off a very trickster/dirty fighter kind of vibe. Didn't think about gastly'a design.
I think it would be funny to give like rhydon or something the move TOMBSTONER. It could just be a 100 power 100 accurate rock move. I guess you could replace DIG with it and make the quiz actually correct too. Could be fun for an April fools day video.
Not sure if possible, but make tombstoner a rock and ground move, so it could be up to 8x super effective (if anything was weak to both rock and ground) and Golem and Rhydon both get STAB for both types. Then do a rhydon vs golem race.
@@MichaelSotoCE Funnily enough, I think that the best secondary type you could give Mewtwo in Gen 1 is Ice. Not only would it get STAB on Blizzard (the strongest special move in Gen 1), it would be immune to Freeze which is normally the only thing that's guaranteed to beat it. It wouldn't make sense thematically (unless you said that it was ''genetically modified to be an ice type'' or something) but it would make regular Mewtwo look meager by comparison (which is saying a lot).
The best possible typing among Pokemon that actually exist in Gen 1 is pure Psychic, and the second best is pure Normal. Normal Psychic is theoretically very strong too, but it’s largely irrelevant as there aren’t any strong ghost or fighting moves, plus all psychic types are already immune to ghost anyway. That said, if a poke has good special and good attack, a Psychic Normal typing would let it run Psychic + Hyperbeam coverage and just utterly destroy everything. That would be one of the only ways to make Mewtwo even stronger than it already is, since it has 110 base attack, which is actually higher than Tauros, likely the strongest offensive Pokemon in Gen 1 other than Mewtwo and mew.
"Now, this isn't a speedrun" -> proceeds to beat the WR speedrun by 20 minutes with no manips, an unoptimized route, multiple deaths to champ, no tms, no x acc, no candies, and 0 dvs.
It's notable that in Generation 1, the Psychic type was not immune to Ghost moves. If you change a move's type to be Ghost, it correctly deals Super-Effective damage to Psychic types. The problem is that the move Lick was incorrectly coded to not affect Psychic types, and since the only 3 moves with the Ghost type in generation 1 were Lick (broken), Night Shade (ignored type chart to hit all types, ignoring the Normal immunity), and Confuse Ray (which still ignores the type chart), it was incorrectly identified as them being immune to Ghost-Type damage.
Not quite. If you check the disassembly, the type matchup data includes db GHOST, PSYCHIC_TYPE, NO_EFFECT github.com/pret/pokeyellow/blob/master/data/types/type_matchups.asm
Ghosts not being immune to Poison never made any sense and it only got worse when Steel type was added, which is immune to Poison, despite Rock, Ghost, and Ground not being immune.
Not sure if possible, but make tombstoner a rock and ground move, so it could be up to 8x super effective (if anything was weak to both rock and ground) and Golem and Rhydon both get STAB for both types. Then do a rhydon vs golem race.
Is there a reason you didn't go pick Psychic TM? I mean hypnosis and dream eater is slow combo and luck based, psychic ghost gengar makes sense but how you explained it would seriously be broken. Another great run and also notice the non movable background being static actually makes it easier to watch also and maintains healthy pixels along the way so the videos comes out sharper and picture quality. Oh i just notice no TM rule, my bad.
Trying to style on Giovanni's Persian like "haha, you can't deal any damage to me" is actually dangerous overconfidence. Yes, an earthquake probably can't oneshot you with your typing, but if you have -6 defense because you kept letting persian hit you with screech, it definitely WILL.
Clicked assuming it was going to be a Gen 1 competitive battling theory video. Anywho, my napkin analysis below. Psychic/Ghost would be crazy good in Gen 1. Immune to Normal Type Body Slam + Hyper Beam? Fantastic. Resist Psychic with great speed and special, coupled with Hypnosis. Exeggutor and Jynx would just be outclassed immediately as a sleep setting lead, Tauros goes from a guaranteed Earthquake 2HKO (Or OHKO with it's crazy crit rate) to a 50% 3HKO with EQ without crits (Chance to even live a 2HKO if one was a crit). However, while Gengar would become a mandatory include on teams, lacking boosting moves such as Amnesia, or recovery moves like Recover (It gets rest which is still pretty meh), it would just hit harder while taking more hits. It still does not pose a "sweep the whole team" level of risk things like Amensia Slowbro does. It would punch a bigger hole, and then likely explode. Fairly confident in saying it would NOT make it to UBERS, and would be something manageable. Possibly even healthy, as it gives Tauros another check in the tier potentially.
I think that is an excellent breakdown of it were in competitive. I think the Sleep + STAB +resistances + boom would certainly make it a required Pokemon for an OU team, on par with Tauros and essentially the Tauros check that the meta always needed in Gen 1.
Next time you do an alternative moded type run, could you do some based on the gym leader TCG cards? Like they have Raticate as a Lt Surge Pokémon, Porygon as Sabrina's, and Machamp as Giovannis. What if you gave them all duel types to match their appropriate gym trainer? Electric Raticate, Psychic Porygon, Rock type Ninetales, Ground type Machamp. I think that would be cool.
Man, that one is strong. There are so many ways to make it easier, but you needed none of them: - Thunderbolt over night shade - Psychic over confuse ray - Rare candies - Vitamines - Not using the worst gengar in the world
Ghost/Psychic would end up immune to Body Slam/Explosion/Hyper Beam, resist Psychic, and be normally-affected by Earthquake. Additionally, getting STAB on "Psychic" means it wouldn't need to rely on Hypnosis as much. So long as it is not Paralyzed or Sleep'd, it would be quite potent. Still walled by Chansey and Snorlax, but not as badly as regular Gengar.
I think another reason why Gengar is a poison type besides him being made of gas, is because that type was the "evil" type before the dark type was introduced (which is actually called "evil" in japanese iirc), and Gengar is always potrayed as somewhat mischievous.
