I think it's worth pointing out that some of the difficulty in Pokemon games, especially in the older ones, leans more towards endurance than having outright punishing battles. If you're deep in a dungeon with a large layout and few ways to get out safely, every battle is gonna be tougher because you're going to have to rely on managing resources and being efficient with your Pokemons PP and HP to get further, having to go large sections without a Pokemon center is how some of these games go about creating difficult encounters
Agreed. Nowadays, the dungeons feel shorter and simpler or they have random nurse/Chansey/etc hanging out that'll heal you without having to leave the dungeon/route.
yes! even lots of pokémon trainers in the og games only had a pokémon or two in their arsenal. the difficulty doesn’t come from each individual trainer but the endurance of clearing an area without healing after every little drop in hp. pokémon has always played with optional difficulty, giving you plenty of money to stock up on healing items to your liking. i’ve been playing emerald recently and i’ve been pleasantly surprised with how the game rewards you for exploration and accomplishing endurance feats if you choose not to have unlimited access to potions, full heals, etc. finding a hyper potion on a random route is so much more rewarding when you push through the route to earn that item.
This is like she said one of those older RPG aspects. Go play any of the other RPGs during that time, Dungeon Crawling as a thing, where it was common to need to retreat heal and refill supplies and go back. While someone who knows the type of game these are will probably get it in one go, these dungeons were hard as a kid and I got stuck in the Game Corner and Ice Path in GSC, and only got lucky with Silph Co as I stumbled across the card key. While these dungeons were not as difficult as their older counterparts, GameFreak really managed to make kids first RPG without compromising the mechanics of what made one. Unlike other games, looking at you Mystic Quest.
@@glenarnold5058 If your goal there is to save PP, I'm not sure that actually checks out. With the lower power moves, you're going to have to use more of them to accomplish the same feats and that's going to drain PP quickly anyway.
was really fun editing this because I've been wanting to say a lotta these things for a while now, still shocked at how much I was nodding my head on the first read-through of the script lol
A fresh perspective on a game that has been talked about to death is refreshing to see. Despite it’s flaws, the OG Pokemon games are groundbreaking in so many ways, and it’s easy to see why game freak never hesitates to constantly reintroduce it to a new generation.
One thing I never considered and you blew my mind on is the fact that these games slowly transform from natural looking pokemon and nature surrounding you, to overblown cities, indoors and manmade looking pokemon. That is such a layer to these games that I was painfully oblivious to until now, despite knowing them so well. Thank you!
As a 35 year old man, I will never forget Gen I. I loved Gen I and Gen II especially. I got to see what I caught and trained in 3D with Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Stadium 2, which pushed Gen I and II to it's absolute limits. Those are my fondest memories of my childhood.
As a kid I couldn't do the Victory Road or Seafoam Island puzzles but the Power Plant didn't have puzzles so I used Zapdos to help me beat the Elite Four. Over 20 years later Zapdos is still my favorite Pokemon.
One thing I miss about the originals is how the legendaries weren't used for marketing. Many people adore how Mewtwo and Mew were handled, with you having to read through papers in an abandoned facility to even get a little bit of background on them, and how cool the legendary birds were. But when they started putting legendaries on the boxes, I feel that they lost that surprise factor. In Red/Blue, you had no idea what any legendary looked like (if you didn't do things like watch the anime), or that they even existed, whilst the box arts since Gen 2 spoiled those surprises. Instead of finding out a secret, you're indirectly told about one of the coolest Pokémon you'll see on your travels. And, in Gen 3 and beyond, since you're forced to encounter the box legendary, if you're aware of how Pokémon stories go, you know exactly who you'll be catching. The series now has to rely on alternate forms for surprises, such as what they did with Necrozma.
I’d say it’s fair enough for games to show the “main” legendary on the box, and to be fair, this is important for marketing reasons considering the scale of the franchise. I do however strongly agree with the whole discovery aspect. Some of my fondest memories of the older games were discovering legendaries and other nooks and crannies that were scattered throughout the games. I feel like whilst the main legendary should be advertised for obvious reasons, the company should leave the rest of the legendaries up to us to discover. This also goes for locations as well. Some of the coolest places in older games weren’t obvious, however now, they are usually known about months before the games release.
I feel like that's selective nostalgia blindness. I remember the legendaries' images being everywhere back in the day too, they just weren't on the actual boxes for gen 1 is all. Mewtwo especially was all over toy/guidebook/etc packaging as decoration (and it existed in several toy forms), and I mean... it's kinda prominently featured in the first movie. All that to say, legendaries have always 100% been heavily marketed.
@@svenbtb To be fair, Pokémon didn't release with the movie, show, toys etc. It only got all of that later when the games were already popular. Those who played the games before the initial boom likely wouldn't have known about the legends until after they saw them in the game.
I always get a little annoyed when people bring up Gen 1 as these excessively buggy games. I played Red constantly back when it came out and I never encountered any crazy glitches in a normal playthrough. Like you said, you really have to go out of your way to experience the infamous Gen 1 bugs. And nothing in Gen 1 really compares to the "Lumiose City save glitch." That involved something as simple and important as saving your game... Compared to other really buggy games I've played, like Daggerfall and The Sims 2 (which never really gets brought up when discussing buggy games), Pokemon RBY are honestly not bad at all.
Well psychic being immune to ghost was a bug which helped make the psychic type OP (and ghost types worse) and was also confusing as multiple NPCs say that ghost should be supereffective. The 1/256 move miss glitch we all must have encountered a number of times. I used to get save file corruptions all the time, as well as the game simply freezing often.
Going between older and gens and newer gens every so often, I get the feeling really often that there are things about Gen I and II that are lacking in the modern games. At the same time, that fondness for the older games makes me go back to them often enough, just to realize how far a lot of concepts have come in over 20 years. I think Pokémon does something kind of unique for JRPGs, and no game is really invalidated by any of the ones that've come after or came before, and I'm not sure that there's a "definitive" Pokémon experience within a single one. RBY just gives you very similar tools to the rest, with a different set of priorities from modern games, which helps it stay distinct and worth playing.
I honestly didn’t see the stuff representing being from a child’s perspective, and hearing it now it feels really interesting. I enjoy how in depth this discussion is considering how it feels like most people like to just generalize these games due to how they’re the oldest games. Personally and this might be a big hot take but I feel the Glitches make Kanto so much more enjoyable considering how with the knowledge of all the glitches and stuff the game goes from a fun rpg into a really wacky game where many impossible things are possible. If I ever play Kanto I always choose the VC because of this and it’s mainly why I feel FRLG are the worst remakes of the entire series since the games that predated them were good BECAUSE of its faults
Does that mean that you feel that the Let's Go games are better remakes than FireRed and LeafGreen? I'm curious about your reasoning for feeling that way if so.
@@Deoxys911 I feel Let’s Go are more experiments then remakes considering how it’s designed less as a major love letter to Kanto, but to bring ideas from Go into the main series. As a result I feel it’s charm allows it to be an enjoyable game that’s hard to compare with other remakes. Usually I avoid LG when discussing remakes but I’d argue while it does a lot of what FRLG does to make Kanto less special to me it still has some wonder with its ideas to feel more fulfilling to play
@@LightHikaru in some situations I’d argue bugs and glitches improve a game. Basically if the glitches are enjoyable and aren’t taking away from the players experience then yes glitches can make a game good, if glitches don’t do that though then they don’t make a game good at all
I totally agree that Gen 1 is really good and sort of underrated. Kanto is a super nice region that allows for a ton of exploration. Plus they had 150 Pokemon right out of the gate, which is kind of crazy and was unheard of at the time, an RPG with 150 possible party members.
i still remember as an 8 year old when it was announced johto would add 100 more and i went all philosophical in my head - for the probably first time - "how am i gonna handle another 100 pokemon? will i be able to remember the specific differences between all those pokemon? how many more pokemon can a human brain even handle?" i was naive.
