I mean, I remember suggesting this seriously, but combined with the theoretical Dragons in RBY video. They’re in the same boat after all: single evolution line, with plenty to talk about with the top of that ladder. Well, guess I have something to look forward to next year.
I didn't read the comment and now realize this is ghost in RBY, that is an April fools. But yeah just be like YMS and say you like animals (joking) ❤❤❤
Can't believe you didn't mention that Gengar's Explosion has a 1/45 chance, on a noncrit, to put a full HP Jolteon or Snorlax in the 255 damage glitch, making them unable to Rest. With such crucial info left out, no wonder people will still pick Charizard as their lead in OU.
There should be a move called "haunt" That is available turn only 1 after a pokemon is switched in after the previous faints. It would do massive damage and ignores resistance
@@Jpeg_skeletonI guess a ghost type retaliate works. Retaliate is a move introduced in Gen 5, and it is a 70 power 100 accuracy normal move, and it doubles to 140 if an ally fainted the previous turn.
Johto really dropped the ball with their gyms. Jasmine has 2 Magnemite and a Steelix (with a crap movepool to boot), when they could have slapped a Magneton there for free (I think). Falkner having Pidgey and Pidgeotto despite having access to Noctowl was also an L
@@daofficerofthenoodles7504 I still don't get that, I understand why ghost and dragon are the rarest types, since encountering stuff like ghosts and dragons wouldn't realistically bw something that happens on a daily basis, but why the hell would you decide that it's a good idea for the two least common types to be the ones used by the guys that can only use one type in their team of six at a time?
What's funniest to me about the ghost type specifically is that lick, of all possible moves, is most likely the reason why the type was categorized as a physical damage type until gen4. People always like to talk about how it makes no sense that it was made a physical type instead of a special one given how much better the first ghost Pokemon in gens 1 and 2 have better special stats, but it's just made unintentionally hilarious that they got lumped into being a physical type because the one singular damaging move (that isn't fixed damage) is not only pitifully weak but also only learned by things that don't even have a halfway decent attack stat anyways
I get why Ghost was physical for Gen 1 because the only damaging move that wasn’t set was Lick, but I really wish they swapped its physical status with Dark’s special in Gen 2, especially given how Dark had a LOT of moves that appeared to be physical at first glance.
Maybe it’s the ghosts forgetting they’re dead and trying to enter a physical form in the land of the living? I mean being able to shoot a tongue laser does sound cool though
there’s some interesting implications of dark being special given that the dark type is based on cruelty and underhandedness rather than the metaphysical quality of darkness. like, does crunch do dark-type damage rather than normal-type damage because it’s imbued with the power of hate? is that why it’s special? idk man it’s the best explanation i can think of
Fun fact: The types are so imbalanced in this game, Gen 1 has more poison types than Gens 2 to 6 combined. Also, this would be the case even if the Gastly line wasn’t poison.
In context it makes sense. Each region has a sort of theme. Johto is traditional. Idk Hoenn. Sinnoh is mythology. Unova is American. So on so forth. Kanto was more industrial.
As a quick note on the type diversity of Gen 1, the devs found out late into production that they were going to be getting a second game on a bigger cartridge, so when it came time to cut down the original ~185 pokemon for space, they knew that they would get to put them back in later, so they were more considerate of the region itself over fair type distribution when making cuts, and since team rocket is a poison type team and the most memorable and common trainer type, they wanted them to have the most diversity. So poison types were basically given a free pass over in the dex, hence why there's so many. Now, as for why they don't have many ghosts despite having an entire town dedicated to them? That's a mystery we'll never solve. Also, it will never not be funny to me that Lance is a flying type trainer and Agatha a poison type. (Also, I think DEER may have been a ghost type too, it looks undead to me)
I imagine it’s because ghosts aren’t something you expect to come across very often. even in a fantasy world, there’s a distinct difference between magic that lets you breath Fire, and magic that violates the circle of life and death Later games add more in where they start getting more creative with the concept, but in RBY/GSC, Types were treated very literal
I want to make a comment contributing to the discussion, but can I just say I love the visual gags in this video? The Ghost of Chansey coaching Gengar, Lickitung not knowing what to do with the ice cream, Gastly at a job interview, even stupid shit like the repeated use of Gastly, Haunter, and Gengar's flat and unamused face is just so entertaining to me.
I love how ghost in Gen 1, in game was built up being this ultimate counter to psychic just to have 1 base 20 power move and the fact psychic is immune to ghost due to a fucking bug. Shit sucks
It's hilarious how the ultimate psychic counter also had poison typing, which is notably weak against psychic type attacks, meaning Gen 1 Psychics were realistically actually the ultimate counter to GHOSTS
@@emmetstanevich2121 If RBY had the current 1.5x crit damage, then that STAB, super effective Lick would still only be 5 points stronger than that body slam *on a crit*
I wonder if the programming error was because they were trying to make lick do way more damage than just a regular supper effective hit against psychic types, but accidentally made it do 0 instead. That would make more sense, the only ghost move normally doing barely any damage except against the strongest type which it obliterates
Pokémon like Gen 1 Gengar and Dragonite have me convinced that at one point “signature Types” were a thing. That or they were so certain they’d make a sequel that they allocated resources towards creating a Typing stuck with either Poison or Flying. I’d love to see the alternate universe where this concept stretched so far that you have overly-specific combos like Fairy/Carbohydrate Daschbun and Psychic/Digit Unown.
The lack of Ghost and Dragon types seemed like an attempt at making the types feel special. Gen 1 is largely designed around the idea that you have constant access to Normal Type moves, but that Special Attacks help you against common resistances. Ghost: Only type immune to Normal Type attacks. Dragons: Largely resistant to most Special Attacks.
I reckon dragon was meant to be the "final boss" type. because it resists all 3 starters and pikachu, can't be resisted, and is only weak to itself and ice. ice types in gen 1 were almost hidden, you'd have to either figure out how to evolve shellder, take the lapras from silph co, trade a poliwhirl in cerulean city for jynx, head inside the optional seafoam islands and catch a dewgong, or successfully catch articuno. of course its not that hard to kill lances dragonites, and you don't need an ice type for ice moves, but I like the spirit of the puzzle!.
@@flaming007 Correct. It's also really easy to just Cheese Lance's horrible AI and turn his Dragonairs and Dragonites into set up fodder. They'll just spam agility against anything weak to psychic.
I don’t have much experience in RBY, but think the funniest thing about the Ghost type in early games is Misdreavus, which no trainer has in GSC and is only available in Mt. Silver. It’s like they’d almost finished the game and then someone went “hey did you guys see this ‘Ghost’ type we got?” and everyone panicked to add something as quickly as possible.
They did plan on adding a voodoo doll/Jangshi panda ghost evolution line, but it got scrapped. Since Curse’s animation still references the nail pinning down, which was prominently featured on the bear voodoo doll, I think they were cut late in development, and added in misdreavus last minute so there could be a new ghost type.
Also Dragon. "Good job on Misdreavus guys, surely that's everything, right?" "Good god this line of work just drags on, huh?" "Wait, Drag...on... Oh shit"
Ah Misdreavus, one of numerous gen 2 Pokemon who are just absolutely nonexistent in the game itself. Other examples include Pokemon such as the Lanturn line, Magcargo line, and even Skarm of all Pokemon, who in spite of his popularity in competitive is almost completely vacant from the games itself. Misdreavus in particular is quite humorous though given that they made a whole Ghost type gym only to have every trainer use exclusively the Gengar line
Hearing that Golbat's harassing 7U with Confuse Ray is just incredibly funny to me, considering that's pretty in line with the experience of fighting wild Zubat and Golbat And considering 7U is basically the embodiment of a player's team in the early-mid game of a playthrough, that really could not be any more appropriate
The fact that shadow ball drops sp def & gengar's sp atk is so much higher than its phys atk always made me think someone in the design process thought that ghost moves were special b4 the split
Golbat's Confuse Ray also comes up in Ubers where, uh, you can use it to annoy the shit out of Mewtwo after doing your job of walling Body Slam-less Mew.
@@findingliospugolini8979 Mew is traditionally running a physical Swords Dance set. Add Softboiled, Earthquake, and one of either Body Slam, Explosion, or Hyper Beam, and you have your average Ubers Mew. A set running only EQ and Explosion as attacking moves is very threatening, but completely walled by flying types (such as Golbat). The same is true for the more modern Reflect sets running only EQ as an attacking move. Mew *can* run Special coverage like Ice Beam or Blizzard in combination with Reflect, but Mew critically does not get access to Amnesia, making a pure Special set completely unviable against the common Amnesia threats in Ubers, Mewtwo and Slowbro.
Imagine this in an alternate timeline Satoshi: "When designing the first Pokemon game I would think back to my childhood where i climbed ancient mountains and explored haunted houses. I guess its no surprise there are so many Ghosts and Dragons huh?"