Doing a timed run and not using thunderbolt until elite 4 is wild. Surely thunderbolt with gengars special will do more to normal types than nightshade
Sure, but It's not really a speedrun. It's being largely compared to a previous Gengar run that I did with no TMs at all, and the fact is this Pokemon crushed even without any TMs at all
Gengar with Psychic type would be insane in RBY OU. Not sure if he'd dethrone Tauros because normal stab+Blizzard+high crit chance+ spreading para is so good. Gengar would check Tauros and possibly impact Rhydon's usage since he absorbs normal/physical attacks. Without Psychic typing Gengar would usually be happy to go boom on Tauros for momentum but would actually pose a threat with stab psychic if he had the psychic type. Gengar would have to watch out for Pokemon like Exeggutor and Alakazam because of Sleep and para plus special drop wars with Psychic. He's also physically frail so he can't just ignore EQ and even Drill Peck from Zapdos. Snorlax and Chansey would also likely solo Gengar do to bulk+sustain+freeze hax. On the flip side I think he'd be a problem for any Pokemon to face, even Pokemon that would match up well. And that is the most intentional comment I've ever left on this channel. Edit: what I said about Rhydon's viability is a toss up because he is the best Zapdos counter.
I can get behind all that. The ability to boom Alakazam and Chansey would help a bit, It could still spread Sleep/Paralysis itself, and the switch-ins could be insane though. Since it speed ties Tauros, it would only really be outsped by Alakazam and Starmie among OU staples and could easily tank anything they could dish out while spamming status itself. So honestly, I think it could be pretty good and at least a mainstay in the same likes as Tauros, since it's high special makes it a mini-Chansey with more type resists and better crit chances and explosion as a trump card.
@RBYPokemonChallenges For real. Psychic Gengar would be absurd. Easily top 3. Psychic/Thunderbolt/Hypnosis/Explosion. So good especially with Stab on Psychic. Fr it's only issues would be EQ, Thunder Wave, and classic Freeze Hax. It'd have to be wary of Zapdos being specially bulky and throwing out Drill Peck while also being able to tank an Explosion. The only reason why I wonder about dethroning Tauros is because of the role he plays in the meta. Solid normal types tend to have the weakness of being slow. At least in RBY. He's the only true OU threat that's both Normal and fast. Tauros would definitely get better mileage against the whole meta whereas Gengar with Ghost/Psychic would be the hardest Pokemon to answer in the format. Which one is more valuable is hard to tell imo. But the switch-ins as you said would be absurd. So damn good! 😂
0:10 I think this is the exact same Gengar card I found in my old card binder this weekend. I have been bursting to say something about it to somebody but I'm now also paranoid about losing it or it getting damaged before I can get it graded. I've never gotten a card graded before but if I did my research right and I'm not wildly off with my amateur assessment of it, I'm pretty sure it has a decent chance of getting a 9.5 or even a 10 and might be worth $1.3k. There was also a Bulbasaur from the Diamond & Pearl Secret Wonders set that I can't find a single flaw on but I will only sell that one as a last resort. I love Bulbasaur and that card is so shiny!
I do like the muse that Ghost would be special and Dragon would be physical before the physical / special split, fitting that for the original main members, Gengar is a powerful special attacker while Dragonite has more attack. This psychic variant feels a good use of the notion.
Yeah, sometimes the Physical and special determinations made no sense... They also always gave fire types higher attack for some reason. Why is Dark Special in Gen 2 when it's meant to be strong against Psychic and Ghost types, for example
Something I always figured with ghost types and why physical based moves affect them outside of normal and fighting types. Ghost types DO have physical forms as in they can be touched the general idea with most attacks hitting them imo is that they can phase partly or fully into an intangible state but they need to be aware of the attack and it has to be more than a simple strike. Like yes peck is a thrust but it also has a focused air or wind around it so while the contact might not affect it the energy around it will. Normal and fighting type moves on the other hand are very predictable and obvious which is why they don’t affect ghost types but dark type is super effective because it’s an underhanded tactic they weren’t watching for
That's some interesting head-cannon. Still doesn't explain Goldeen's Peck versus Horn Attack issue, and obviously levitate came in later to make them immune to ground as well.
@@RBYPokemonChallenges even I cant fully figure that one out my guess at best is its like how theres more than one way of swinging a sword. like a horn attack is just a regular thrust while the peck is doing it a certain way, part of the reason why peck is weaker than horn attack as well, peck isnt a full thrust like horn attack is I believe. Also my hand-cannon is partly the result of how the anime treated ghost types, since its said indirectly in a few places that ghost types arent true spirits, just creatures that can be intangible naturally.
I've always thought of Gengar as a mono-Ghost type (or potentially dark/ghost if it wasn't gen 1), since it's essentially an animated shadow. But since i don't believe any pokemon loses a type on evolving without gaining another one, it just kept the poison type from gastly.
For sure. I think Gastly makes sense as poison-type, but it's not impossible for Pokemon to change their secondary typing with evolution, which is why I think Ghost/Psychic is appropriate.
Thing about gen 1 is that psychic is already not weak to Bug, because bug type moves _barely even exist_ , and the mons that do learn them suck and aren't used by anybody. The only real benefit this gengar should get is stab on psychic and not being weak to EQ anymore
A curious suggestion pulled from an all-time great competitive pokemon video, to quote Reverend: "If Mew was a Normal type, it would probably be better than Mewtwo", and while I know that's entirely within the context of competitive pokemon, I wonder how well a Normal/Psychic Mew would fare.
You madlad, you got to Celadon and DIDN'T right away go to get Psychic. Gengar flexing on this game. Btw a Psychic/Ghost Mewtwo would be absolutely broken. It gets Psychic at the get-go
Yeah, I didn't want to grab any TMs unless absolutely necessary, and for what it's worth, they weren't necessary. Ghost/Psychic Mewtwo sounds fun, but I have other plans as well...
@@RBYPokemonChallenges Seems a little weird, not going to lie. Gengars typing would have made absolutely zero difference defensively well beyond mid-game. The OP-ness of ghost/psychic gengar comes from STAB Psychic on a pokemon with near-Mewtwo quality Special/Speed, not the ability to take x1 ground damage and immunity to ghost.