Man, when Lance pulled out that 3rd dragonite in Silver... My 7 year old self just stared in awe at how powerful this champion really was, listening to his iconic theme. It was amazingly difficult, and that difficulty made it all the more worth beating it.
Replaying this or FRLG makes me appreciate how gameplay-focused they are. It's really refreshing to go from town to dungeon to gym over and over with no interruptions. There's also way more trainers, which is great because I love exploring every inch and fighting every trainer.
@@ChangedMyNameFinally69they are the best way to experience Kanto because: 1) Natures 2) Abilities 3) improved type balance (Steel moves & Dark moves) Even then, this system had its flaws. Then Gen 4 came in with the Physical/special split and standardized battling for the foreseeable future. As much as I love R/B/Y and muh nostalgia, I can realize that this game has its flaws and needed FR/LG to keep it relevant, balanced and updated
@@BruhMoment-mn9kn The games are perfectly fine as one and done adventures. People wanted shorter games with more content nowadays. Who gives a shit about the physical/special split? Yeah there never should've been types assigned to one or another but it was never that important in single player.
Looking back at it, getting stuck at a part was a learning experience. I will always remember the times I had to overcome part of the game because my older cousin wasn't around. It helped teach me to stop, think, and look around to see if there were any solutions to my problem nearby and this has come in handy for countless games and real life scenarios. Also, I learned how to read playing Pokemon Blue and my mom got a phone call from the school when I used "flamethrower" as the longest word I knew. My mom didn't bat an eye when I asked her how to say it from the backseat of the car and proceeded to spell it out.
I got Yellow version when I was 6 as my first video game ever. It took me weeks to beat Brock because I didn't understand that when it told me Pikachu's Thundershock didn't affect Geodude, it would *always* not affect Geodude. I ended up beating him with a level 30 pigeotto or something. Good times.
@@dinolover I believe you mean Rock Tunnel. :) I got stuck at the same part as a kid because I didn't know that Flash existed! It took me at least a month to get through haha.
@Naeanz I can totally relate to the reading. I played Paper Mario: TTYD so much back in the day, and it had a crazy amount of dialogue. Role playing video games were the perfect game genre for kids; they were essentially novels in a playable form.
Speaking as someone who grew up on DS Pokémon and has no nostalgic connection to gen 1 at all, playing through yellow earlier this year was so much fun and I think all Pokémon fans in my position should try. It doesn't really take that long to adapt to the lack of QoL features and what's left is one of the most focused and satisfying Pokémon games Game Freak ever made. The dialogue, map design, Pokémon choice and encounter locations all feel so much more deliberate and cohesive compared to most modern Pokémon games. Fire Red and Leaf Green are more player friendly but idk I feel the Kanto in them lacks a lot of the heart and care that the originals clearly had. I still think there's a lot of value in gen 1 so long as you view them from a different perspective to later games that adapted and perfected their formula.
They still genuinely hold up after all these years. Yellow is one of my favourites in general. Battles feel faster than some of the later games, especially 2 and 4, and the core gameplay is still accessible to a wide audience. I can't say the same for the early Pokemon anime seasons though, especially Johto.
Looking back at Gen 1 before Pokemon became the powerhouse it is today, I always felt the story was basically an 80s movie like Stand By Me, ET, or the Goonies turned into a simple RPG. It a charming story about a kid exploring the world and going on adventures that, due to the meddling of adults, become grand yet dangerous.
One of the best thing about the Gen 1 games is because of how we can take on most gyms in any order, these games are one of the best when it comes to team building variety. You can use Pokemon that are in what are supposed to be late game areas by visiting those areas early.
Finally, a review that *explains* why the psychic and dragon types are powerful instead of claiming they detract from the game. Though I never thought about it from the RPG perspective until now. Thanks for this much needed essay!
Tbh it’s unavoidable that Psychic Pokemon being overpowered was an oversight. Bug Pokemon are easy to find and available in the early stage of the game and ghost Pokemon are everywhere in Pokemon Tower, which you have to clear to progress to the game anyways. Buuuut bug Pokemon had no good bug moves to use. And a programming error made Ghost type attacks ineffective toward Psychic Pokemon. On the other hand, I think fans over exaggerate how OP psychic Pokemon are. The game balances them out by making most of them physically frail. Use Slash with your Charizard or Persian and Sabrina and Gary’s Alakazam go down before they can ever attack. And Mewtwo is intentionally meant to be uber powerful. He’s the “true final boss” and since most kids who were unaware of his existence probably wasted their master ball on a legendary bird or a random wild Pokemon (fun fact: My first Pokemon game was Gold when I was 8 and I wasted master ball on a level 30 Poliwhirl) if a player wanted to catch Mewtwo they would need a lot of ultra balls, probably a good status changing move, and patience. But also yes Dragon Pokemon were clearly always intended to be op in gen 1 and the game practically rewards you for taking the time to go to Seafoam island and going through the dungeon to find and catch Articuno who will let you sweep through most of Lance’s team.
I still don't agree with the video's points on Psychic and (to a lesser extent) Dragon even from the perspective of a singleplayer RPG campaign. Firstly, With Dragon, you could argue it's meant to be a rare boss type. That's why Dragonite is kept a secret. Why Dratini is so rare. Why Lance is the last member of the Elite 4 etc. But Psychic is meant to be more common. Pokemon like Abra, Hypno and Mr. Mime aren't uncommon. The player has come across Psychic before. If Psychic is supposed to be intentionally stronger like Dragon, then why aren't the Pokemon associated with it as rare? Why is there an entire gym dedicated to them? If Mewtwo were Dragon Type or was the only Psychic type or is Psychic was way more rare, then you could argue it makes more sense. But Psychic isn't like that. The game treats it like any other type rather than something more powerful than usual. Plus, not to mention that even its checks don't work properly. Ghost was supposed to be Strong against Psychic but due to an error, Psychic is immune to it and the only good Ghost type, Haunter/Gengar is part poison and thus weak to Psychic. Bug is garbage. At least Dragon has Ice be super effective against it but Psychic doesn't. So even from the perspective of it being a harder challenge for Singleplayer for children, it doesn't work and is unfair because even the intended answers don't work properly. You could counter that by saying the most powerful Pokemon in RBY Competive aren't even Dragon and Psychic types. Normal is the best type thanks to Tauros, Snorlax and Blissy being unstoppable due to their movepool, exploring crits and that Fighting and rock type Pokemon are terrible. Or that Starmie or Blastoise using Ice Beam deals well with Dragonite. But those are from Adults that have played the game enough to see that the official answers were wrong. The average child playing RBY isn't going to have the knowledge to know their basic tools don't even work properly. Secondly, In most other RPGs, even those that let you recruit bosses as party members, those bosses tend to operate differently from when they're a boss to when they're a party member. This is a common meme that that when you recruit a boss in a JRPG they are much less powerful. That's fine in those games because it's clear that bosses operate on a different logic to the player. But RBY sets up that everyone plays by the same (at least it tries) rules. Your first rival fight against Blue has Oak teaching both you and Blue how to do battles. Basically telling you that you and Blue are playing the same game. Anything your rival can do, you can do as well. Conversely, anything you can do, he can as well. That was a selling point of Pokemon. To quote the post "Five things Pokemon's battle system does right" from r/truepokemon "5. What you see is what you get Games that could learn from this: Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VIII Oh yes, this is the big one. You know how in almost every other RPG ever, when you recruit a enemy character to your team, their stats mysteriously take a nosedive? Or they lose whatever amazing ability made them a threat in the first place, all in the name of “player balance”? Not here, kiddo. You too can be Dragontrainer McBadass if you're willing to raise a Dratini all the way to lv 55, so you can sweep people just likehow you got smacked around by Lance in the Elite Four. Or you can be whoever else you want, because every single Pokemon the NPCs use are exactly the same as the ones you can obtain and use in game. There's an incredible feeling of accomplishment you get finally managing to catch or raise a Pokemon that gave you an enormous amount of grief or did something cool and unusual when you battled it earlier in a playthrough. Its what keeps me interested in finishing the Pokedex and continuing to raise my Pokemon after beating the game." So a standard boss JRPG doesn't really work in Pokemon since you should be able to fight the boss and fight exactly like the boss. So this philosophy that Dragon or Psychic are meant to be JRPG bosses conflicts with a core design of Pokemon.