@@fourthmatchflame I'd imagine explosion and self destruct would be a lot riskier to use because, assuming at least a couple of those extra ghosts are OU viable, there'd be a higher risk of them switching in a ghost and tanking the explosion like it's nothing. It'd probably make snorlax and tauros a little more scared than they are now, as they can't just body slam the whole tier now (speaking from experience, I don't run into gengar too often), and earthquake, while good, wouldn't OHKO gengar if it wasn't a poison type, and I'd imagine some of those new ghosts wouldn't be poison (and if there was a flying/ghost, LMAO rip my snorlax running body slam and earthquake).
My biggest problem with the gengar line being poison type isn't even for balance reason. I love poison types even when it's a hindrance. The issue I have is thematic. Haunter and Genger don't really feel like poison types they feel like mono ghosts. If anything I think Gastly might have my favorite design of the line because that's exactly how I imagine a toxic ghost to look
The original logic was meant to be that a lot of early-designed Pokemon are based on staple RPG monsters. Voltorb is a mimic. Grimer is a slime. And Gastly was meant to literally be a cloud of toxic gas. In any case, when you look at their index number, it seems like Gastly and Gengar were designed separately and were only later assigned to each other, with Haunter being created to fill in the missing stage. This is why, conceptually, Haunter and Gengar don't have any real Poison in them. Haunter is just meant to be a ghost (its Japanese name is even literally "Ghost"), and Gengar is based on doppelgangers, or ghosts that mimic people's appearances, with that behavior being described in its dex entries.
just wanna mention that gengar has been using psychic in OU more often. it’s main use over mega drain is being good vs other gengar, while also still hitting rhydon pretty hard since a neutral special attack still hits hard considering gengars high and rhydons slow special, currently in spl gengar has used night shade 14 times and psychic 10 times, so it’s not far behind
Also allows it to fish for Phsychic special drops vs a paralyzed Chansey. Say what you will about it's practicality, but there's no denying that it's kind of funny
@@supersmashbro596 It’s only Scummy if you mean that you use Mewtwo to sweep people who DON’T have a Mewtwo, and act like it was a fair fight. Otherwise, you do you: it’s a fun Pokémon
People really overstate the case for how buggy Gen 1 actually is. Most bugs in the game are either not something your average player would encounter in a normal run or mostly subtle and not that noticeable for the average player. People know about a lot of the bugs in the game because it got played so much by so many players taking it apart. Meanwhile as a small child I managed to break out of the map in Wario Land 1 and got into the glitchy mess area for example. Just imagine how buggy the perception of a game like that would be or frankly any game at the time if it got played as much as Gen 1 Pokemon.
There was one bug I encountered that I have never been able to replicate. I was replaying Blue but with a difference, in that I didn't catch any other Pokémon and only used Squirtle. By the time I got to Vermilion it was a Blastoise. I decided to go into the Pokémart, and after I was done talking to the clerk, I was stuck there. I could only open my menu or talk to the clerk.
It's mostly the small stuff that keeps adding up that gives the gen 1 games such a bad rep. So many things just aren't working properly/as intended it ends up being hilarious. And for exemple take that famous 1/256 chance to miss "100% accurate" moves... that's definitely a glitch that a lot of regular players will encounter, right ?
@@CarboKill besides the Badge Boost glitch? Ya know, the glitch that did something even I noticed 20 years ago, even if I didn't know what was actually happening? When moves would suddenly become significantly better or worse after a stat alteration, it's kinda hard to miss happening after aw hile
@@InfernosReaper That's probably the main one that's going to be noticeable to some players. I still fit that under being subtle enough that I think most players would not notice it even if most players are probably going to experience it to some degree.
@@Luragon9876 The 1/256 miss isn't even necessarily unintentional. Hit rates are not actually displayed in game in Gen 1 so it's pretty hard to say if that's even a bug.
The weird thing about Ghost being Physical type is that in Gen 3, you started getting Ghost Types that were specifically tailored to be physical attackers. Banette had a good amount of physical attack, and Dusclops was a bulky physical attacker as well. And then they got screwed over the very next gen, and were stuck with… Shadow Claw and Shadow Punch.
I always found in interesting that generation 3 affectively introduced the ghost and dragon types into regular play - for not just were they nothing in gen 1, but they doubled down on this mentality in gen 2 - for the one new dragon was trade-only, and the new ghost was only available in an area where there was literally only a single trainer in the game left. It seems to me that they were intended to be "special" types due to ghost's normal immunity and dragon's many resistances (effectively only being weak to ice in gen 1) to only be found in extremely rare pokemon, until they said fuck it and made regular dragons and ghosts that could be pragmatically used.
Not only did they not add more than a single pokemon of each of these types but they really did go and add like 18 new water types one of which is also the new dragon. Really couldn't give dragon a damn thing without it also being water lmao
@@ewanphilip5604 It took until Gen 5 for them to introduce fully evolved Pokemon that were pure Dragon (Haxorus and Druddigon). Yeah, not having a pure Flying-type Pokemon at all until Gen 5 is pretty odd (and not even a dual-type with Flying as the primary type until Gen 6), but big boy Dragons not being allowed to fly solo until Unova feels really weird
I almost feel like the ghost type was "accidentally" balanced for most of its life, up until gen 8. Gen 1 was probably the roughest inherent gen for it both due to gengar being weak to psychic and ground, as well as the fact that a "real" ghost-type attack (like shadow ball) would thud against most relevant pokemon (even if psychic was weak instead of immune, the dominance of the Big Three means that there are at minimum 3 ghost-immune pokemon per team, and while it *probably* won't happen, shadow ball -> tauros switch-in -> lose speed tie -> crit eq would be a funny way to lose a match.) Gen 2 added an actual ghost-type move, but it also added dark, steel, and particularly Pursuit, which makes it much riskier to leave a ghost-type on the field for extended periods of time, mitigating the fact that it has two immunities. Gen 4 added the physical/special split, which allowed special-attacking ghost types to use their STAB, but it also made Pursuit much more dangerous now that it's a physical move. Gen 6 notably removed steel's resistance to Ghost (and dark) in what feels like a targeted, pre-emptive nerf to Aegislash, and rendered ghost-types immune to trapping (not that it would matter much for Smogon, seeing as arena trap and shadow tag were on their way out,) but it also buffed Knock Off's power and distribution. For much of the generations, the ghost type has been getting inherently better and better, but answers to the type have similarly risen to the challenge to keep them in a healthy spot. Then gen 8 removed pursuit, which I never agreed with, especially considering that gen also buffed teleport and added HDB, making it really hard to stop the opponent from walling your attacks and getting their attackers in for free, especially regenerator 'mons like slowking. And now we're in gen 9, where the meta has been warped around a ghost-type who can block almost all forms of hazard removal just by switching in, and who can simply switch out of your answer just to switch back in the next time you try to clear hazards. If Pursuit were still in the game, I would probably be defending Gholdengo due to the mindgames needed to block hazard removal without getting trapped, but as it stands the string cheese man is simply too riskless to use. (Also, let magnet pull affect ghost/steel types. I can understand ghost's ability to escape things like wrap and arena trap, but I think it's entirely reasonable for a powerful magnet to trap the metal parts of Aegislash and Gholdengo that they wouldn't want to simply leave behind.)
Removing pursuit was fucking nuts. If not for the level of power creep keeping ghost vaguely in check it would be a borderline unusable type in some tiers because any mon with shadow ball stab and decent stats would be insane to spam. This is absolutely proven by BDSP, a metagame with much less power creep and no pursuit where Gengar was banned for being too spammable
Plus there’s also Mons like Flutter Mane and Dragapult. The former was banned to Ubers not even a week into the games release and Dragapult is one of the strongest OU Mons around, only kept in check by its lack of decent physical Ghost STAB and it’s special attack being lower then it’s physical attack. If pursuit was brought back then you could at least keep those Mons in check, but instead they can run Wild for free
Later generations have a tendency to forget that certain types are balanced around both their moves and the offensive/defensive matchups of that type. Dragons aren’t broken in Gens 1-3 because they don’t get good STAB, but they’re not BAD either, since it’s a reasonably good defensive type, and the type was offensively meant to be incredibly safe to click, meaning it had to be low reward in BP as well. Like, I don’t think Fairy would have existed if BP 120 physical Outrage and Draco Meteor were never a thing. I LOVE those moves, but they’re really what pushed Dragon from being good to being blatantly unfair to fight As an example of the reverse, Bug typing has been getting more and more powerful moves each generation because the type has some TERRIBLE offensive matchups, making it very easy to slow the roll of using them for raw damage
@@CastersvarogIssue with Pursuit was that it was very punishing for Psychic types too. Also the irony with Dragapult is that it was banned in Gen 8's Nat Dex format where pursuit still exists because of Z-moves making it far too overwhelming to deal with.
Epic nerding about beta Pokemon because this video gives me an excuse to write an overly long comment about them: I remember people saying that "Barunda" is probably a very, very early concept of Jigglypuff (the balloon pokemon) since you can kinda read "Barunda" as containing the way you'd say the English word "Balloon" in Japanese. And you know, it just _is_ a balloon. On a similar note, "Tsuinzu" is basically just how you'd say the English word "Twins" in Japanese. It kinda makes sense, since a lot of older Pokemon are just English words, like how the legendary birds are just called "Freezer," "Thunder," and "Fire." Finally, Crocky. I have nothing interesting to say about this one but god DAMN if there was a single unused Pokemon I wish was in the game, it'd be this one.