Psychic/Ghost Gengar would definitely be a spooky pick for the gen 1 competitive meta. 3 immunities, no real counters or weaknesses and Gengars stats? Yeesh... Seeing the whole Psychic/Ghost run though, does make me think of how Ninetales would manage in a run of RBY with a ghost or psychic secondary typing (I can see valid arguments for either typing). If you ever get the chance (maybe next spooky season) I'd love to see you try it. I love getting to see you do these kinda whacky altered mon runs.
Hypnosis+Dream Eater Gengar is my favorite. Especially with Thunderbolt and Psychic as follow up moves. 😅 I was known in high school to make pretty savage monsters with great move sets.
Okay, I've got a challenge for you: how broken would psyshock Abra be? Reasoning: in the TCG, the English version of Base Set Abra had the move "psyshock" instead of confusion. This became the name of an actual move in gen 5, which we know makes psychic type attacks highly effective against specially defensive pokemon. How effective would Abra be if it actually got psyshock in red/blue or yellow? We'll say it starts with psyshock instead of teleport, and everything else remains the same.
Curious how powerful Gengar would be if Ghost resisted Psychic. Allowing it to have at least a weakness to ground moves, but actually be Alakazam's counter as intended.
I wonder if a Dark/ Ghost would be even more broken in gen 1. I actually always liked their typing in gen 1. Immunity to Normal and getting poisoned in gen 1 is super OP for the main game. Poison is a very underrated type. I'm also wondering how different a run with Gengar would be if Night Shade couldn't hit Normal types and if Ghost effectiveness against Psychic was correctly programmed.
In Gen 2, I may retry this as Ghost/Dark. I agree that Poison is a bit underrated, just because Psychic types were too OP. I would like to "fix" the ghost type in Gen 1, but not sure I know how to yet.
I think if you used rare candies, the gengar would have gotten a much higher score. If you like not using them unless you need to, maybe add rare candies as a point deducter too.
It's meant to be a poison type because gastly is made from toxic chemicals and gas. It's literally in the name. The gastly line being poison and ghost type make much more sense than psychic/ghost. We would have to change gastly's name in order to give it psychic type.
For Gastly specifically, i get the lore, but Gengar is not a floating ball of gas. There are plenty of Pokemon that change things as they evolve, so I'm just saying Ghost/Psychic makes more sense for Gengar specifically.
@RBYPokemonChallenges I know Gengar is obviously not, but giving it psychic/ghost would be good for a regional form, though. Gengar doesn't look like a psychic type whatsoever. It can also spit sludge out of its mouth, which is why poison fits better. It has toxins in its mouth, and it happens to be purple and red, which makes poison and ghost fit much better, at least in my opinion. Some poison types are purple.
I think you're giving Game Freak way too much credit. I doubt balance was on their radar at all. Type assignment was almost certainly 100% thematic. Ghost types are super effective against psychic, except not because they're immune, and there are basically no ghost moves, and they wrongly left it physical for 3 generations.
With how severely busted Gen1 is, I have absolutely no confidence that the guys back then had any freaking clue what balance even meant. I played Gen1 religiously as a kid, and I loved it, but my god is that game destroyed by the crunch the development was whipped through to get it out for christmas. Even by todays _AAAA-pre-order pre-release_ -release standards, the game is just not even in first 1.0 stage at launch xD
I know this isn’t a speed run but why not teach thunderbolt? Would have sped up all the non rock type fights in the mid game in place of lick/nightshade till you got psychic. It’s not like you’d replace it in your move set either. Only other move you’d need for Gengar in this type of run is mimic. Nitpicks aside I think we can all agree Gengar probably should have been made ghost/phyc for gen 2 onwards. The poison typing never made any sense in terms of lore. lol
Because it was kind of fun just to see it basically crush the game without even using strong attacking moves, and because I always avoid TMs when ubnecessary
@RBYPokemonChallenges You would only think Arcanine was a legendary Pokémon by reading the Dex entries, though if you did (or didn't), you wouldn't think it was the only legendary. Try again.
Maybe you could do a run with a pokemon that has tombstoner. Would be interesting whether that move is broken enough to trivialize the whole game Also fits into the spooky month
It's actually baked into my overlay system that I use for live stats and everything, but it's basically achievable with a GameShark by just writing the type codes to the correct spot in RAM
The immunities are not that impressive. Normal and fighting are already there and ghost... Would be impressive if there were any good ghost moves to be immune to. Lack of weakness is good tho.
I. the context of a solo run, the resistance to Psychic and loss of weakness to Ground is so OP for this Pokemon, the type immunities make the early game a joke and just let us laugh a little more at Agatha.
@@RBYPokemonChallenges Yeah, I mean the lack of weakness, the resistances, and the immunities to normal and fighting are great. What I am saying is that the only new immunity is Ghost and that one in particular is kinda irrelevant.
You know, that Gengar could have beaten the game so much faster _and_ more consistently if you had thought Psychic. Yes, it's less powerful than Dream Eater but you don't have to put everything to sleep first and making lots of reset in the end just because of bad luck. You could have easily offset a lot of these resets and ended with, not only a better time, but a better score.
@@RBYPokemonChallenges for sure. still my favorite. just saw a video where a guy reverses stats of some pokemon and draws what they would look like with the stat change. chansey had crazy stats but 1 hp and wonder guard. would be cool to see pokemon with altered abilities
No in the gen 1 games Ghost type is weak to Psychic type so if Gengar was STILL part Psychic type Sabrina's pokemon would still do double damage to it.
Ghost is not weak to psychic, poison is weak to psychic. Psychic attacks are neutral on ghost. Ghost is only weak to ghost attacks. Generation 1 ghost pokémon are weak to psychic but only because generation 1 ghost pokémon were paired with poison type. Psychic is immune to ghost attacks but Nightshade ignores type immunities in gen 1 and the only other ghost attack was Lick.
Failing to teach this Psychic immediately upon leaving the department store is such an unforced error. All those battles where you used night shade and lick and confuse ray over and over again and it would've been over so quickly with psychic. There's bad play, and then there's actively bad play, and then there's whatever this was. Unless I misunderstand the metric you're using and time is not a factor in your score.