You could argue there's a GIANT difference between the justification behind doing something and whether or not it's a good one. I think it's perfectly acceptable for there technically being a story reason for Psychics and Dragons to be stronger than the rest while slso acknowledging this is blatantly unhealthy design even within the game itself, while also spawning several sequelae some of which still plagues the series.
Although one of the reasons why psychics were so powerful in gen 1 is they messed up their ghost type advantages. That was literally just a mistake. . There doesn't need to be a reason why dragons are so powerful in gen 1, because dragons are not all that powerful in gen 1 anyway. Lance is strong, but that's because of hyper beam, not dragon types (which again, you could argue was strong due to a mistake).
honestly yes, lots of people take issue with this or that aspect, how not everything was perfectly polished yet or how it was improved upon in the sequels, but at the same time red & blue have aged very gracefully and most triple a game franchise's first outputs have nothing on pokemon. personally - and it might be nostalgia - , i also still replay the games quite frequently.
Your point on how noticable the bugs/glitches actually were was a great one - the context we look at R/B/Y now, with enormous amounts of information on the internet about every bug and how to replicate it, is an entirely different environment to the primarily offline world when they released. Missingno was the only one I came across as a child because of being told about it. Even very common ones, like Bide and Focus Energy not behaving as intended, weren't really things I picked up on at the time. People scrolling through enormous lists of glitches and declaring the game a mess is imo a bad representation of how anyone is likely to experience the game
To compound on the idea "The games haven't gotten easier, you just grew up," I believe I can offer a good perspective on this. I was born in 2004, I had a DS, I had Diamond, got Platinum when it was released, and played through Black 2 upon release. When X and Y came out, I was 9, 10 when I got the game. Meaning I was the prime age range for Pokémon, and even then X and Y were some of the easiest games I had ever played. I never blacked out, once. Same with ORAS. And Sun and Moon. I still enjoyed these games, but they were not difficult. At all. And that absolutely takes away from the experience. There weren't any obstables in my way in X, Y, ORAS, Sun and Moon, etc. I will never feel anything like **finally** beating Cynthia, or finding that one item in the Underground, or stumbling across that item I needed to move the Psyduck. The games are so tailor-made to make them as such an easy and comfortable ride that, atleast in my opinion, a ton is lost. I hold a lot of sentimental value towards Gen 6 as well, but barely any of that is with the singleplayer itself. Most of it is the online. I wish it'd change, go back to the older design philosiphy, but I guess thats just how it is now.
The worst part (to me at least) is that they seemingly began to be TERRIFIED of players getting lost. The flags that point to where the next destination is, the massive amount of cutscenes (that aren't skippable), making legendaries mandatory to catch, the lack of side areas etc. The idea of replaying games like Sun or Moon is absolutely draining to me. I'd have to sit through a rather long tutorial sequence, and essentially walk down a path I've walked down 3 times already (I played Sun/Moon twice, and Ultra once) with little variation. I love the characters, music, aesthetics, new Pokémon and more of Gen 7, but to experience those things I'd have to explore what is essentially a straight path, and that drains the life out of me.
I think Nintendo literally told people that they had to make the games easier to play, else kids will just move on to something else. Lot more options now
I was three years old when I first played Super Mario 64. Discovering everything at your own pace to 100% the game and fly around outside of Peach's castle for doing so is a feeling I barely get in most other games.
This makes the recent DP remakes really jarring. The modern games practically drag you through the main game so much with so few side areas that when you get an example of the opposite, well...
@@J.R.Unbound they are so terrified of players getting "lost" that in swsh every route in the entire game is essentially a hallway that has one way in and one way out with no room for exploration
I think your point about competent children vs. incompetent adults is a really worthwhile one. In a lot of children's media, you tend to see children as the voice of reason, and adults as the nonsensical, inexperienced ones. The best example I can think of Goosebumbs; throughout all those stories, children are the ones who totally get what is going on, while adults are dismissive and/or clueless. It's something that really resonates with children (and is important in media aimed towards their demographic) because it allows them to be able to say 'look, us kids actually can be the right ones sometimes, not just adults.'
Pokemon Gen 1 was coded and optimised for the Gameboy. Yes, there are a few bugs and glitches, but can anyone name a game which cannot be glitched? Compare these to the modern masterpiece that is the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy: "Definitive" Edition, intended to run on such powerhouses as the PS5 and the XBox Series X. One was playtested and is fun to play, if a little rough and with room for improvement. The other was a rushed mess with no evident playtesting and is full of terrible oversights.
I think a large reason why there are so many documented glitches is people (myself included) find it fun to break the Gen I games, and feel the bugs add to the charm rather than just being a symptom of the game being a cheap cash grab. Missingno helped to whet their appetites, and then they fall down the rabbit hole, where things get progressively more chaotic as the game struggles to make sense of what is going on. These games are pretty easy to break if you know where to look. The glitches are also very reproducible, leading into the ability to share new glitches and easily experiment, very similar to finding new Pokemon in the actual game.
Man, after growing up with the first two generations for almost two decades, and then finally getting a new game with Shield, I really couldn't help but wonder why they decided to go all out with holding the player's hand, and to be honest I still do.
One of the things I really like about Gens 1 and 2 is the stat experience that came before EVs were a thing. You could in effect max out each stat, with a lot of grinding. I like it for two reasons. Firstly I don't have to worry about getting EVs in the wrong stat which doing just a touch of more modern competitive battling has made me afraid of. Secondly, it kind of makes some early game weaker Pokemon viable much later on as they'll have much higher stats than an NPC Pokemon of the same level. It makes your team-building options bigger than they look like on the surface. If someone doesn't like the earlier Gens I completely understand, but I think they are very much worth a try as they do bring a unique experience. If nothing else worth a try from a historic perspective and to better understand the mechanical growth that would come later on.
@@Drowmerc EVs were a thing in gens 1 and 2. Your thinking of IVs which in gens 1 and 2 they had a different system called DVs. In say Red version if you were to level up a Charizard the normal way by battling it would have way higher stats then a Charizard that was leveled up by rare candys.