Sometimes I wonder how Gengar would have done if it was a pure Ghost type and didn't have the hinderance that was the poison type in RBY. Man talking about my favorite type like that hurts but it do be like that
Gengar would be insane. You'd basically have no drawbacks, and still have a normal resist. Moves like EQ would probably be 3 hit KOs, for reference. Currently, it's 11th, but if it was pure ghost, I could see it in B+ with mons like Rhydon and Cloyster
I think a lot about dragon quest’s influence on early pokemon ; DQ2 inspired the games trading feature, and DQ5, while not the first monster taming game (that honor would go to megami tensei digital devil story on the famicom) it was very influential in the japanese design space. That game has an early game area where you rid a tower-like manor of ghosts, said ghosts just being some of the early game candle, fire spirit and, who could forget, Dragon Quest Fat Rat. Not many enemies you could point to as an obvious “ghost” though. Gen 1 is odd for so many reasons, but the discussion of ghost types in this vid reminded me of that area. Another sudden thought ; why was marowak not a ground/ghost type? Would make perfect sense
One thing that's always fascinated me about RBY that I don't think is in any other Gen (that I've heard of, which tbf I don't know too much about other gens competitively), is how extremely different the metagames between OU and UU is, so much so that often when pokemon fall out of OU, they immediately go past UU because the metagame there just shreds them, Golem being a prime example. I'd love to see a video about the how and why OU and UU are so extremely different in Gen 1
I suspect part of the reason there's only one ghost type is that the ghastly line was originally supposed to be the ghosts of Pokémon, rather then just a pokemon species of their own that happened to be ghostly. This is how the lore in the game treats them, as well as the Kanto Anime. Later this changed but it does make more sense to only have one ghost pokemon line if the idea behind it is that it is just what pokemon are like when they come back as ghosts.
Shotouts to the Stadium Rentals format (where you can only use the rental pokemon from Stadium), having both Haunter and Gengar viable at the same time, thus having the biggest amount of viable mons in RBY tiers, with 2. Also Dragon Rage is viable there due to both being a level 50 format and due to Aerodactly being forced to run it. It's also a really good move there too. Funny as shit.
pleasetell me there's a write-up thread of rentals format, be it for one game or any of the games that have it (I assume more than just Stadium 1 and 2 do at least) like tbh it sounds like it'd be solved as fuck since there's no variance besides move/crit RNG but still sounds fun
Actually played Pokemon Staduim recently, and omg the movesets are... well let's just say that I wouldnt call the sets meta defining. I mean, Alakazam is literally running dig.
@@smtmonke to some degree i guess they kinda had to intentionally screw up some movesets since they're trying really hard to make the pre-evos worth picking over the fully evolved sometimes... i'd have to look with current eyes to see if any are worth the trouble though.
I never thought much about it until recently, but I suspect there’s something of a thematic element w.r.t. Lavender Town’s presence, death, regret, research, and aging in the game - you’re first introduced to Professor Oak who never accomplished his dreams of research in old age, then later to Mr. Fuji in the unsettling Lavender Town who is revealed/implied towards the end to have been the Dr. Fuji who (with Blaine?) founded the original Pokemon Lab that made Mewtwo and destroyed Cinnabar Fuji retired to a quiet life dedicated to helping pokemon and calming their spirits, Blaine couldn’t quite cope with the trauma and took out his feelings by being the strange scientist constantly using fire attacks in the Cinnabar Gym, and Oak (if he was involved) stayed very close by in Pallet Town (where he only has 3 Pokémon left, interesting) and can’t accomplish his dream anymore Assuming this is all intended and not just a wild interpretation, I read it as a cautionary tale against dehumanizing Pokemon (or animals/friends in general) by treating them as a means to an end, in this case a scientific one, which is pretty much the message that Oak repeats to you after you become the champion - interestingly, Oak may have been a cut postgame boss before gaining access to Mewtwo as well So yeah I guess it’s there to hammer in that you should respect your Pokémon and not follow in the footsteps of those guys too closely lol
I understand there being one ghost line. Everything that dies and becomes a ghost winds up as a ghastly. From a game design perspective, it's weird, but there's nothing inherently wrong from a world building perspective for there to be one kind of ghost and everything else about a haunting being decided by strength and personality
@@piscenicprodigy8816 They can all be born from Eggs, even Yamask so they clearly arent actual Ghosts Honestly that just seems like a Rumor that was put into the Pokedex, Like Drifloom kidnapping Children wich is a thing we see beign debunked on Legends Arceus
When he says "What's Haunter getting up to now" I thought of Haunter as some old family friend coming out onto the porch knitting after becoming a widow the last year and ya checking up on them 🤣 glad I have aphantasia
it took me so long to realise that Gengar Neutral was meant to be a riff on gender neutral. i pictured it as just two Gengars in a fighting game, playing in neutral.
Genuinely absurd that your vids have come so far in blending information and humor, both visually and narratively. I can’t believe that the April Fool’s vid of all things has become my favorite on the channel. Excellent work, can’t wait to see where you take it by next year too :)
The best description I ever heard of Gen 1 is this. “Gen 1 is a game held together with ducktape and dreams that turned into a success. It’s what modern sonic games wish they could be.”
@@Julford Entei got absolutely fucked until an event near the end of gen 4 gave it Flare Blitz lmao, and Flareon had the same problem until GENERATION SIX
There is a 4th Ghost in RBY. It has has sprite and can _sort of_ be encountered as a battle. Yes, it's "Ghost" in Lavender Tower. I always thought it looked really cool. Too bad they never made a playable version of it.
I am not the greatest fan of RBY (The GameBoy games). But RBY (The Smogon competitive scene) however... it might be one of the most fun competitive games I have tried in a long time.
Thinking about how ghost had only 1 weakness in Gen 1(itself) and how the only ghost move was lick which is terrible. It makes me think that GF might've been trying to design ghost as more of a defensive type with a lot of immunities, few weaknesses, but very few ways of dealing damage. After all it makes sense since ghosts can phase through stuff in most popular media and it makes sense to make them more defensive to reflect that. It makes me want to see what would happen if a bulky ghost like cofagrigus was added into Gen 1.
One thing that I noticed is that a number of pokemon in gen 1 have poison type instead of dark type. Golbat, VIleplume and Gengar lines come to mind: Vileplume might be debatable, but both Golbat and Gengar feel like they were 100% meant to be dark types instead of poison. They probably wanted to include dark type, but havent cause it wasnt finished.
for what it's worth, i've heard that Barunda was probably Flying type, which is why Bird type exists in the game at all, being initially to distinguish between things that fly because they are birds and things that fly by other means
1:34 I don't know if it's accurate but it sort of makes sense to me why Onix exists in the state it does in RBY if I assume it was designed specifically just to be the first boss and not an actual Pokémon that the player would include in their team, they were probably thinking that players would prioritize Golem or Rhydon and Onix would be just be caught for collection purposes. Back then Pokémon was still really close to JRPG tropes when it came to how it handled its creatures and it was painfully evident that a lot of mons weren't designed for use by the players, but rather to be mid/earlygame chump for enemies to use like Muk or Weezing (which is probably why they don't have a better STAB attack than Sludge) or "early game crutch that falls off later" like the Caterpie and Weedle lines, I believe Onix is yet another such case.
People always say “Charizard should’ve been a dragon type!” but no one ever says “Literally any Pokémon that isn’t in the Dragonite line should’ve been dragon type!”
These people don't realize that if you were to make Charizard a Dragon type back then it would've defeated the purpose of Dragon type in RBY: wall your starter. If you think about it everything Dragon resists is a starter type in RBY and the only fully evolved Dragon in the game is also the ace Pokémon of the final boss, Lance is meant to be a thorn in the side of players that overcommitted on their starter and needs to be beaten either by running coverage or by investing more in your other team members.
to my understanding, one of the big reasons rby is so buggy is they had to get VERY creative with the code to make the game actually fit in 1mb. Also iirc it took until gen 7 for the total number of poison types not added in gen 1 to exceed the number of poison types added in gen 1 alone. Also also not only were there more dragons planned that were scrapped, scyther was originally a dragon with bug elements that got reworked into a bug with very very loose dragon elements that didn't really make it into the official art.
Then Satoru Iwata was basically like, "bro let me optimise your code for the next game" and he did it so well that not only is GSC pretty much bug-free but there was enough space left over for GameFreak to fit in the entire Kanto region. Iwata is just built different.
I'm in a rough spot right now with anxiety and major tooth pain (cant see anyone til monday, of course this happens on a Friday afternoon) , this video came at the perfect time to help calm me down, thanks BY
Something I find funny about the Ghost type is that there are very good teams out there that consist entirely of Ghost and Psychic types. To clarify, Ghost is such a bad offensive type that you can make a META team entirely of mons immune to it by accident
Dude your videos are awesome. I listen to these to go to sleep. Not in a bad way, they just induce deep pokemon mechanic thought that put ne into a type of trance. Your speaking cadence is top notch too.
most major Johto fights in general use Kanto Pokemon way too much, so Morty is far from the only case. TBH it always gave me a weird feeling like Johto isn't really a fully fledged region but more like a Gen 1 expansion pack.