You were speculating that the Gen1 ghosts were poison type as a game balance thing, or maybe to prevent them from being poisoned, but I think it's a lot simpler than that. Gastly is concepted as being made of poisonous gas, so it gets the poison type. Then the rest of its evolutionary line inherits that typing.
This raises the question of why Gastly was concepted this way, and apparently it's based on Japanese folklore analogous to the European Will-o-the-Wisp. So the Ghost/Poison typing is a reference to a phenomenon that was anciently believed to be the souls of the dead but is now theorised to be caused by decomposition gasses - I think that's pretty clever. Vanilla Gengar is poison type because it evolves from Gastly's line, and Gastly is poison type as a shout out to scientific investigation of folkloric phenomena.
Yeah, I can get it in the context of Ghastly, but there are types that change as they evolve, so it could have been Ghost/Poison changed to Ghost/Psychic via evolution. Cool background on the origins of Gastly though, I learned something new!
@RBYPokemonChallenges Haunter and Gengar's bodies are made from the same poisonous gas as Gastly. All Ghost Pokemon possess some worldy object or material. Most of them are very obvious such as Banette, Chandelure, Trevenant, etc.
Nice explanation! I think an additional factor could be that ghost was a relatively late addition to RG’s development, and Gastly was probably mono-poison until they added ghost-type (possibly to make the Pokémon Tower segment more memorable?) But that said, the Pokémon Tower segment would *definitely* have been way harder if the Gastly line got psychic-type. xD
@@RBYPokemonChallengesBack in gen 1 they didn't think of that, they only changed or removed a secondary typing starting with Bellosom in gen 2. If the Gengar line was made nowadays, i don't know if it would be psychic, but it probably would lose the poison type upon evolving from Ghastly.
@@dryhad9253 Huh. I always assumed it was either balance or because dark hadn't been thought of and implemented yet. Gengar's design gives off a very trickster/dirty fighter kind of vibe. Didn't think about gastly'a design.
I think it would be funny to give like rhydon or something the move TOMBSTONER. It could just be a 100 power 100 accurate rock move. I guess you could replace DIG with it and make the quiz actually correct too. Could be fun for an April fools day video.
Just make tombstone an OHKO move but since rhydon is so slow and is 4x weak to water he'll still probably suck.
Not sure if possible, but make tombstoner a rock and ground move, so it could be up to 8x super effective (if anything was weak to both rock and ground) and Golem and Rhydon both get STAB for both types. Then do a rhydon vs golem race.
Tombstones needs to be a priority move like Quick Attack, so Rhydon always hots first with it
Gen III introduced the move Rock Tomb.
Hear me out, make tombstoner a negative priority ohko move with 50% accuracy, so you have to tank at least one hit
If Gengar is already that good, just imagine how broken a Ghost/Psychic Mewtwo would be.
@@Zelgius1 gentwo
Normal psychic would probably be better
@@MichaelSotoCE Funnily enough, I think that the best secondary type you could give Mewtwo in Gen 1 is Ice. Not only would it get STAB on Blizzard (the strongest special move in Gen 1), it would be immune to Freeze which is normally the only thing that's guaranteed to beat it. It wouldn't make sense thematically (unless you said that it was ''genetically modified to be an ice type'' or something) but it would make regular Mewtwo look meager by comparison (which is saying a lot).
The best possible typing among Pokemon that actually exist in Gen 1 is pure Psychic, and the second best is pure Normal. Normal Psychic is theoretically very strong too, but it’s largely irrelevant as there aren’t any strong ghost or fighting moves, plus all psychic types are already immune to ghost anyway. That said, if a poke has good special and good attack, a Psychic Normal typing would let it run Psychic + Hyperbeam coverage and just utterly destroy everything. That would be one of the only ways to make Mewtwo even stronger than it already is, since it has 110 base attack, which is actually higher than Tauros, likely the strongest offensive Pokemon in Gen 1 other than Mewtwo and mew.
You mean Psychic/Dark combo typing
Okay, so now we just need to compare it against a Ghost/Psychic Mewtwo...
This is becoming a common request
@@RBYPokemonChallenges finally, mewthree
17:07 "I'd like to lick the clam"
These words will someday be in my memoirs
"id like to lick the clam but unfortunately it has really high defense" might be the most clippable thing you've ever said
I mean, it's accurate commentary at the very least 😂
I'm quite confident that if you taught yourself psychic and thunderbolt, you would have rolled the whole game with near 0 resets
Possibly.
@@RBYPokemonChallenges Is there really a better moveset than Icebeam/Thunderbolt/Psychic/anything?
@@suckieduckie yes
@@Ellisarmor Such as?
@@RBYPokemonChallenges surely
TBH this video doesn't necessarily show how good a Ghost/Psychic Gengar was, it just shows how good sleep was in Gen1
Gengar unfortunately didn’t get the chance to lick Erika’s flower and didn’t get flashed by Sabrina.
Sad times, I know....
Good find on the PP up! Usually a prescription is required.
Yeah, fortunately we didn't need a doctor because we know a professor
All those licks got me excited
There's a reason Gengar has a big tongue
Mr. Psychic knew you would make this video
And he knew you would make this comment.
@@minikawildflower is Sabrina ms. Psycic?
A Ghost and Psychic Gengar run, sounds interesting
"Now, this isn't a speedrun"
-> proceeds to beat the WR speedrun by 20 minutes with no manips, an unoptimized route, multiple deaths to champ, no tms, no x acc, no candies, and 0 dvs.
He used speed up on the emulator.
The speed running WR is on 1x speed thought not 8x :D
This is 4x speed, so yeah, not technically a Speedrun. Speedrunning it on 1x speed would still be OP with TMs
It's notable that in Generation 1, the Psychic type was not immune to Ghost moves. If you change a move's type to be Ghost, it correctly deals Super-Effective damage to Psychic types. The problem is that the move Lick was incorrectly coded to not affect Psychic types, and since the only 3 moves with the Ghost type in generation 1 were Lick (broken), Night Shade (ignored type chart to hit all types, ignoring the Normal immunity), and Confuse Ray (which still ignores the type chart), it was incorrectly identified as them being immune to Ghost-Type damage.