@@alucard8433 Oh trust me I know. As I have played RBY all in a year through virtual console. I am not mistaking IVs and DVs. Check Bulbapedia but it is completely okay to call EVs in those gens stat experience, which I did because they work differently from traditional EVs. Or as I said in my own comment. "Secondly, it kind of makes some early game weaker Pokemon viable much later on as they'll have much higher stats than an NPC Pokemon of the same level. It makes your team-building options bigger than they look like on the surface." I understand grind leveling works differently than candy level, especially in RBY.
@@Drowmerc No EVs still worked the same way they do now. The only difference is that you can max out all of the stats instead of being limited to 510 Effort Value points total from Gen 3 Onward.
*>" Secondly, it kind of makes some early game weaker Pokemon viable much later on as they'll have much higher stats than an NPC Pokemon of the same level. It makes your team-building options bigger than they look like on the surface."
You mentioned the extended series of keys, and I think that actually harps on one of my favorite aspects of Gens 1-2 that got especially lost starting with Gen 5: beyond JRPGs, they also function very well as top down Metroidvania. And the nonlinear mapping of the world enhances this feeling even more. A lot of later Pokemon games really lost this aspect and it actually made them feel less organic in some ways as a result.
That's not so much a metroidvania thing, as it is just an old jrpg thing. The first couple of Final Fantasy games are all about getting the key, so you can get the key to get the key to access the place with the key. Or unlocking specific abilities or vehicles to use as a key to access new areas. Especially FFI and FFIII. I really enjoy that aspect of those games, and in the older Pokemon games too. It makes for good world design and structure, and a sense that the entire world is a puzzle box to unlock. Like in the metroidvanias indeed.
I'd argue non linearity is a weakness of the old games. The most clear example of this is in johto, where the non linearity after you get to ekruteak is the main reason the game has such a horrendous level curve.
They have aged in some areas, but they're still fun games with some great design. Alongside Emerald and Platinum, they're some of my favourite Pokemon games. Fast paced battles, great music, a lot of variety, and a difficulty curve that's just right; not much in the way of heavy grinding. A Minus.
I'm 20 years old so these games predate when I started playing Pokemon with X and I absolutely love the original red and blue. I think the way the way the map wraps around is great and makes it so towns are never to far away once you have all the HM's I think its the best layed out region to this day. Over the summer I played through it on a game boy pocket for the authentic experience and I had so much fun that I haven't had with Pokemon games in a while.
I always love seeing your analysis of the Pokemon games, it's really unique and factors in the context of the series and gaming at a whole into account when discussing their merits and shortcomings, which I something not many people do when talking about older games
I love your analysis videos so much, they always offer a fresh new perspective on things. Kanto isn’t among my favorite regions but I don’t think any Pokémon games are bad, and like you said, these were amazing for their time and people tend to forget that. Context makes everything better.
The thing I love so much about your videos is that even when I agree 100% with every point, I still always leave learning some huge new thing about the topic. I really hadn't thought about the way the game is viewed from a child's perspective, and the intentional crafting of Dragon and Psychic as boss encounters, and it really goes to show how much thought GF put into the games. It's sad to see how much legitimately incredible design choices from these games are pushed aside by the fandom as a whole. I also think
The main theme of Kanto kind of became the theme of the series in a meta sense Pokémon has progressed a ton over the years. A lot has been added. But a lot has been lost as well. Personally, I love all of the games, but I do understand why people lament some changes. Especially since I’m playing Shining Pearl, which gives me equal parts “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” and “I’m glad they do do this anymore”
Nice to see a video that isn’t “The graphics are a joke but it was a good game for its time…” I revisited these when they released on 3DS and all I remember is how much more enjoyable they were than Sun and Moon… It’s hard to appreciate these games in the same way I once did, solely due to how many times I’ve played them, but this video made me do that ☺️ …Maybe I need to replay them again…? 🤔
dunno, i always thought the red and blue graphics were excellent and fit in very well with the overall graphic vision of the games (together with trainers + overworld). yellow's re-do of pokemon sprites to look more like in the anime to me is kinda like the breakfast "biggest downgrade in movie history" meme, where they give the goth girl a make-over and she just ends up looking kinda average.
This is a FANTASTIC video, honestly, and a great articulation of a lot of the je ne sais quoi Gen I (and, where applicable, other JRPGs with similar design philosophies) has for me. As a kid, I didn’t get things like, say, Brock’s typing a placement in the game progression, stuck in my craw too much because overcoming stuff like that was, in my mind, part of the challenge of the game. I actually think he’s a pretty clever inclusion for how he can force a player to stop and assess the resources available to them. Said resources could’ve been doled out a tad better, sure (and I’d take away Brock’s Full Heals to make Poisoning his Pokémon a more viable strategy), but it’s absolutely something you can overcome and that teaches you about type matchups. Pokémon Tower, with all its Ghost-types, is kind of a harder (at least on paper) reprise of this same concept, actually. Sure, it’s easy for me NOW, with my knowledge of the ins and outs of the game and of Pokémon in general, but it absolutely puts up a good challenge for young players and puts them in situations where the way forward is something they have to deduce for themselves rather than something that’s simply handed to them. Also PVP JRPG gameplay kinda wasn’t a thing before Pokémon like at all?? At least to my knowledge??? So I really can’t fault them for balancing things around what they had a frame of reference for, which was the single-player storyline context.
Gen 1 did a lot of things right for the first game in the series. There are some things it doesn't do quite as well as many other games but it was a very well designed game for it's time and still holds up very well today. A game doesn't have to be complex to be good. Sometimes something simple can be something really special.
I think this is what’s really appealing of the first generation of Pokémon because I think of those of us at the advent and after have always known this but never realized or understood it. The connection between urbanization and nature and how humans affect the balance of it through Pokémon. Even the first season of the anime showcased this concept like with the Tentacruel episode and Bye Bye Butterfree.
The infrastructure of Pokemon is definitely interesting to think about as an adult. Great angle to tackle the man vs. nature themes from. I never noticed that the Pokemon get stranger as you progress into the more Urbanized areas of the game.
You're 100% correct about the bugs in the game and how people perceive them and go too hard. When actually playing the game most people aren't going to notice any notable bugs. I certainly didn't encounter anything on my own outside of being told about how to encounter missingno from an outside source. In contrast even as a small child I found a way to break out of normal play areas in Wario Land and experience super glitchy areas. And that game is significantly less ambitious than Pokemon was. Putting any game from that era under as much scrutiny as Pokemon would no doubt yield tons of bugs.
As someone who grew up with Red, Blue and Yellow what I love about those games is their simplicity. The newer games have so many needlessly complex systems that its less about the pokemon and more about exploiting the system. Where in Red you can just hop in and enjoy the world.
I grew up on the gen 5 Pokemon games myself since the GameBoy era was kind of before my time. I think nostalgia does kind of help with replay value like this, I for example can always return to a Unova game and barely miss anything from the latest ones because like you said, I'm used to it. Maybe one day I'll pick one of these games up on virtual console (you put Crystal on my radar because everything you praised it for was stuff I'm into with RPGs), but even if I never get the chance that's kind of what videos like this are for to me. You get to live vicariously through someone else for a little while and experience a game you otherwise might never be able to. I think that makes them a pretty important form of content which makes me wish UA-cam was more friendly with it. So thank you for taking the time to make these amazing essays! It's really an honour to tour the Pokemon with you.