I never really got why Ninetales wasn't a Fire/Ghost type. Or why Jynx wasn't a Ghost/Ice Type. There's so many Pokemon that would've made clear ringers for certain types (Hell, Electabuzz should've been Electric/Fighting, and Magmar should've been Fire/Fighting). But among the large group, so many just seemed to have gotten ignored or overlooked, because we just needed another water type. In addition to that, movepool adjustments would've really helped. I think some Normal Type attacks could've stood to be different types. Imagine if Vicegrip was a Bug type attack. Suddenly, Pinsir has a STAB attack, and Kingler has a unique edge over other Water types (it can potentially kill Psychics or scare them out). Hyper Beam also probably should've been a Dragon Type attack alongside Slam, since they are both primarily used by the Dratini line, and while I know other Pokemon can learn them, Gen I kinda wasn't hurting for it, and Hyper Beam is meant to be the "Ultimate attack" so why not have it be Dragon Type?
If you grew up playing on a Gameboy color, you know pokemon was miles ahead of any other Gameboy game of that time. Most other games you couldn't even have a save file.
On the point of distribution among types, i feel like the idea behind it at the time is that ghosts and dragons are rare and special. Thats why theres a ghost and a dragon trainer but they turned out to be the spooky related stuff and the vague serpent related stuff trainer
Gen 1 CAN be glitchy and buggy. As a kid just playing it straight? I noticed almost none of the oddities. It was incredible to me. It felt huge. And mysterious.
Nice to hear rby getting some love. They may be broken and dated by today's standards but having a full rpg with 151 collectible characters on a handheld was revolutionary for the time. And they paved the way for what the series would become.
Ive been having the worst day tonight. It's freezing cold. I had a miserable drive home cuz of the near lethal blizzard, amongst so many other things. But coming home and seeing Big Yellow upload a video. A really fun video about really fun things. That made my night. Thank You Big Yellow. Thanks for being such a cool person. Thanks for these wonderful videos. Thank you for giving me something very enjoyable to smile at :) ❤️ I hope you have a wonderful day.
As a kid I thought Ghosts and Dragons were rare in the game because they're typically pretty rare in fiction, ghosts being invisible and dragons living on top of mountains or whatever. I think the real reason is balancing. Dragon was designed to be an extremely powerful type, which is balanced by only being on a Pseudo-legendary. Same with Ghost to a lesser extent since having a normal immunity is so cracked, they limited it to one evo line. While that explains why they opted to give Charizard a Flying type rather than Dragon, Gyarados still makes no sense. Its entire theme is that it's extremely powerful after evolving from Magikarp, and its design is based on Chinese dragons. Why the fk is it a flying type?
gengar in the first 3 gens was the coolest bitch ever because you’d think its lack of special stab would hurt it, but nah. it was using weird bulky utility sets and 75 bp non-stab moves and it’s still top 5-10 every gen
For anyone wondering, gengar is currently doing very well in gen 9 being a UU superstar, essentially being to UU what dragapult is to OU just without the ability to run physical attacking sets. It runs a large variety of sets from specs, scarf, substitute and nasty plot allowing it to shred through just about everything except for a tera poison gastrodon without setup.
whoever the one person who suggested this for the obligatory slightly silly April Fools vid a while back was I hope you're doing well
Idk who it was but it was a great idea
Do a Dragon type video next year
I mean, I remember suggesting this seriously, but combined with the theoretical Dragons in RBY video. They’re in the same boat after all: single evolution line, with plenty to talk about with the top of that ladder.
Well, guess I have something to look forward to next year.
I got a bit confused bc of timezones, but ye ig it is April 1st somewhere
I didn't read the comment and now realize this is ghost in RBY, that is an April fools.
But yeah just be like YMS and say you like animals (joking) ❤❤❤
Can't believe you didn't mention that Gengar's Explosion has a 1/45 chance, on a noncrit, to put a full HP Jolteon or Snorlax in the 255 damage glitch, making them unable to Rest. With such crucial info left out, no wonder people will still pick Charizard as their lead in OU.
Yeah I cant believe it either. To think he's a "professional competitive pokemon player" 🙄
Wait is that true? That’s a wild little fun fact you had tucked away, and I want more if you have them lol
and on a crit it's a guaranteed ohko so it's a win/win scenario!!
@@zeenoh5811 45 percent of the time, every time.
It's 1/39, not 1/45
Gengar coming out and Countering something that killed an entirely different pokemon is probably the most "ghost" thing you can do in any pokemon game
There should be a move called "haunt" That is available turn only 1 after a pokemon is switched in after the previous faints. It would do massive damage and ignores resistance
@@sonogramgrl what?
@@Jpeg_skeleton so basically a ghost type retaliate
@@G0nzaloCoronel idk what retaliate is but sure
@@Jpeg_skeletonI guess a ghost type retaliate works. Retaliate is a move introduced in Gen 5, and it is a 70 power 100 accuracy normal move, and it doubles to 140 if an ally fainted the previous turn.
I like the implication that Tajiri ran into a ghost and a dragon while exploring the country side.
but just one of each, very important
And a whole lot of toxic Gar-
…oh. That… actually makes depressing sense
@@spindash64 theres just poisonous snakes and stuff too
What’s more mind boggling than only 3 ghost types, is in Gen 2 when they made a ghost gym, added *1* new ghost type, and it’s NOT EVEN IN THE GYM.
Johto really dropped the ball with their gyms.
Jasmine has 2 Magnemite and a Steelix (with a crap movepool to boot), when they could have slapped a Magneton there for free (I think).
Falkner having Pidgey and Pidgeotto despite having access to Noctowl was also an L
@@Gold_Gamer_100
Gen 2 is pretty much a mess. Moreso than Gen 1, in terms of design. Not on glitches and other funny things.
And. And. You can't even catch that new at the time Ghost type until the very end of the game.
@@Gold_Gamer_100doesn't jasmine literally have a quest involving an amphoros a great Gen two electric type
@@nonymouswisp8176 She is a steel type gym leader
It'll never not be funny to me that ghost and dragon types exist in gen one, but each type gets one evolution line and basically no same type attacks.
YET THEY BOTH GET ELITE 4 MEMBERS
I feel like they were literally added just to be the signature pokemon of an Elite Four member.
@@daofficerofthenoodles7504 I still don't get that, I understand why ghost and dragon are the rarest types, since encountering stuff like ghosts and dragons wouldn't realistically bw something that happens on a daily basis, but why the hell would you decide that it's a good idea for the two least common types to be the ones used by the guys that can only use one type in their team of six at a time?
What's funniest to me about the ghost type specifically is that lick, of all possible moves, is most likely the reason why the type was categorized as a physical damage type until gen4. People always like to talk about how it makes no sense that it was made a physical type instead of a special one given how much better the first ghost Pokemon in gens 1 and 2 have better special stats, but it's just made unintentionally hilarious that they got lumped into being a physical type because the one singular damaging move (that isn't fixed damage) is not only pitifully weak but also only learned by things that don't even have a halfway decent attack stat anyways
Also both types only got ONE more mon in Johto and that’s it. Tragic
Small thing, but you ALWAYS kill it with the Pokemon names in your background footage. “Gengarfluid” had me on the floor
Golem/Goley similarly killed me
I LOVED "Hello Critty", that one got me.
@@Iinneus
And Rai Kiske from previous episodes
I will be forever mad that Typhlosion isn’t in RBY and thus he can’t show off “Sol Badgerguy”
“Nine Inch Tails” and “Kids Named Finger” are also pretty up there.
I beed my ped
I get why Ghost was physical for Gen 1 because the only damaging move that wasn’t set was Lick, but I really wish they swapped its physical status with Dark’s special in Gen 2, especially given how Dark had a LOT of moves that appeared to be physical at first glance.
They wanted so bad to make Dark physical but we still went through 2 entire generations of Special Bite and Physical Shadow Ball
Ah yes I remember shooting lasers out of my teeth whenever I bit into my food back in the gen 3 days
Maybe it’s the ghosts forgetting they’re dead and trying to enter a physical form in the land of the living?
I mean being able to shoot a tongue laser does sound cool though
there’s some interesting implications of dark being special given that the dark type is based on cruelty and underhandedness rather than the metaphysical quality of darkness. like, does crunch do dark-type damage rather than normal-type damage because it’s imbued with the power of hate? is that why it’s special? idk man it’s the best explanation i can think of
Every Dark move that existed in gen 3 was made physical in gen 4.
Fun fact: The types are so imbalanced in this game, Gen 1 has more poison types than Gens 2 to 6 combined. Also, this would be the case even if the Gastly line wasn’t poison.
Kanto is just hella toxic
In context it makes sense.
Each region has a sort of theme.
Johto is traditional. Idk Hoenn. Sinnoh is mythology. Unova is American. So on so forth.
Kanto was more industrial.
@Anthony Nguyen hoenn could be intended to be modern day Japan
@@RoninofCrimsonMaple hoenn is Water (?