Not quite. If you check the disassembly, the type matchup data includes
db GHOST, PSYCHIC_TYPE, NO_EFFECT
github.com/pret/pokeyellow/blob/master/data/types/type_matchups.asm
Ghosts not being immune to Poison never made any sense and it only got worse when Steel type was added, which is immune to Poison, despite Rock, Ghost, and Ground not being immune.
Agreed, like how does one poison a Rock?
@@RBYPokemonChallenges My only guess is whatever magic makes Poison somehow be weak to Psychic powers.
Yeah i add the fact that Bug moves aren't super efective against Ground...i mean, come on, some bugs literally EAT ground
Not sure if possible, but make tombstoner a rock and ground move, so it could be up to 8x super effective (if anything was weak to both rock and ground) and Golem and Rhydon both get STAB for both types. Then do a rhydon vs golem race.
That would be incredible. I would need to see if there is some way to do that.
Now test if it would be overpowered as psychic/ghost with the equivalent of the levitate ability.
I have something like this coming, just wait 😂
Levitate is more important with the poison typing, though.
I wish gamefreak would make "pokemon maker" to make runs like this
Agreed, they clearly had internal ideas about giving Pokemon different typings since they added regional variants. Just let the community go wild!
Is there a reason you didn't go pick Psychic TM? I mean hypnosis and dream eater is slow combo and luck based, psychic ghost gengar makes sense but how you explained it would seriously be broken. Another great run and also notice the non movable background being static actually makes it easier to watch also and maintains healthy pixels along the way so the videos comes out sharper and picture quality. Oh i just notice no TM rule, my bad.
Yeah, was avoiding TMs because they weren't really needed
Trying to style on Giovanni's Persian like "haha, you can't deal any damage to me" is actually dangerous overconfidence.
Yes, an earthquake probably can't oneshot you with your typing, but if you have -6 defense because you kept letting persian hit you with screech, it definitely WILL.
Fair point. But, fortunately Giovanni wasn't an issue
TCG merges Psychic and Poison anyway....unless the Nidoran family lines are holding out on us
Clearly, it's just in this case, Psychic actually makes sense.
Clicked assuming it was going to be a Gen 1 competitive battling theory video. Anywho, my napkin analysis below.
Psychic/Ghost would be crazy good in Gen 1.
Immune to Normal Type Body Slam + Hyper Beam? Fantastic.
Resist Psychic with great speed and special, coupled with Hypnosis.
Exeggutor and Jynx would just be outclassed immediately as a sleep setting lead, Tauros goes from a guaranteed Earthquake 2HKO (Or OHKO with it's crazy crit rate) to a 50% 3HKO with EQ without crits (Chance to even live a 2HKO if one was a crit).
However, while Gengar would become a mandatory include on teams, lacking boosting moves such as Amnesia, or recovery moves like Recover (It gets rest which is still pretty meh), it would just hit harder while taking more hits. It still does not pose a "sweep the whole team" level of risk things like Amensia Slowbro does. It would punch a bigger hole, and then likely explode.
Fairly confident in saying it would NOT make it to UBERS, and would be something manageable. Possibly even healthy, as it gives Tauros another check in the tier potentially.
I think that is an excellent breakdown of it were in competitive. I think the Sleep + STAB +resistances + boom would certainly make it a required Pokemon for an OU team, on par with Tauros and essentially the Tauros check that the meta always needed in Gen 1.
Next time you do an alternative moded type run, could you do some based on the gym leader TCG cards? Like they have Raticate as a Lt Surge Pokémon, Porygon as Sabrina's, and Machamp as Giovannis. What if you gave them all duel types to match their appropriate gym trainer? Electric Raticate, Psychic Porygon, Rock type Ninetales, Ground type Machamp. I think that would be cool.
That would honestly be cool!
Lt Serge battle paused for a Barney the purple dinosaur ad😂😂😊
Perfect
Man, that one is strong. There are so many ways to make it easier, but you needed none of them:
- Thunderbolt over night shade
- Psychic over confuse ray
- Rare candies
- Vitamines
- Not using the worst gengar in the world
All facts
Ghost/Psychic would end up immune to Body Slam/Explosion/Hyper Beam, resist Psychic, and be normally-affected by Earthquake.
Additionally, getting STAB on "Psychic" means it wouldn't need to rely on Hypnosis as much.
So long as it is not Paralyzed or Sleep'd, it would be quite potent. Still walled by Chansey and Snorlax, but not as badly as regular Gengar.
I think another reason why Gengar is a poison type besides him being made of gas, is because that type was the "evil" type before the dark type was introduced (which is actually called "evil" in japanese iirc), and Gengar is always potrayed as somewhat mischievous.
I can get that, but I think Ghost covers the evil/mischievous part enough
Giving Gengar Hoopa(confined)'s and Lunala's typing is perfect.
Truly perfect!
Maybe leaving Ghastly and Haunter as poison, Ghastly is a ball of gas so poison makes some sense.
Fair enough there.
Doing a timed run and not using thunderbolt until elite 4 is wild. Surely thunderbolt with gengars special will do more to normal types than nightshade
Sure, but It's not really a speedrun. It's being largely compared to a previous Gengar run that I did with no TMs at all, and the fact is this Pokemon crushed even without any TMs at all
Gengar with Psychic type would be insane in RBY OU. Not sure if he'd dethrone Tauros because normal stab+Blizzard+high crit chance+ spreading para is so good. Gengar would check Tauros and possibly impact Rhydon's usage since he absorbs normal/physical attacks. Without Psychic typing Gengar would usually be happy to go boom on Tauros for momentum but would actually pose a threat with stab psychic if he had the psychic type. Gengar would have to watch out for Pokemon like Exeggutor and Alakazam because of Sleep and para plus special drop wars with Psychic. He's also physically frail so he can't just ignore EQ and even Drill Peck from Zapdos. Snorlax and Chansey would also likely solo Gengar do to bulk+sustain+freeze hax. On the flip side I think he'd be a problem for any Pokemon to face, even Pokemon that would match up well. And that is the most intentional comment I've ever left on this channel.