What an incredible video. So many great ideas you talked about in this one, I can't possibly comment on all of them in a single comment. Just let me say thank you for the great watch and congratulation on such a remarkable piece of work.
I think it says a lot that the foundation laid out in the first games was robust enough to support all the future games without heavily changing most of the core mechanics. Great video!
Man I clicked on the video thinking I was gonna find a new UA-camr to watch but I accidentally stumbled upon my favourite UA-cam channel when I was like, 12 years old lol. Weird to think about. You've improved a lot! Glad you're still making content! Really glad I found your channel again, you're one of the major reasons im so into the Pokemon series in the first place :)
Yet another amazing essay! Tama, you have a really great ability to be compelling and interesting regardless of your side on a topic, and I enjoyed hearing your reasons for why the original games are so dear to you. Just because a game hasn’t aged well and had flaws mechanically doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad game or there aren’t things about it that can’t be enjoyed, and although I personally don’t enjoy playing Gen 1, I’ve honestly gained a newfound respect for them and can totally understand why people prefer these to any of their remakes. I definitely agree that depending on where you started in the series, certain quality of life changes or graphical improvements might be deal-breaking for you (I started with Gen 3 so it makes sense why the first games frustrate me so much)! Your takes are always so enjoyable to watch and I hope life is treating you well. Can’t wait for the next essay!
Ahhh it's so nice to see you put out a video again. You've always been one of my preferred UA-camrs and seeing you upload a new video after 10 months definitely made my morning.
These games have great jrpg balance mechanics like late game Pokemon being stronger than early game to reward catching and using new stuff, non linearity, centralised locations with quick backtracking, and good rewards for talking to optional NPCs.
It feels like the fandom often forgets pokemon is mostly the adventure, not the post game. Which is funny, bc that's the crowd who talso tends to drop a pokemon game in a year and not sink their teeth into the rpg world of the post games.
I remember back in 2012 there was a big pokemon craze at my school and I ended up finding my sisters blue cartridge and buying a gameboy colour to play it. I was addicted and beat the main campaign and caught all the legendarys. I would say it definitely holds up
Wow! So professional, enjoyable, and insightful. Thank you so much for the content, this video was lovely. I never played an official game that came out before Pokemon Emerald, but I'd love to try to play Red or Blue on an emulator -- some of the old-school appeals you mentioned sounded really enticing. The main reason why I haven't played them yet were for Red & Blue's infamous bugginess, and for its poor quality of life. So it's exciting to hear that both of those claims were greatly overstated.
19 y/o here. I grew up playing white and soulsilver with ss being my very first Pokémon game. Beating red a few weeks ago marked my completion of every mainline region. What I can say is that the experience still encompassed what I think to be the true spirit of Pokémon. Despite its graphical and qol inadequacies, the game still takes you on an adventure through a lush world. It still manages to immerse the player and allows your imagination to fill in the gaps where necessary. (As any good retro game should for it to hold up in 2021) In that respect, it truly shows the creative direction was being limited by the capabilities of the hardware/development team more than anything else. This is something that I feel took a sharp turn from gen 6 onward, where gf/pc/nintendo made the capabilities of the hardware one of the major driving points as they forced a direct translation of Pokémon to be “3D.” (Although I long for the return of megas) All just for it to fall on its face in swsh and solidify its current state as a modern triple A game where they’ll rush anything for a holiday release. That being said, I definitely don’t see gen 1 as perfect and honestly think it deserves some of the shit it gets. It very much is rough around the edges and leaves a bit too much up for the player to find their own fun/build their own world (for my taste at least). I think it deserves respect, but it is in no way underrated. Genwunners is an old, dead meme and no one is sucking off the recent games. Gens 3-5 were peak imo for good reasons. They built upon a very strong foundation from 1 and 2 and used the better hardware to realize their creative direction more vividly rather than rely on it to sell copies. It was a solid attempt and first entry into a beautiful idea of a franchise, but no first try is perfect. I can’t imagine my opinions are unheard of or unpopular, but it definitely isn’t clouded by nostalgia lol. Great vid and hoped a take from a younger Pokémon fan reassured that not everyone hates gen 1
I love this! Thank you so much, you pretty much hit every point I've been trying to make about these games for years. While I tend to be a bit evasive about my age on the internet, for this I feel it's important: I was a preteen when this game was announced, and already loved RPGs like Final Fantasy VI and Super Mario RPG, and I actually fell in love with the idea of an RPG where you could add random battle monsters to your party. With over 100 possible monsters you could use?! On the flippin' GAME BOY?! WHAT?! It's hard to emphasize just how important the context and the time period were for the game. Especially since the original Game Boy felt, even at the time, that you were accepting the limitations and restrictions for the convenience of portability, but Pokemon never felt like anything was getting sacrificed by it being on the platform. And again, as you said, graphical presentation and QoL aside, it still holds up as just a fun RPG
The sense of exploration and discovery is what made the early games great. The maps were non-linear, paths were inaccessible because you have to earn some item and task, and it really made you feel accomplished when you finally unlocked the path. The new games maps are WAY too linear, especially SWSH.
Your essay videos are always my favorite format you do. You’re able to articulate my thoughts in an actual comprehensive fashion. So glad to see people move past the “haha buggy game” argument and look at the game in the context of its release. Also very happy to see discussion on how well developed the “key sequence” of the mid game is with the Silph Scope, people will shit on it but then go on and praise Metroid and Zelda games which have fundamentally the same gameplay loop lol. Also glad to see your analysis of the themes of industrialization destroying nature. I thought the environmental storytelling with Team Rocket killing the Marowak and the journals in the Pokémon mansion was very well done too. Appreciate your hard work Tama! Keep it up!
Something I'd like to comment on further is the experience of playing games made by one people or a small group. An experience that remains fairly similar to this day. Making and coding video games is extremely hard, which is something the average person probably wouldn't know because of how much of a monolith big developer teams and publishers are. Playing red/blue for what they are is just like one of those very indie gaming experiences. You have to be ready to forgive and glance over the rough edges in order to enter the wonderful and deeply sincere world that the hearts of one or a few people have managed to pour out. Worlds that those people found so worth to see assembled that they went through with the hassle of game development, just so they could see it brought to life.
I have to say, I really appreciated the way this video focused more on the big-picture elements of an RPG that often fade into the background, not only in the form of the structure and theming of the game, but also the context and creative intent behind it. It was one of the rare times I feel like someone talked about these original Pokémon games as, well, art, and not just a template for other games, or the start of a big media franchise. In short, this video made me think about and appreciate these games on a deeper level than I would've otherwise, and reminded me not to take games like them for granted.
I think nostalgia's a thing. I'm played Gen 1 when it was new, and I remember when Pokemon Yellow and Pokemon Stadium both came out. For their time, they are VERY good games, and arguably the best games released on the original Game Boy. Only other contender is Link's Awakening. That said, having played every other game over the years, Red and Blue have definitely aged, and there are much better ways to experience Kanto. Honestly, I'll play FRLG any day of the week, because it's a much better version of those games, with fewer bugs and better balancing, and it's much nicer to look at. Let's Go is.... okay, but what they took out and what they added don't quite make it better than FRLG in my book. TLDR: In my opinion, FRLG is the best way to experience Kanto, and while good for its time, I have issues going back to RBY.