Hoenn is themed around balance
As a quick note on the type diversity of Gen 1, the devs found out late into production that they were going to be getting a second game on a bigger cartridge, so when it came time to cut down the original ~185 pokemon for space, they knew that they would get to put them back in later, so they were more considerate of the region itself over fair type distribution when making cuts, and since team rocket is a poison type team and the most memorable and common trainer type, they wanted them to have the most diversity. So poison types were basically given a free pass over in the dex, hence why there's so many.
Now, as for why they don't have many ghosts despite having an entire town dedicated to them?
That's a mystery we'll never solve.
Also, it will never not be funny to me that Lance is a flying type trainer and Agatha a poison type.
(Also, I think DEER may have been a ghost type too, it looks undead to me)
I imagine it’s because ghosts aren’t something you expect to come across very often. even in a fantasy world, there’s a distinct difference between magic that lets you breath Fire, and magic that violates the circle of life and death
Later games add more in where they start getting more creative with the concept, but in RBY/GSC, Types were treated very literal
Excuse me but do not mock Birdkeeper Lance, he tries very hard to be cool with his cape.
I want to make a comment contributing to the discussion, but can I just say I love the visual gags in this video? The Ghost of Chansey coaching Gengar, Lickitung not knowing what to do with the ice cream, Gastly at a job interview, even stupid shit like the repeated use of Gastly, Haunter, and Gengar's flat and unamused face is just so entertaining to me.
Gengar painting itself pink to look like Chansey and that one dumbass "goofy Gengar" face made me snicker something fierce.
I was going to say something about lick being able to paralyze normals unlike body slam, but then I realized.
No joke I went through that exact same realisation while making this
same interaction against Ghost types, where they both can't paralyze Ghosts, but with the reasons why is swapped between the typings
I love how ghost in Gen 1, in game was built up being this ultimate counter to psychic just to have 1 base 20 power move and the fact psychic is immune to ghost due to a fucking bug. Shit sucks
Fr the only weakness was bug which the only big move was to beedrill
Even if psychic was weak to ghost in gen 1, a super-effective STAB lick (20BP * 2 * 1.5 = 60) is still worse than a neutral non-STAB body slam (85BP.)
It's hilarious how the ultimate psychic counter also had poison typing, which is notably weak against psychic type attacks, meaning Gen 1 Psychics were realistically actually the ultimate counter to GHOSTS
@@emmetstanevich2121 If RBY had the current 1.5x crit damage, then that STAB, super effective Lick would still only be 5 points stronger than that body slam *on a crit*
I wonder if the programming error was because they were trying to make lick do way more damage than just a regular supper effective hit against psychic types, but accidentally made it do 0 instead. That would make more sense, the only ghost move normally doing barely any damage except against the strongest type which it obliterates
Pokémon like Gen 1 Gengar and Dragonite have me convinced that at one point “signature Types” were a thing. That or they were so certain they’d make a sequel that they allocated resources towards creating a Typing stuck with either Poison or Flying.
I’d love to see the alternate universe where this concept stretched so far that you have overly-specific combos like Fairy/Carbohydrate Daschbun and Psychic/Digit Unown.
Its an interesting theory for sure especially since these two have secondary typings with familiar and accessible weaknesses, with poison and flying
porygon could be digit. alcremie could be carbohydrate, kinda. arguably ambipom could be digit lol
As they proceed to drop the ball once again in Gen II with Ghost and Dragon type variety lol
Rock/Sodium Nacli line.
@@isenokami7810 Sodium/Chloride
The lack of Ghost and Dragon types seemed like an attempt at making the types feel special.
Gen 1 is largely designed around the idea that you have constant access to Normal Type moves, but that Special Attacks help you against common resistances. Ghost: Only type immune to Normal Type attacks. Dragons: Largely resistant to most Special Attacks.
I reckon dragon was meant to be the "final boss" type. because it resists all 3 starters and pikachu, can't be resisted, and is only weak to itself and ice.
ice types in gen 1 were almost hidden, you'd have to either figure out how to evolve shellder, take the lapras from silph co, trade a poliwhirl in cerulean city for jynx, head inside the optional seafoam islands and catch a dewgong, or successfully catch articuno.
of course its not that hard to kill lances dragonites, and you don't need an ice type for ice moves, but I like the spirit of the puzzle!.
@@flaming007 Correct. It's also really easy to just Cheese Lance's horrible AI and turn his Dragonairs and Dragonites into set up fodder. They'll just spam agility against anything weak to psychic.
@flaming007 yeah, I think that was the intent. Shame they went and ruined it when they added the much more overpowered fairy typing
Gen 1 was very much set up like any other RPG on the Gameboy rather than what we know as a Pokemon game.
I don’t have much experience in RBY, but think the funniest thing about the Ghost type in early games is Misdreavus, which no trainer has in GSC and is only available in Mt. Silver. It’s like they’d almost finished the game and then someone went “hey did you guys see this ‘Ghost’ type we got?” and everyone panicked to add something as quickly as possible.
And yet, Morty doesn’t have it damnit.
They did plan on adding a voodoo doll/Jangshi panda ghost evolution line, but it got scrapped. Since Curse’s animation still references the nail pinning down, which was prominently featured on the bear voodoo doll, I think they were cut late in development, and added in misdreavus last minute so there could be a new ghost type.
Also Dragon.
"Good job on Misdreavus guys, surely that's everything, right?"
"Good god this line of work just drags on, huh?"
"Wait, Drag...on... Oh shit"
@@rjante2236 and they didn't even have enough time to make a new pokemon so they just slapped it on kingdra
Ah Misdreavus, one of numerous gen 2 Pokemon who are just absolutely nonexistent in the game itself. Other examples include Pokemon such as the Lanturn line, Magcargo line, and even Skarm of all Pokemon, who in spite of his popularity in competitive is almost completely vacant from the games itself. Misdreavus in particular is quite humorous though given that they made a whole Ghost type gym only to have every trainer use exclusively the Gengar line
Hearing that Golbat's harassing 7U with Confuse Ray is just incredibly funny to me, considering that's pretty in line with the experience of fighting wild Zubat and Golbat
And considering 7U is basically the embodiment of a player's team in the early-mid game of a playthrough, that really could not be any more appropriate
The fact that shadow ball drops sp def & gengar's sp atk is so much higher than its phys atk always made me think someone in the design process thought that ghost moves were special b4 the split
You know what's very funny ? Crunch dropped Special defense in gen 2/3 (as it makes sense) and was switch to defense drop once it became physical.
Golbat's Confuse Ray also comes up in Ubers where, uh, you can use it to annoy the shit out of Mewtwo after doing your job of walling Body Slam-less Mew.
Caves would be proud
…I know nothing of Ubers RBY, but…would mew not be running psychic??
@@findingliospugolini8979 Mew is traditionally running a physical Swords Dance set. Add Softboiled, Earthquake, and one of either Body Slam, Explosion, or Hyper Beam, and you have your average Ubers Mew. A set running only EQ and Explosion as attacking moves is very threatening, but completely walled by flying types (such as Golbat). The same is true for the more modern Reflect sets running only EQ as an attacking move.
Mew *can* run Special coverage like Ice Beam or Blizzard in combination with Reflect, but Mew critically does not get access to Amnesia, making a pure Special set completely unviable against the common Amnesia threats in Ubers, Mewtwo and Slowbro.
@@findingliospugolini8979Because you would be using Mewtwo for that
Imagine this in an alternate timeline
Satoshi: "When designing the first Pokemon game I would think back to my childhood where i climbed ancient mountains and explored haunted houses. I guess its no surprise there are so many Ghosts and Dragons huh?"
actually, id LOVE to play that! imagine how diffrent the meta would be if ghost was a more common type?
@@fourthmatchflame I'd imagine explosion and self destruct would be a lot riskier to use because, assuming at least a couple of those extra ghosts are OU viable, there'd be a higher risk of them switching in a ghost and tanking the explosion like it's nothing.
It'd probably make snorlax and tauros a little more scared than they are now, as they can't just body slam the whole tier now (speaking from experience, I don't run into gengar too often), and earthquake, while good, wouldn't OHKO gengar if it wasn't a poison type, and I'd imagine some of those new ghosts wouldn't be poison (and if there was a flying/ghost, LMAO rip my snorlax running body slam and earthquake).
My biggest problem with the gengar line being poison type isn't even for balance reason. I love poison types even when it's a hindrance. The issue I have is thematic. Haunter and Genger don't really feel like poison types they feel like mono ghosts. If anything I think Gastly might have my favorite design of the line because that's exactly how I imagine a toxic ghost to look
The original logic was meant to be that a lot of early-designed Pokemon are based on staple RPG monsters. Voltorb is a mimic. Grimer is a slime. And Gastly was meant to literally be a cloud of toxic gas.