Edit: what I said about Rhydon's viability is a toss up because he is the best Zapdos counter.
I can get behind all that. The ability to boom Alakazam and Chansey would help a bit, It could still spread Sleep/Paralysis itself, and the switch-ins could be insane though. Since it speed ties Tauros, it would only really be outsped by Alakazam and Starmie among OU staples and could easily tank anything they could dish out while spamming status itself. So honestly, I think it could be pretty good and at least a mainstay in the same likes as Tauros, since it's high special makes it a mini-Chansey with more type resists and better crit chances and explosion as a trump card.
@RBYPokemonChallenges For real. Psychic Gengar would be absurd. Easily top 3. Psychic/Thunderbolt/Hypnosis/Explosion. So good especially with Stab on Psychic. Fr it's only issues would be EQ, Thunder Wave, and classic Freeze Hax. It'd have to be wary of Zapdos being specially bulky and throwing out Drill Peck while also being able to tank an Explosion. The only reason why I wonder about dethroning Tauros is because of the role he plays in the meta. Solid normal types tend to have the weakness of being slow. At least in RBY. He's the only true OU threat that's both Normal and fast. Tauros would definitely get better mileage against the whole meta whereas Gengar with Ghost/Psychic would be the hardest Pokemon to answer in the format. Which one is more valuable is hard to tell imo. But the switch-ins as you said would be absurd. So damn good! 😂
Will Gengar lick Misty's starfish? Only one way to find out!
Hmm....
@@RBYPokemonChallenges in FRLG Pokemon Challenges
I mean for an actual thought piece, it would've been better to actually give all Gengar in the game this type.
18:31 I'll pick back up at this timestamp tomorrow. I love the video so far!
0:10 I think this is the exact same Gengar card I found in my old card binder this weekend. I have been bursting to say something about it to somebody but I'm now also paranoid about losing it or it getting damaged before I can get it graded. I've never gotten a card graded before but if I did my research right and I'm not wildly off with my amateur assessment of it, I'm pretty sure it has a decent chance of getting a 9.5 or even a 10 and might be worth $1.3k.
There was also a Bulbasaur from the Diamond & Pearl Secret Wonders set that I can't find a single flaw on but I will only sell that one as a last resort. I love Bulbasaur and that card is so shiny!
That is awesome! I hope it gets graded that high!
I do like the muse that Ghost would be special and Dragon would be physical before the physical / special split, fitting that for the original main members, Gengar is a powerful special attacker while Dragonite has more attack. This psychic variant feels a good use of the notion.
Yeah, sometimes the Physical and special determinations made no sense... They also always gave fire types higher attack for some reason. Why is Dark Special in Gen 2 when it's meant to be strong against Psychic and Ghost types, for example
My man how did you not teach this thing Psychic!? It would have rolled even harder.
Agreed, but I just didn't need it.
Something I always figured with ghost types and why physical based moves affect them outside of normal and fighting types. Ghost types DO have physical forms as in they can be touched the general idea with most attacks hitting them imo is that they can phase partly or fully into an intangible state but they need to be aware of the attack and it has to be more than a simple strike. Like yes peck is a thrust but it also has a focused air or wind around it so while the contact might not affect it the energy around it will. Normal and fighting type moves on the other hand are very predictable and obvious which is why they don’t affect ghost types but dark type is super effective because it’s an underhanded tactic they weren’t watching for
That's some interesting head-cannon. Still doesn't explain Goldeen's Peck versus Horn Attack issue, and obviously levitate came in later to make them immune to ground as well.
@@RBYPokemonChallenges even I cant fully figure that one out my guess at best is its like how theres more than one way of swinging a sword. like a horn attack is just a regular thrust while the peck is doing it a certain way, part of the reason why peck is weaker than horn attack as well, peck isnt a full thrust like horn attack is I believe. Also my hand-cannon is partly the result of how the anime treated ghost types, since its said indirectly in a few places that ghost types arent true spirits, just creatures that can be intangible naturally.
I've always thought of Gengar as a mono-Ghost type (or potentially dark/ghost if it wasn't gen 1), since it's essentially an animated shadow.
But since i don't believe any pokemon loses a type on evolving without gaining another one, it just kept the poison type from gastly.
For sure. I think Gastly makes sense as poison-type, but it's not impossible for Pokemon to change their secondary typing with evolution, which is why I think Ghost/Psychic is appropriate.
This was very interesting to see!
Thing about gen 1 is that psychic is already not weak to Bug, because bug type moves _barely even exist_ , and the mons that do learn them suck and aren't used by anybody.
The only real benefit this gengar should get is stab on psychic and not being weak to EQ anymore
But in a solo challenge, those benefits as well as a resistance to Psychic, are HUGE!
A curious suggestion pulled from an all-time great competitive pokemon video, to quote Reverend: "If Mew was a Normal type, it would probably be better than Mewtwo", and while I know that's entirely within the context of competitive pokemon, I wonder how well a Normal/Psychic Mew would fare.
I think this is a fair idea. Stab Pound and Megapunch on the learnset, and STAB Body Slam and Hyper Beam late would be OP.
Haha "lick PP"
Pokemon games are adolescent comedy gold.
25:16 so what, you rather accuracy drops into morrowind, daggerfall, or skyrim?
You madlad, you got to Celadon and DIDN'T right away go to get Psychic. Gengar flexing on this game. Btw a Psychic/Ghost Mewtwo would be absolutely broken. It gets Psychic at the get-go
Yeah, I didn't want to grab any TMs unless absolutely necessary, and for what it's worth, they weren't necessary. Ghost/Psychic Mewtwo sounds fun, but I have other plans as well...
@@RBYPokemonChallenges Seems a little weird, not going to lie. Gengars typing would have made absolutely zero difference defensively well beyond mid-game. The OP-ness of ghost/psychic gengar comes from STAB Psychic on a pokemon with near-Mewtwo quality Special/Speed, not the ability to take x1 ground damage and immunity to ghost.
Isn't the first generation the one where the order of your Pokemon's types matter when the ai chooses moves?
It's not the first move, but rather a long, convoluted list.