I respectfully disagree with the FRLG comment, but as a fellow 90s kid I also have to admit that you cannot see Gen1 or RBY without seeing the Pokémania that happened in the late 90s. Yes, there was the MCU a few years ago and all the power to Endgame fans, there is Fortnine and Among Us today. There's K-Pop being listened all over the planet and Minecraft even to this day is massive. But I can't think of many cultural phenomena that turned the world upside down so fucking brutally as Pokémon did in the late 90s. Pikachu was in the motherfucking cover of TIME magazine, the Pope talked about Pokémon, Pkmn The Movie was the best selling kids movie of all time (until Finding Nemo 2 years later). Gen 1 was a worldwide phenomenon.
Same here. It's fun to start up the og games every once in a while to play for a bit, but I always go back to FRLG if I plan on playing through the entire game. I just don't have a desire to complete the originals again when I could be playing a version that's more polished in pretty much every way. I feel at this point the only reasons for the average person to play the originals are either for nostalgia purposes, or if you wanted to experience them in their purest, unfiltered form, cracks and faults included.
Main reason why I love Gen 1 and 2, so much exploring and both generations are simple to pick up. No long un-skipable cutscenes, no mystery gifts of mythical/legendary pokemon, etc. Everytime I replay Gen 1 and 2 I always find new things, even 25+ years later. Thanks for this awesome video. ❤
Great perspective. I really love these essay style videos! I'll admit Gen I is hard for me to go back to. I find Gen 2 much easier, but there's still a lot of value there in the experience. Some stuff you mentioned like tedious menus and inventory space reminds me of the same problems Earthbound has. But if you can put those aside and know what to expect going in, it'll be a very fresh experience.
The real problem with this game is the lack of some quality of life features, thats why i could understand why someone wouldnt like too much this game today, but at least for me, Gen 1 is the definition of a flawed masterpiece, for a 1996 portable black and white game, this was just unmatched, and i was impressed how even today i was having a lot of fun. The simplicity, the artstyle, the nonlinear exploration along with Kanto map design and a lot of the different gameplay mechanics compared to newer games in the series are also why i really like it.
As someone who started with R/S/E first (born in 1993, started in 2002) and played R/B/Y and G/S/C after finishing Sapphire, and there is a charm and simplicity to Gen I and Gen II that I haven't experienced anywhere else. Yes, Gen I is flawed, but considering the technological limits at the time? It's impressive that these games still hold up fairly well and are still a challenge. Love you content, and keep up the good work!
Thank you for this video! This is an awesome analysis on a topic I haven't seen discussed before and it's done in a way that doesn't go out of it's way to appease anyone while also treating the subject with respect. You bring up a lot of really great points I hadn't ever considered before, but will keep me thinking for a long time.
I've got to say your newest pokemon reviews are some of my favourite videos on the internet. The way you actually take a new approach on reveiwing them is lovely, and I think they really capture what's special about the games.
Lovely analysis that's original and really gives pause to normal discourse surrounding these games. Playing Dragon Quest and reading the Helix Chamber articles of this gen really gave me a chance to re-evaluate how these games were built. In Dragon Quest, the story is usually rudimentary and more about going to each location and seeing stuff kind of play out around you. It's very similar to how the Team Rocket plot sort of transpires as you're trying to hunt for Pokemon. I do think your points on how exploration is prized in these games most is very notable as the game does not really have a clear goal. More recent Pokemon games always tell you what's happening next in the Menu. By the time you Cut the tree in Cerulean, the game practically throws you into the middle and you have to figure out how to get to the bottom of the map with very little to go on. Further, I really think Pokemon types being mostly based on giving certain teams a 'final boss' feel is well identified. For me, I have not a lot of love for Gen I simply because I never played these games through as a kid. My first Pokemon game was Pokemon TCG and then Gold. I do know how to get MissingNo because I was a schoolkid in the late 90s/early 00s and had some exposure, but my only real context for these games is from challenge run videos on UA-cam. So I look at these games as a curiosity more so than any real major pangs of nostalgia (Gen II on the other hand is all nostalgia). It's so cool to see how your analysis has become so sophisticated. I'm not sure if you've ever read the Helix Chamber articles about how the Pokemon in Gen I were developed, but you should check them out. There's stuff in there how Types were introduced a bit later, hence why Normal types learn so many moves as they were mostly the earlier Pokemon developed.
These are my favorite Kanto games too. I love the simplicity. It's so refreshing. I by no means think they're the best Pokemon games, but for me at least, they're among the easiest to go back to. You can immediately jump into training Pokemon without a dozen mandatory tutorials and no complex mechanics. Plus it takes me back to a simpler time like you said.
A big thing people tend to miss when saying that Pokemon was never difficult is that there's more to difficulty than just the design of individual battles. There's the difficulty of exploring a complex dungeon, or solving a tricky puzzle, or making good use of limited resources, or figuring out a complex sequence of events to progress. There's so much stuff you do outside of battle that affects a game's difficulty. If you look at these elements in gen 1 compared to later games, then they're... still not extremely difficult or anything, but they are substantially more challenging than what you'll find in most modern Pokemon games.
I agree with a lot of this. I grew up with Gen 1 and have spent thousands of hours playing these games over the years. There's something really charming about how simple everything is. However, I have come to prefer FRLG over time because I'm intimately familiar with the deeper mechanics of all Pokémon games, and Gen 1 is much more difficult to build diverse teams for, due to how many Pokémon are just awful. Both games have strengths and weaknesses though and I'm really glad they both exist to scratch those different itches.
If you're familiar with the Universal Pokemon Randomizer, randomizing moves, grant 4 moves at level 1, force 80% good moves and Update Moves to Gen 8 does wonders for viability. Bug gets 25BP Pin Missile and 80BP Leech Life, Fighting gets (High) Jump Kick which keep their 1 point of recoil from gen 1 and get 130 and 100 base power respectively, as well as a 50BP Fighting Karate Chop that always crits for fully Evolved pokemon. Fly becomes 90 / 95 and Drill Peck gets spread around. Dig is a minor casualty, dropping to 80 power, but the consolation is a lot more pokemon naturally learn dig and EQ under these settings. Gen 1 is really fun just doing this and leaving everything else the same. Or you can ramdomize Pokemon as well for a more distinct and unpredictable experience
Honestly even if you didn't say anything "new" in these videos (which you do) your videos now are so different I'd love to see anything pokémon-related you make.
You’re a boomer. Also great video! I think my favorite part of your analysis videos as of late has been how you bring the perspective of the dev teams life(living in tokyo being urbanized ect) and how it comes through in the Pokémon games story and themes. It’s something I literally never thought about until the RS and now this video Also glad you touched on the bugs being overplayed. Yes they’re buggy, no it didn’t bother me when I was 7, and actually they were super fun. Missingo was very useful lol!
There’s something so nostalgic and relaxing about your voice. It brings me back to when I first discovered your channel what feels like over a decade ago.
The point about facing dragonite during the Lance battle is an interesting take. I've never heard it before, but it makes total sense. Without a guide book or any previous knowledge of what he had, that fight would have been even more incredible.