In any case, when you look at their index number, it seems like Gastly and Gengar were designed separately and were only later assigned to each other, with Haunter being created to fill in the missing stage. This is why, conceptually, Haunter and Gengar don't have any real Poison in them. Haunter is just meant to be a ghost (its Japanese name is even literally "Ghost"), and Gengar is based on doppelgangers, or ghosts that mimic people's appearances, with that behavior being described in its dex entries.
just wanna mention that gengar has been using psychic in OU more often. it’s main use over mega drain is being good vs other gengar, while also still hitting rhydon pretty hard since a neutral special attack still hits hard considering gengars high and rhydons slow special, currently in spl gengar has used night shade 14 times and psychic 10 times, so it’s not far behind
That's pretty sick to hear honestly and it defo makes sense. Thanks a lot for the insight, defo makes me want to try it out myself when I can
Also allows it to fish for Phsychic special drops vs a paralyzed Chansey. Say what you will about it's practicality, but there's no denying that it's kind of funny
This is officially my favorite thumbnail (and potentially video) you have ever done Yellow, keep up the amazing quality, and Happy Fool's Day!
this one and the lvl 85 chansey one are definitely top tier
Pizza pokemon
Gengario
Everyone Wanna be a Ghost-Type.
Lastly
I never saw Pokemon as a BAD broken mess, but as an ambitious mess held together with scoth tape and spit.
i like to say it's held together with glitter glue, hope, and dreams
call me scum but i actually find using mewtwo to break the game is like the best thing ever.
@@supersmashbro596
It’s only Scummy if you mean that you use Mewtwo to sweep people who DON’T have a Mewtwo, and act like it was a fair fight. Otherwise, you do you: it’s a fun Pokémon
People really overstate the case for how buggy Gen 1 actually is. Most bugs in the game are either not something your average player would encounter in a normal run or mostly subtle and not that noticeable for the average player. People know about a lot of the bugs in the game because it got played so much by so many players taking it apart.
Meanwhile as a small child I managed to break out of the map in Wario Land 1 and got into the glitchy mess area for example. Just imagine how buggy the perception of a game like that would be or frankly any game at the time if it got played as much as Gen 1 Pokemon.
There was one bug I encountered that I have never been able to replicate. I was replaying Blue but with a difference, in that I didn't catch any other Pokémon and only used Squirtle. By the time I got to Vermilion it was a Blastoise. I decided to go into the Pokémart, and after I was done talking to the clerk, I was stuck there. I could only open my menu or talk to the clerk.
It's mostly the small stuff that keeps adding up that gives the gen 1 games such a bad rep. So many things just aren't working properly/as intended it ends up being hilarious. And for exemple take that famous 1/256 chance to miss "100% accurate" moves... that's definitely a glitch that a lot of regular players will encounter, right ?
@@CarboKill besides the Badge Boost glitch? Ya know, the glitch that did something even I noticed 20 years ago, even if I didn't know what was actually happening?
When moves would suddenly become significantly better or worse after a stat alteration, it's kinda hard to miss happening after aw hile
@@InfernosReaper That's probably the main one that's going to be noticeable to some players. I still fit that under being subtle enough that I think most players would not notice it even if most players are probably going to experience it to some degree.
@@Luragon9876 The 1/256 miss isn't even necessarily unintentional. Hit rates are not actually displayed in game in Gen 1 so it's pretty hard to say if that's even a bug.
The weird thing about Ghost being Physical type is that in Gen 3, you started getting Ghost Types that were specifically tailored to be physical attackers. Banette had a good amount of physical attack, and Dusclops was a bulky physical attacker as well. And then they got screwed over the very next gen, and were stuck with… Shadow Claw and Shadow Punch.
I always found in interesting that generation 3 affectively introduced the ghost and dragon types into regular play - for not just were they nothing in gen 1, but they doubled down on this mentality in gen 2 - for the one new dragon was trade-only, and the new ghost was only available in an area where there was literally only a single trainer in the game left. It seems to me that they were intended to be "special" types due to ghost's normal immunity and dragon's many resistances (effectively only being weak to ice in gen 1) to only be found in extremely rare pokemon, until they said fuck it and made regular dragons and ghosts that could be pragmatically used.
Not only did they not add more than a single pokemon of each of these types but they really did go and add like 18 new water types one of which is also the new dragon. Really couldn't give dragon a damn thing without it also being water lmao
@@ewanphilip5604 It took until Gen 5 for them to introduce fully evolved Pokemon that were pure Dragon (Haxorus and Druddigon). Yeah, not having a pure Flying-type Pokemon at all until Gen 5 is pretty odd (and not even a dual-type with Flying as the primary type until Gen 6), but big boy Dragons not being allowed to fly solo until Unova feels really weird
I always appreciate the nicknames you’ve got in your showdown footage; I laughed out loud at “Nine Inch Tails”
I almost feel like the ghost type was "accidentally" balanced for most of its life, up until gen 8. Gen 1 was probably the roughest inherent gen for it both due to gengar being weak to psychic and ground, as well as the fact that a "real" ghost-type attack (like shadow ball) would thud against most relevant pokemon (even if psychic was weak instead of immune, the dominance of the Big Three means that there are at minimum 3 ghost-immune pokemon per team, and while it *probably* won't happen, shadow ball -> tauros switch-in -> lose speed tie -> crit eq would be a funny way to lose a match.) Gen 2 added an actual ghost-type move, but it also added dark, steel, and particularly Pursuit, which makes it much riskier to leave a ghost-type on the field for extended periods of time, mitigating the fact that it has two immunities. Gen 4 added the physical/special split, which allowed special-attacking ghost types to use their STAB, but it also made Pursuit much more dangerous now that it's a physical move. Gen 6 notably removed steel's resistance to Ghost (and dark) in what feels like a targeted, pre-emptive nerf to Aegislash, and rendered ghost-types immune to trapping (not that it would matter much for Smogon, seeing as arena trap and shadow tag were on their way out,) but it also buffed Knock Off's power and distribution. For much of the generations, the ghost type has been getting inherently better and better, but answers to the type have similarly risen to the challenge to keep them in a healthy spot.
Then gen 8 removed pursuit, which I never agreed with, especially considering that gen also buffed teleport and added HDB, making it really hard to stop the opponent from walling your attacks and getting their attackers in for free, especially regenerator 'mons like slowking. And now we're in gen 9, where the meta has been warped around a ghost-type who can block almost all forms of hazard removal just by switching in, and who can simply switch out of your answer just to switch back in the next time you try to clear hazards. If Pursuit were still in the game, I would probably be defending Gholdengo due to the mindgames needed to block hazard removal without getting trapped, but as it stands the string cheese man is simply too riskless to use.
(Also, let magnet pull affect ghost/steel types. I can understand ghost's ability to escape things like wrap and arena trap, but I think it's entirely reasonable for a powerful magnet to trap the metal parts of Aegislash and Gholdengo that they wouldn't want to simply leave behind.)
Gen 7 Gengar is like its gen 1 predecessor. It gets Cursed Body instead of Levitate
Removing pursuit was fucking nuts. If not for the level of power creep keeping ghost vaguely in check it would be a borderline unusable type in some tiers because any mon with shadow ball stab and decent stats would be insane to spam. This is absolutely proven by BDSP, a metagame with much less power creep and no pursuit where Gengar was banned for being too spammable
Plus there’s also Mons like Flutter Mane and Dragapult. The former was banned to Ubers not even a week into the games release and Dragapult is one of the strongest OU Mons around, only kept in check by its lack of decent physical Ghost STAB and it’s special attack being lower then it’s physical attack. If pursuit was brought back then you could at least keep those Mons in check, but instead they can run Wild for free
Later generations have a tendency to forget that certain types are balanced around both their moves and the offensive/defensive matchups of that type. Dragons aren’t broken in Gens 1-3 because they don’t get good STAB, but they’re not BAD either, since it’s a reasonably good defensive type, and the type was offensively meant to be incredibly safe to click, meaning it had to be low reward in BP as well. Like, I don’t think Fairy would have existed if BP 120 physical Outrage and Draco Meteor were never a thing. I LOVE those moves, but they’re really what pushed Dragon from being good to being blatantly unfair to fight
As an example of the reverse, Bug typing has been getting more and more powerful moves each generation because the type has some TERRIBLE offensive matchups, making it very easy to slow the roll of using them for raw damage
@@CastersvarogIssue with Pursuit was that it was very punishing for Psychic types too.
Also the irony with Dragapult is that it was banned in Gen 8's Nat Dex format where pursuit still exists because of Z-moves making it far too overwhelming to deal with.
I honestly love how drastically competitive gen 1 STILL changes. I feel like it really speaks to just how nuanced the game really is
It's wild how people will look at a digital dog from 20 years ago and go "yea, leer flareon is optimal now"
Epic nerding about beta Pokemon because this video gives me an excuse to write an overly long comment about them:
I remember people saying that "Barunda" is probably a very, very early concept of Jigglypuff (the balloon pokemon) since you can kinda read "Barunda" as containing the way you'd say the English word "Balloon" in Japanese. And you know, it just _is_ a balloon.
On a similar note, "Tsuinzu" is basically just how you'd say the English word "Twins" in Japanese. It kinda makes sense, since a lot of older Pokemon are just English words, like how the legendary birds are just called "Freezer," "Thunder," and "Fire."