Poison was the "evil" typing of gen 1. If Gengar had its typing based on original design intent, it would be Ghost/Dark.
@@Nukepositive it's also based partly on a Japanese ghost that spreads disease.
True, it was changed from Psychic to Dark type later in TCG
Tombstoner run when?
Needs to happen
Psychic/Ghost Gengar would definitely be a spooky pick for the gen 1 competitive meta. 3 immunities, no real counters or weaknesses and Gengars stats? Yeesh...
Seeing the whole Psychic/Ghost run though, does make me think of how Ninetales would manage in a run of RBY with a ghost or psychic secondary typing (I can see valid arguments for either typing). If you ever get the chance (maybe next spooky season) I'd love to see you try it. I love getting to see you do these kinda whacky altered mon runs.
Ghost Ninetales is coming because it's the favorite Pokemon of Channel Member @Roy Merkel
Hypnosis+Dream Eater Gengar is my favorite. Especially with Thunderbolt and Psychic as follow up moves. 😅 I was known in high school to make pretty savage monsters with great move sets.
Absolutely. Especially in Gen 1 where opponent's can't move the turn they wake up
Fun run. Nicely done
Okay, I've got a challenge for you: how broken would psyshock Abra be? Reasoning: in the TCG, the English version of Base Set Abra had the move "psyshock" instead of confusion. This became the name of an actual move in gen 5, which we know makes psychic type attacks highly effective against specially defensive pokemon. How effective would Abra be if it actually got psyshock in red/blue or yellow? We'll say it starts with psyshock instead of teleport, and everything else remains the same.
I'd need to figure out how to program that, but sounds interesting
To me, the poison typing seems like it's probably a holdover frog Gastly, which would make sense.
Sure, I am just arguing that Psychic is more appropriate.
Interesting, unfortunately this run brings in two other runs: What would a Ghost/Psychic Mewtwo and Ghost/Psychic Alakazam run look like?
Yes and yes!
Exactly what I was thinking 🤔
My favorite spooky mon for spooky season 🔥🔥🔥
Curious how powerful Gengar would be if Ghost resisted Psychic. Allowing it to have at least a weakness to ground moves, but actually be Alakazam's counter as intended.
For sure. They would need to redo a lot of type effectiveness rules then however, like making it pure ghost and then making ghost weak to ground.
The premise doesn’t make sense. He’s poison because he’s purple obviously ;)
Another good Gengar video would be Ghost being Special vs Physical
It would be interesting to try
I wonder if a Dark/ Ghost would be even more broken in gen 1.
I actually always liked their typing in gen 1. Immunity to Normal and getting poisoned in gen 1 is super OP for the main game. Poison is a very underrated type.
I'm also wondering how different a run with Gengar would be if Night Shade couldn't hit Normal types and if Ghost effectiveness against Psychic was correctly programmed.
In Gen 2, I may retry this as Ghost/Dark.
I agree that Poison is a bit underrated, just because Psychic types were too OP.
I would like to "fix" the ghost type in Gen 1, but not sure I know how to yet.
I was surprised we ended up with a Dream Eater set instead of Psychic. Probably good for sustain but I always hated hyponosis accuracy
Yeah on minimum battles the heal is often more important than the damage consistency
Definitely would go the other way in a speedrun
How did you change his typing?
Magic! 🪄
I think if you used rare candies, the gengar would have gotten a much higher score. If you like not using them unless you need to, maybe add rare candies as a point deducter too.
Fair point. I was just doing it as a first run, so that could have been optimized more
It's meant to be a poison type because gastly is made from toxic chemicals and gas. It's literally in the name. The gastly line being poison and ghost type make much more sense than psychic/ghost. We would have to change gastly's name in order to give it psychic type.
For Gastly specifically, i get the lore, but Gengar is not a floating ball of gas. There are plenty of Pokemon that change things as they evolve, so I'm just saying Ghost/Psychic makes more sense for Gengar specifically.
@RBYPokemonChallenges I know Gengar is obviously not, but giving it psychic/ghost would be good for a regional form, though. Gengar doesn't look like a psychic type whatsoever. It can also spit sludge out of its mouth, which is why poison fits better. It has toxins in its mouth, and it happens to be purple and red, which makes poison and ghost fit much better, at least in my opinion. Some poison types are purple.
I think you're giving Game Freak way too much credit. I doubt balance was on their radar at all. Type assignment was almost certainly 100% thematic. Ghost types are super effective against psychic, except not because they're immune, and there are basically no ghost moves, and they wrongly left it physical for 3 generations.
What? Game Freak wasn't perfect?
With how severely busted Gen1 is, I have absolutely no confidence that the guys back then had any freaking clue what balance even meant. I played Gen1 religiously as a kid, and I loved it, but my god is that game destroyed by the crunch the development was whipped through to get it out for christmas. Even by todays _AAAA-pre-order pre-release_ -release standards, the game is just not even in first 1.0 stage at launch xD
I suppose I can agree with that. But it was perfect at the time, which is why the franchise continues to this day.
interesting run!
earlier use of Thunderbolt, Ice Beam, Psychic etc. would have been more beneficial for the time i think, no?
Gengar unfortunately doesn't get Ice Beam, but yeah, Thunderbolt earlier would have been the play
Could you imagine this in Competitive back in the day?
Self destruct and hyper beam would be less common.
But it's also the speed and lack of type weaknesses. It would completely destroy so many Pokemon in the meta.
I know this isn’t a speed run but why not teach thunderbolt? Would have sped up all the non rock type fights in the mid game in place of lick/nightshade till you got psychic.
It’s not like you’d replace it in your move set either. Only other move you’d need for Gengar in this type of run is mimic.
Nitpicks aside I think we can all agree Gengar probably should have been made ghost/phyc for gen 2 onwards.
The poison typing never made any sense in terms of lore. lol
Also, why didn't he teach Psychic the moment he had access to Saffron city instead of Lick?
Because it was kind of fun just to see it basically crush the game without even using strong attacking moves, and because I always avoid TMs when ubnecessary
"It makes no sense Gengar isn't a Poison-type" is shorthand for "I never read PokeDex entries.