Being 36 years old, I started with gen 1, even though HG/SS are my favorite Pokemon games. I've played most Pokemon games up until the current Bad Era on the Switch. They're not my favorite, but I _LOVE_ Red and Blue because of how different they are from other Pokemon games. Their code is held together by tape and glue. Their sprites are unlike what Pokemon even in the anime looked like at the time that the anime Pokemon seemed like a completely different species than the same Pokemon from the games, like Growlithe, Exeggcute with the giant "master egg," Koffing with the skull and crossbones on its forehead, "realistic" Pidgey, fat Pikachu, etc. The inventory system is awful to the point it makes the game difficult and your bag and PC has extremely limited space (especially if you do what I do and save all your TMs, to either later duplicate with Missingno or use on your best Pokemon party members.) Some of the routes throw 30 trainers at you at once, like the trek from Lavender to Fuchsia, or the Silph Co. takeover of Team Rocket. The learnpools in gen 1 are atrocious, because breeding didn't exist back then, so some Pokemon's first level-up move wouldn't be until level 37! They don't force some HMs onto you, so unless you explore, it's easy to get lost and not know you have to go deep into the Safari Zone to get the HM you need. And some people can go the entire game without having ever found the HMs for Flash or Fly. The game punishes you for taking shortcuts and skipping things.
The levels of opponent Pokemon are often much higher than your team, like those powerful lv. 33 Dugtrio in Diglett's Cave and your rival's team jumping like sixteen levels by the time he's the Pokemon League Champion. Speaking of which, your Rival is also a jerk in gen 1 and actually motivates you to want to grind and beat him, unlike all the soft rivals from gen 3 onward. The game is the total opposite of today's hand-heldy games and it's easy to get lost in them, but even as a child, I still managed at beat Red and Blue no problem. And so on. Everything about Red and Blue is unintentionally hard (relative for a Pokemon game), which makes it a lot of fun! Even Yellow isn't as fun because of the improved sprites, giving you all three starters, and the removal of (an easy to encounter) Missingno. Everything about Red and Blue is such a unique experience from the easier games from gen 3 onward, and the sprites are so unique, I love going back to Red or Blue every year or so due to its unintentional difficulty and chaotic code. The gen 2-5 Pokemon games are fun too, but lack that chaos and difficulty I love about Red and Blue.
I love this review soooo much. Thank you for putting in the time to explain why gen 1 are still wonderful games. I have so often wondered why people have maligned pokemon RBY as often as they do. I feel it has to do more with recency bias than actual objective data.
I still have my Blue version cartridge I played back in the day, and as much as I would love to crack it in and have that old nostalgia trip of playing on an authentic gameboy again, I just can't bring myself to erase my team I made back in 2002; Sandslash Gyarados Starmie Pidgeotte Raichu Muk (Yes I play in an emulator sometimes but it's not the same).
anyone can say whatever they want about gen 1, but the battle system they came out with is insanely good. they essentially made chess with 100 different pieces. That's pretty impressive
I thought I knew about as much as I could about gen 1 but here we go. Really thoughtful analysis that took me back to why I fell so in love with this series as a kid, for reasons I never fully realised until now. I particularly like your points about how the environment itself tells the story, and how the game makes more sense as being from a kid's perspective.
The death of the proper dungeon in mainstream JRPGs in recent years has been one of the primary reasons I've fallen out of touch with the genre as a whole. It almost feels like JRPGs are ashamed of their own mechanics these days rather than trying to innovate on the experience point system in meaningful ways, settling for using the same mechanics while focusing more on non-gameplay elements like storytelling to appeal to people instead of using the gameplay as the selling point. As such we've seen a decline in the genre, both in Pokemon and in general
@@ChangedMyNameFinally69 Chess exists completely without context or a narrative and is still one of the cornerstones of tactical game design to this day, you absolutely do not need a story to have a good game Furthermore you can keep believing that story is what elevates games instead of gameplay while Pokemon continues to deteriorate in quality. There was more good "narrative" experiences in the relatively more difficult dungeons of Gen 1 than any attempt Game Freak has made at telling an actual story because running out of resources and fighting tough enemies creates its own stories independent of whatever junk the developers are trying to force on you. Sun & Moon and Sw&Sh have almost as much in cutscenes as gameplay and it's generally agreed the story parts of SM bring down the experience while in SwSh it actively makes the game worse
I really love this review. It's refreshing to hear someone not call these games "unplayable because of the glitches" or type charts. As you said, I really had to go out of my way to try and encounter glitches when I played these as a kid and even now. I also remember encountering Lance for the first time and going against his Dragonairs and Dragonite, having never seen them before and overcoming the challenge of defeating these pokémon despite having no idea about their weaknesses. I think it's ok to have some types to be better than others, especially here where Psychic and Dragon types are rare to come across and present a memorable challenge to beat. I've played almost every generation of Pokémon (I missed gens 6 and 7) and I would also have to say that the music in gen 1 still holds up incredibly and has given us the most iconic tracks of the pokemon gaming franchise. I also love the simpler story of this and gen 2. You're sent out on your own adventure as a 10 year old and happen to take down the criminal organisation. I've always found the storylines where you save the world, because it's expected of you, to be way too over the top personally. Despite it's own issues, Pokémon Sword and Shield did well in this area.
Back in the summer of 2016, because of the 20th anniversary of Pokémon, I wrote a few articles on my blog revisiting the earlier Pokémon gens. I did my research on gen 1 and, of course, part of it focused on how the games were developped by a small team and all the glitches. That was the time Pokémon Go was exploding and, as people may remember, crashing out every five seconds or so. Back then, I realised the guys at Niantic were going through similar issues Game Freak went when they made Red&Blue: a small team, making something that had never been made before, something that became bigger than what they ever imagined, that ended up a bit rough around the edges. What I love the most about gen 1 is how simple and classic it is -- even if this is just the nostalgia talking. Games aren't like that anymore. And the soundtrack! I'm listening to it right now, while I'm typing this, and it's striking how such simple themes (some of which became staples on Pokémon) acomplish so much. I mean, don't you guys get that "Oh no" feeling everytime you listen to the Rival's theme? And the creepiness of Lavender's theme? And the growing tension of the battle themes? I'm going to replay these games one of these days. 🙂
I think the magic of Gen 1 that will never be replicated comes from the fact that we didn't have the internet back then, I didn't know what "Special" meant, I didn't know the psychic type was OP, I didn't have a catch rate calculator and thought it was impossible to catch any of the legendaries without a master ball. We were dropped in this world without knowing how it worked under the hood, now we can find out what the best team is, every secret and learn about every game mechanic. I really enjoyed Sword with the expansion pass, but it's a completely different feeling.
Good video, but I don't think multiplayer was introduced to Gen 1 until the very end of development. The official sources I've read all seem to claim that PVP was added at the very end of development (which is why it can be notoriously buggy even for Gen 1) which would mean that the games were single player RPGs first and foremost. That being said, I've been doing a 151 run of Yellow this year and I'm almost done! The game holds up better than I expected; definitely moreso than FRLG or LGPE I feel where the changes made to the games in the remakes undermine what made Gen 1 so special to begin with.
Honestly this video helped me appreciate Gen 1 so much more. I love to rag on red and blue but this video opened my eyes to really appreciate how they stand up even today. Thank you.
Regarding the "Pokemon games are not difficult" section: No, Gen 1, and 2, where reasonably difficult games, the actual problem here is how anything XY and later is ridiculously easy to a point where you do not have to think and just play on auto pilot without ever facing the danger of even losing a single fight. They even made the rivals chose the weaker type ... And in sword/shield they even went out of their way to have other NPC investigate things and told the player to just continue with the gym challenge. Sword and shield are games that do not have any form of challenge or difficulty in the main story. There is not a single problem the player has to solve, outside of ridiculously cheap gym challenges, to progress. They even went so far to limit what you can capture at any given time by limiting the level of pokemon you can capture to the amount of badges you have just to limit your options even further. The game is outright hostile towards free thought and creativity.