Finally, Crocky. I have nothing interesting to say about this one but god DAMN if there was a single unused Pokemon I wish was in the game, it'd be this one.
I had to look up what you said about the birds, thats incredible lmao. Naming a legendary creature "Fire" makes me so happy
even better with barunda, "da" is a copula for japanese sentences, so barunda's name could be read as "it is a balloon."
Yellow can I just say i absolutely love it when you edit the sprites to make them show different emotions.
It might be because it's 2am and I'm delirious but Tentacruel getting swatted for sleeping made me die laughing
Calling a Pokémon game a passion project in the modern day is a wild thought
that spiderman/tentacruel scene LITERALLY killed me
_i_ am now a ghost-type
Sometimes I wonder how Gengar would have done if it was a pure Ghost type and didn't have the hinderance that was the poison type in RBY.
Man talking about my favorite type like that hurts but it do be like that
One day we will have our long-awaited bulky Poison/Ghost, fellow toxin enjoyer. One day.
I hope it’s a bacteriophage.
Gengar would be insane. You'd basically have no drawbacks, and still have a normal resist. Moves like EQ would probably be 3 hit KOs, for reference.
Currently, it's 11th, but if it was pure ghost, I could see it in B+ with mons like Rhydon and Cloyster
I think a lot about dragon quest’s influence on early pokemon ; DQ2 inspired the games trading feature, and DQ5, while not the first monster taming game (that honor would go to megami tensei digital devil story on the famicom) it was very influential in the japanese design space. That game has an early game area where you rid a tower-like manor of ghosts, said ghosts just being some of the early game candle, fire spirit and, who could forget, Dragon Quest Fat Rat. Not many enemies you could point to as an obvious “ghost” though. Gen 1 is odd for so many reasons, but the discussion of ghost types in this vid reminded me of that area.
Another sudden thought ; why was marowak not a ground/ghost type? Would make perfect sense
presumably, it's because there's only one ghost marowak and you can't catch it, so making every cubone die in evolution would be a _bit_ out of place
#DigitalDevilSweep
That would be dope
Dq5 baby woohoo
@@hi-i-am-atan The cubone doesn't necessarily have to die to be ghost type. It could just be haunted by its mom or something.
The 'Lario' base image has to be the greatest thing ever drawn by a human. It needs to be framed and put in a museum.
One thing that's always fascinated me about RBY that I don't think is in any other Gen (that I've heard of, which tbf I don't know too much about other gens competitively), is how extremely different the metagames between OU and UU is, so much so that often when pokemon fall out of OU, they immediately go past UU because the metagame there just shreds them, Golem being a prime example. I'd love to see a video about the how and why OU and UU are so extremely different in Gen 1
I suspect part of the reason there's only one ghost type is that the ghastly line was originally supposed to be the ghosts of Pokémon, rather then just a pokemon species of their own that happened to be ghostly. This is how the lore in the game treats them, as well as the Kanto Anime. Later this changed but it does make more sense to only have one ghost pokemon line if the idea behind it is that it is just what pokemon are like when they come back as ghosts.
Shotouts to the Stadium Rentals format (where you can only use the rental pokemon from Stadium), having both Haunter and Gengar viable at the same time, thus having the biggest amount of viable mons in RBY tiers, with 2.
Also Dragon Rage is viable there due to both being a level 50 format and due to Aerodactly being forced to run it. It's also a really good move there too. Funny as shit.
That format just sounds like hilarity in general.
pleasetell me there's a write-up thread of rentals format, be it for one game or any of the games that have it (I assume more than just Stadium 1 and 2 do at least)
like tbh it sounds like it'd be solved as fuck since there's no variance besides move/crit RNG but still sounds fun
Actually played Pokemon Staduim recently, and omg the movesets are... well let's just say that I wouldnt call the sets meta defining. I mean, Alakazam is literally running dig.
@@smtmonke to some degree i guess they kinda had to intentionally screw up some movesets since they're trying really hard to make the pre-evos worth picking over the fully evolved sometimes... i'd have to look with current eyes to see if any are worth the trouble though.
@@edfreak9001 there are probably some analysis writeups by the speedrunning community, mainly werster
I'm a huge fan of Gengar being a speedy, trolly, high risk high reward mon with the lingering threat of certain moves
Fits them perfectly
Something about the “His ass is NOT optimal” image makes me keep returning to this video it’s frying my humor centers
I never thought much about it until recently, but I suspect there’s something of a thematic element w.r.t. Lavender Town’s presence, death, regret, research, and aging in the game - you’re first introduced to Professor Oak who never accomplished his dreams of research in old age, then later to Mr. Fuji in the unsettling Lavender Town who is revealed/implied towards the end to have been the Dr. Fuji who (with Blaine?) founded the original Pokemon Lab that made Mewtwo and destroyed Cinnabar
Fuji retired to a quiet life dedicated to helping pokemon and calming their spirits, Blaine couldn’t quite cope with the trauma and took out his feelings by being the strange scientist constantly using fire attacks in the Cinnabar Gym, and Oak (if he was involved) stayed very close by in Pallet Town (where he only has 3 Pokémon left, interesting) and can’t accomplish his dream anymore
Assuming this is all intended and not just a wild interpretation, I read it as a cautionary tale against dehumanizing Pokemon (or animals/friends in general) by treating them as a means to an end, in this case a scientific one, which is pretty much the message that Oak repeats to you after you become the champion - interestingly, Oak may have been a cut postgame boss before gaining access to Mewtwo as well
So yeah I guess it’s there to hammer in that you should respect your Pokémon and not follow in the footsteps of those guys too closely lol
I understand there being one ghost line. Everything that dies and becomes a ghost winds up as a ghastly. From a game design perspective, it's weird, but there's nothing inherently wrong from a world building perspective for there to be one kind of ghost and everything else about a haunting being decided by strength and personality
Yeah Kinda Weird Ghosts in Gen 1 were suposed to be actual Ghosts
@@kirbyfazendoummoonwalk9214 I mean, most ghost types are. Famously, yamask remembers its previous life and cries about it
...then there were suddenly 85 more afterlives, not counting being turned into one of 0.7 billion pokémon
this is canonically untrue since there is the ghost Marowak in the game
@@piscenicprodigy8816 They can all be born from Eggs, even Yamask so they clearly arent actual Ghosts
Honestly that just seems like a Rumor that was put into the Pokedex, Like Drifloom kidnapping Children wich is a thing we see beign debunked on Legends Arceus
When he says "What's Haunter getting up to now" I thought of Haunter as some old family friend coming out onto the porch knitting after becoming a widow the last year and ya checking up on them 🤣 glad I have aphantasia
"gengar is a pokemon you have to take a lot of risks with, but the payoff can be massive"
...gengrappler...
it took me so long to realise that Gengar Neutral was meant to be a riff on gender neutral. i pictured it as just two Gengars in a fighting game, playing in neutral.
Genuinely absurd that your vids have come so far in blending information and humor, both visually and narratively. I can’t believe that the April Fool’s vid of all things has become my favorite on the channel. Excellent work, can’t wait to see where you take it by next year too :)
Your edit jokes are so good! The gengar with egg and suspicious chansey had me rolling.
The best description I ever heard of Gen 1 is this.
“Gen 1 is a game held together with ducktape and dreams that turned into a success. It’s what modern sonic games wish they could be.”
Happy to see Scarlet and Violet pay homage to this philosophy
Especially when ScarVio happens to delete your save file randomly.
@@Glory2Snowstar The Kanto pandering has gotten out of hand smh my head
That thumbnail perked me the hell up, I love Lario edits.
It's so bizarre how the Gastly line is a special attacker despite both of its types being physical before the physical / special split.
Even more astounding is how they continued doing this in later generations. Poor Sneasel.
And how they were still pretty good in spite of that.
_heh, Spite_
@@Julford Entei got absolutely fucked until an event near the end of gen 4 gave it Flare Blitz lmao, and Flareon had the same problem until GENERATION SIX
Meanwhile, sad Hoenn Dark type and Kingler noises.
Then you have Sceptile and Houndoom having their best moves become Physical
There is a 4th Ghost in RBY. It has has sprite and can _sort of_ be encountered as a battle.
Yes, it's "Ghost" in Lavender Tower. I always thought it looked really cool. Too bad they never made a playable version of it.
I mean, there is another game in which it is usable.
With that being said, it doesn't end well.
@@glacierwolf2155 Isn't missing no bird type?
>only 1 line of ghost pokemon
>make them special attackers
>make ghost a physical type
Wtf were they thinking?
“one of the decisions of all time” and “his ass is NOT optimal!” are just examples of the small things that make me love ur sense of humor and editing
I am not the greatest fan of RBY (The GameBoy games).
But RBY (The Smogon competitive scene) however... it might be one of the most fun competitive games I have tried in a long time.
Thinking about how ghost had only 1 weakness in Gen 1(itself) and how the only ghost move was lick which is terrible. It makes me think that GF might've been trying to design ghost as more of a defensive type with a lot of immunities, few weaknesses, but very few ways of dealing damage. After all it makes sense since ghosts can phase through stuff in most popular media and it makes sense to make them more defensive to reflect that. It makes me want to see what would happen if a bulky ghost like cofagrigus was added into Gen 1.