By that logic, Arcanine is the only Legendary Pokemon.
@RBYPokemonChallenges You would only think Arcanine was a legendary Pokémon by reading the Dex entries, though if you did (or didn't), you wouldn't think it was the only legendary. Try again.
I mean in gen 1 the only strong physical attacks would be something like earthquake/rock slide.....On the special side though-
Yeah, basically nothing strong that's physical can touch this Pokemon
No weaknesses and 3 immunities.
Like Sableye.
Yes, but better
Psygar licks the snake and the clam.
I have clearly perfected commentary
What would a nkrnal psycic do in gen 1 😅
I did the GhostLax run last year
Maybe you could do a run with a pokemon that has tombstoner. Would be interesting whether that move is broken enough to trivialize the whole game
Also fits into the spooky month
Tombstoner would be amazing
I wonder how good parasect would be with a base speed over 100 or if spore was a priority move and always hit first.
We already tested something like that when we gave Spore to Magikarp in the GodKarp run. It's completely OP in that case.
"We have used all of our... Lick PP, and we only have a couple of PP left"
I died 😂😂😂
Clearly I have a maxed out speech stat
@@RBYPokemonChallenges Don't think I didn't laugh also at "And now it's a matter of slowly Licking the Queen down." I'm onto you!
Pokemon just makes it so easy...
What program do you use to change the types?
It's actually baked into my overlay system that I use for live stats and everything, but it's basically achievable with a GameShark by just writing the type codes to the correct spot in RAM
Since Gen IV we get the physical/special splits, so, why Ghost aren't immune to physical attacks instead Normal/fighting types?
Agreed,
The immunities are not that impressive. Normal and fighting are already there and ghost... Would be impressive if there were any good ghost moves to be immune to.
Lack of weakness is good tho.
I. the context of a solo run, the resistance to Psychic and loss of weakness to Ground is so OP for this Pokemon, the type immunities make the early game a joke and just let us laugh a little more at Agatha.
@@RBYPokemonChallenges Yeah, I mean the lack of weakness, the resistances, and the immunities to normal and fighting are great. What I am saying is that the only new immunity is Ghost and that one in particular is kinda irrelevant.
Its crazy how in gen1 ghost psychic is one of the best pairings but in the rest of the games its downright terrible
Agreed. The two typings were hard nerfed from Gen 2 onward specifically because they were too good in Gen 1.
Do it again perfect dvs speedrun.
No need to grab any candy or tms except psychic.
Pretty much agree.
I think that Gengar should have been a pure ghost type or a ghost/dark type
Fair, commenting more on the fact that this is Gen 1 and things were far more wacky and broken, but still fair enough
new idea, what if we give Rhydon double speed, will it be a top tier or still terrible?
It would still be REALLY slow, so probably not much better. But with Tombstoner.....
@@RBYPokemonChallenges maybe standard 80 base speed could help him?
You know, that Gengar could have beaten the game so much faster _and_ more consistently if you had thought Psychic. Yes, it's less powerful than Dream Eater but you don't have to put everything to sleep first and making lots of reset in the end just because of bad luck. You could have easily offset a lot of these resets and ended with, not only a better time, but a better score.
I doubt they made it ghost poison to not get poisoned,they could just have made it inmune to begin with
True.
*looks at Spiritomb* sorry this man forgot you existed and for 2 generations had 0 weaknesses and 3 immunities
What is the background music playing at around 15 minutes in? It's sweet.
I have a bgm playlist on my channel and I think it's from there.
Can't you get a level 100 of whatever starter you choose?
I could...
Not fooling me alakazam or mew two just built to be the best bug or not. He's still fighting alot of Pokémon while physics just one shot every
I apologize, but I don't quite understand your meaning.
ghost type or ghost dark is what it should have been
If the Dark type were in Gen 1, I would agree with that for sure. Ghost/Dark Gengar will need to be on my Gen 2 channel sometime
@@RBYPokemonChallenges for sure. still my favorite. just saw a video where a guy reverses stats of some pokemon and draws what they would look like with the stat change. chansey had crazy stats but 1 hp and wonder guard. would be cool to see pokemon with altered abilities
"more lickey lickey on the clam" owo?
Nailed it.
But at the same time it would still be weak to Sabrina's Psychic type if it was still both types at once.
You mean a triple type?
No in the gen 1 games Ghost type is weak to Psychic type so if Gengar was STILL part Psychic type Sabrina's pokemon would still do double damage to it.
Ghost is not weak to psychic, poison is weak to psychic. Psychic attacks are neutral on ghost. Ghost is only weak to ghost attacks. Generation 1 ghost pokémon are weak to psychic but only because generation 1 ghost pokémon were paired with poison type. Psychic is immune to ghost attacks but Nightshade ignores type immunities in gen 1 and the only other ghost attack was Lick.
ghastly is a gas pokemon, I guess that's enough to make it poison
But again, no poison stab
Ghosts are purple. Any purple mons should be dual types with psychic. Psychic is purple, lol
Ghost/Psychic Weezing, Arbok, and Jynx?
Although it makes sense for a lot of decisions to have been made for balance reasons, the game does not seem especially balanced.
Clery
Failing to teach this Psychic immediately upon leaving the department store is such an unforced error.
All those battles where you used night shade and lick and confuse ray over and over again and it would've been over so quickly with psychic.
There's bad play, and then there's actively bad play, and then there's whatever this was. Unless I misunderstand the metric you're using and time is not a factor in your score.
I specifically mentioned why I wasn't using TMs.
What’s the point of testing a psychic gengar if u don’t teach psychic
STAB Dream Eater, no weakness to Ground-type moves, resistance to Psychic-type moves all are the expected improvements.
How about a Bug/Psychic Venomoth?
Ahem, I think you mean a Psychic/Dragon....
@@RBYPokemonChallenges Yeah. You're right. I'm always confused about the real typing of Venomoth.
Just like Scott's Thoughts.
Always thought Rhyhorn was cooler looking than Rhydon.
4 legs better than 2 when you have stubby useless arms.
Lol, that's legit