Cracking up at your haunter's name "Mike Haunt" 😂
One thing that I noticed is that a number of pokemon in gen 1 have poison type instead of dark type.
Golbat, VIleplume and Gengar lines come to mind: Vileplume might be debatable, but both Golbat and Gengar feel like they were 100% meant to be dark types instead of poison.
They probably wanted to include dark type, but havent cause it wasnt finished.
for what it's worth, i've heard that Barunda was probably Flying type, which is why Bird type exists in the game at all, being initially to distinguish between things that fly because they are birds and things that fly by other means
1:34 I don't know if it's accurate but it sort of makes sense to me why Onix exists in the state it does in RBY if I assume it was designed specifically just to be the first boss and not an actual Pokémon that the player would include in their team, they were probably thinking that players would prioritize Golem or Rhydon and Onix would be just be caught for collection purposes. Back then Pokémon was still really close to JRPG tropes when it came to how it handled its creatures and it was painfully evident that a lot of mons weren't designed for use by the players, but rather to be mid/earlygame chump for enemies to use like Muk or Weezing (which is probably why they don't have a better STAB attack than Sludge) or "early game crutch that falls off later" like the Caterpie and Weedle lines, I believe Onix is yet another such case.
Can you talk about the dark type in gen 1 next?
Absolutely, just listen to this video with the volume off and you'll get the idea
@@BigYellowSilly now do the steel ty- wait a sec....
Fairy type when?
@@shadowtitanx3962 gen 6
Why not Fairy type too?
Only just realised that every elite 4 member in gen 1 falls victim to there not being enough pokemon of their type to make a full team in gen 1
I feel so bad for Tentacruel
Lapras dropping to UU shook the tier up so bad that Tentruel is debated to not even be top 5 anymore
Ah, but Lapras and Hypno are now borderline. So Tenta's doing great rn
People always say “Charizard should’ve been a dragon type!” but no one ever says “Literally any Pokémon that isn’t in the Dragonite line should’ve been dragon type!”
These people don't realize that if you were to make Charizard a Dragon type back then it would've defeated the purpose of Dragon type in RBY: wall your starter.
If you think about it everything Dragon resists is a starter type in RBY and the only fully evolved Dragon in the game is also the ace Pokémon of the final boss, Lance is meant to be a thorn in the side of players that overcommitted on their starter and needs to be beaten either by running coverage or by investing more in your other team members.
the way lick is the genetic ancestor to nuzzle
to my understanding, one of the big reasons rby is so buggy is they had to get VERY creative with the code to make the game actually fit in 1mb. Also iirc it took until gen 7 for the total number of poison types not added in gen 1 to exceed the number of poison types added in gen 1 alone. Also also not only were there more dragons planned that were scrapped, scyther was originally a dragon with bug elements that got reworked into a bug with very very loose dragon elements that didn't really make it into the official art.
Then Satoru Iwata was basically like, "bro let me optimise your code for the next game" and he did it so well that not only is GSC pretty much bug-free but there was enough space left over for GameFreak to fit in the entire Kanto region. Iwata is just built different.
I'm in a rough spot right now with anxiety and major tooth pain (cant see anyone til monday, of course this happens on a Friday afternoon) , this video came at the perfect time to help calm me down, thanks BY
Putting a silly cat face on top of Gengar's artwork was really funny to me because I have a cat named Gengar!
Big Yellow is my go-to listen to while doing chores. I love his commentary style and just the overall topics that he covers
Something I find funny about the Ghost type is that there are very good teams out there that consist entirely of Ghost and Psychic types.
To clarify, Ghost is such a bad offensive type that you can make a META team entirely of mons immune to it by accident
putting the visibility in trans day of visibility cause ur a sight to behold damn
20 BP Electric move that is guaranteed to paralyze? Get that trash out of here!
20 BP Ghost move that MIGHT paralyze? NOW THAT'S THE REAL GOOD SHIT
An underrated aspect of these videos is the fucking clever nicknames. Laptoptier, Nine Inch Tails, they're all so much fun to spot.
@@maude7420 a classic, a classic 👌
Dude your videos are awesome. I listen to these to go to sleep. Not in a bad way, they just induce deep pokemon mechanic thought that put ne into a type of trance. Your speaking cadence is top notch too.
Using Gastly in RBY ZU felt like playing with cheats on when you landed Hypnosis. It was so good.
You learn something new every day
Hitting counter with Gengar may be difficult and inconsistent, but boy do you feel like a badass
3:15 he looks absolutely demented thank you very much for making me aware of Crocky
It was formatted kind of weirdly at 3:07
I thought Baloonda was referring to those eyes. I would do anything for ballon-eyes grey dragon.
I'll never get over the fact that they added a second Ghost lineage in Gen 2 and Morty still only used the Ghastly line
That was insane to me Gen 2 has it's fair share of completely bizarre decisions
most major Johto fights in general use Kanto Pokemon way too much, so Morty is far from the only case. TBH it always gave me a weird feeling like Johto isn't really a fully fledged region but more like a Gen 1 expansion pack.
I never really got why Ninetales wasn't a Fire/Ghost type. Or why Jynx wasn't a Ghost/Ice Type. There's so many Pokemon that would've made clear ringers for certain types (Hell, Electabuzz should've been Electric/Fighting, and Magmar should've been Fire/Fighting). But among the large group, so many just seemed to have gotten ignored or overlooked, because we just needed another water type.
In addition to that, movepool adjustments would've really helped. I think some Normal Type attacks could've stood to be different types. Imagine if Vicegrip was a Bug type attack. Suddenly, Pinsir has a STAB attack, and Kingler has a unique edge over other Water types (it can potentially kill Psychics or scare them out). Hyper Beam also probably should've been a Dragon Type attack alongside Slam, since they are both primarily used by the Dratini line, and while I know other Pokemon can learn them, Gen I kinda wasn't hurting for it, and Hyper Beam is meant to be the "Ultimate attack" so why not have it be Dragon Type?
I absolutely love the thumbnail
Thankfully gen 2 came and fixed the lack of ghost types and all was well
Nice to hear that RBY NU, the most luck-based RBY tier, is mostly unaffected by confuse ray.
If you grew up playing on a Gameboy color, you know pokemon was miles ahead of any other Gameboy game of that time. Most other games you couldn't even have a save file.
On the point of distribution among types, i feel like the idea behind it at the time is that ghosts and dragons are rare and special. Thats why theres a ghost and a dragon trainer but they turned out to be the spooky related stuff and the vague serpent related stuff trainer
Gen 1 CAN be glitchy and buggy. As a kid just playing it straight? I noticed almost none of the oddities. It was incredible to me. It felt huge. And mysterious.
I saw this got posted when I was at work and I’m so happy I can come home and watch it.
Nice to hear rby getting some love. They may be broken and dated by today's standards but having a full rpg with 151 collectible characters on a handheld was revolutionary for the time. And they paved the way for what the series would become.
I like the little edits done to the sprites, those are a nice touch
If RBY were made today the Cubone line would absolutely be Ground/Ghost.
3:32
You found Drifblim's kid.
Ive been having the worst day tonight.
It's freezing cold. I had a miserable drive home cuz of the near lethal blizzard, amongst so many other things.
But coming home and seeing Big Yellow upload a video. A really fun video about really fun things. That made my night.
Thank You Big Yellow. Thanks for being such a cool person. Thanks for these wonderful videos.
Thank you for giving me something very enjoyable to smile at :) ❤️ I hope you have a wonderful day.
As a kid I thought Ghosts and Dragons were rare in the game because they're typically pretty rare in fiction, ghosts being invisible and dragons living on top of mountains or whatever.
I think the real reason is balancing. Dragon was designed to be an extremely powerful type, which is balanced by only being on a Pseudo-legendary. Same with Ghost to a lesser extent since having a normal immunity is so cracked, they limited it to one evo line.
While that explains why they opted to give Charizard a Flying type rather than Dragon, Gyarados still makes no sense. Its entire theme is that it's extremely powerful after evolving from Magikarp, and its design is based on Chinese dragons. Why the fk is it a flying type?
brrrooooo...the editing snippets were funny as hell...good job
gengar in the first 3 gens was the coolest bitch ever because you’d think its lack of special stab would
hurt it, but nah. it was using weird bulky utility sets and 75 bp non-stab moves and it’s still top 5-10 every gen
All that with the poison type holding it down too Gengar's a real one
Gengar is good because he is cute and you wouldn't want to hurt such a cutie winning the battle might make you win but being hated is not a win
Really sad Lickitung, Shellder, or Greninja don’t learn lick. Even if they wouldn’t run it, it would be a nice lore addition.
UR RLLY PRETTY IN THIS VIDEO BIG YELLOW
For anyone wondering, gengar is currently doing very well in gen 9 being a UU superstar, essentially being to UU what dragapult is to OU just without the ability to run physical attacking sets.
It runs a large variety of sets from specs, scarf, substitute and nasty plot allowing it to shred through just about everything except for a tera poison gastrodon without setup.
gengar dropped to RU :(