Incredible video. I have watched countless videos of "surprising facts you didn't know about pokemon" since playing generation 1 as a child over twenty years ago, but your discussion of the themes of these games and how they were illustrated by gameplay and simple design choices I'd previously looked over was illuminating. Mewtwo as an allegory for the atomic bomb; amazing!
I've always found the most hypercritical takedowns of Gen 1 seem to come from a place of jealousy. They're almost always voiced by someone who wasnt around when the games released and so they missed the unparalleled phenomena that was Pokemania. Pokemon might be popular today, but it's absolutely nothing compared to the late 90s. Gen 1 were games designed by 9 people nearly 30 years ago, and they still have less game-breaking glitches than Scarlet and Violet shipped with.
I find it so weird that people use the glitches as something that makes the games worse or bad when I find glitches that add to the experience of a game as always a positive. Fun or useful glitches were always exciting to find.
I think it's worth pointing out that some of the difficulty in Pokemon games, especially in the older ones, leans more towards endurance than having outright punishing battles. If you're deep in a dungeon with a large layout and few ways to get out safely, every battle is gonna be tougher because you're going to have to rely on managing resources and being efficient with your Pokemons PP and HP to get further, having to go large sections without a Pokemon center is how some of these games go about creating difficult encounters
Agreed. Nowadays, the dungeons feel shorter and simpler or they have random nurse/Chansey/etc hanging out that'll heal you without having to leave the dungeon/route.
That's why I kept low power moves like Ember and Confusion on my team through the end of the game.
yes! even lots of pokémon trainers in the og games only had a pokémon or two in their arsenal. the difficulty doesn’t come from each individual trainer but the endurance of clearing an area without healing after every little drop in hp. pokémon has always played with optional difficulty, giving you plenty of money to stock up on healing items to your liking. i’ve been playing emerald recently and i’ve been pleasantly surprised with how the game rewards you for exploration and accomplishing endurance feats if you choose not to have unlimited access to potions, full heals, etc. finding a hyper potion on a random route is so much more rewarding when you push through the route to earn that item.
This is like she said one of those older RPG aspects. Go play any of the other RPGs during that time, Dungeon Crawling as a thing, where it was common to need to retreat heal and refill supplies and go back. While someone who knows the type of game these are will probably get it in one go, these dungeons were hard as a kid and I got stuck in the Game Corner and Ice Path in GSC, and only got lucky with Silph Co as I stumbled across the card key. While these dungeons were not as difficult as their older counterparts, GameFreak really managed to make kids first RPG without compromising the mechanics of what made one. Unlike other games, looking at you Mystic Quest.
@@glenarnold5058 If your goal there is to save PP, I'm not sure that actually checks out. With the lower power moves, you're going to have to use more of them to accomplish the same feats and that's going to drain PP quickly anyway.
Everyone: Arguing whether or not Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are good
Tama: Here’s my Gen 1 review
bdsp is way more ugly than gen 1 glitch wise, hell its faster to beat bdsp without using TID manips in gen 1
was really fun editing this because I've been wanting to say a lotta these things for a while now, still shocked at how much I was nodding my head on the first read-through of the script lol
A fresh perspective on a game that has been talked about to death is refreshing to see. Despite it’s flaws, the OG Pokemon games are groundbreaking in so many ways, and it’s easy to see why game freak never hesitates to constantly reintroduce it to a new generation.
One thing I never considered and you blew my mind on is the fact that these games slowly transform from natural looking pokemon and nature surrounding you, to overblown cities, indoors and manmade looking pokemon. That is such a layer to these games that I was painfully oblivious to until now, despite knowing them so well.
Thank you!
As a 35 year old man, I will never forget Gen I. I loved Gen I and Gen II especially. I got to see what I caught and trained in 3D with Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Stadium 2, which pushed Gen I and II to it's absolute limits. Those are my fondest memories of my childhood.
That's because they were the best gens and were some way challenging. Now a toddler could complete them
Also 35, agree 100%. Pokemon gold/silver blew my 10yr old mind
@@daveeol1987 I completed them when I was 6 years old when they were released so your argument is invalid
@@pandaman1331 Compulsive liar, typical of your generation.
Shame on you then. Gen II and all others are irrelevant.
As a kid I couldn't do the Victory Road or Seafoam Island puzzles but the Power Plant didn't have puzzles so I used Zapdos to help me beat the Elite Four. Over 20 years later Zapdos is still my favorite Pokemon.
Zapdos is the king
Good Old Big Bird from Kanto Sesame street
Hell ya
Well, you didn't miss much with not getting Moltres. It's actually terrible at blowing through the Elite Four.
In Gen 1 Snorlax is the real king
One thing I miss about the originals is how the legendaries weren't used for marketing. Many people adore how Mewtwo and Mew were handled, with you having to read through papers in an abandoned facility to even get a little bit of background on them, and how cool the legendary birds were. But when they started putting legendaries on the boxes, I feel that they lost that surprise factor.
In Red/Blue, you had no idea what any legendary looked like (if you didn't do things like watch the anime), or that they even existed, whilst the box arts since Gen 2 spoiled those surprises. Instead of finding out a secret, you're indirectly told about one of the coolest Pokémon you'll see on your travels. And, in Gen 3 and beyond, since you're forced to encounter the box legendary, if you're aware of how Pokémon stories go, you know exactly who you'll be catching. The series now has to rely on alternate forms for surprises, such as what they did with Necrozma.
I believe the manual makes mention of "Pokémon that only appear once" or something to that effect.
At least there's still the other Legendaries that aren't on the boxes to surprise players in new games.
I’d say it’s fair enough for games to show the “main” legendary on the box, and to be fair, this is important for marketing reasons considering the scale of the franchise. I do however strongly agree with the whole discovery aspect. Some of my fondest memories of the older games were discovering legendaries and other nooks and crannies that were scattered throughout the games. I feel like whilst the main legendary should be advertised for obvious reasons, the company should leave the rest of the legendaries up to us to discover. This also goes for locations as well. Some of the coolest places in older games weren’t obvious, however now, they are usually known about months before the games release.
I feel like that's selective nostalgia blindness. I remember the legendaries' images being everywhere back in the day too, they just weren't on the actual boxes for gen 1 is all. Mewtwo especially was all over toy/guidebook/etc packaging as decoration (and it existed in several toy forms), and I mean... it's kinda prominently featured in the first movie. All that to say, legendaries have always 100% been heavily marketed.
@@svenbtb To be fair, Pokémon didn't release with the movie, show, toys etc. It only got all of that later when the games were already popular. Those who played the games before the initial boom likely wouldn't have known about the legends until after they saw them in the game.
They really hit the nail on the head with the core formula. To this day, even a mediocre Pokemon game with the main gameplay loop is still pretty fun.
I always get a little annoyed when people bring up Gen 1 as these excessively buggy games. I played Red constantly back when it came out and I never encountered any crazy glitches in a normal playthrough. Like you said, you really have to go out of your way to experience the infamous Gen 1 bugs. And nothing in Gen 1 really compares to the "Lumiose City save glitch." That involved something as simple and important as saving your game...
Compared to other really buggy games I've played, like Daggerfall and The Sims 2 (which never really gets brought up when discussing buggy games), Pokemon RBY are honestly not bad at all.
They're really only buggy when you intentionally try to break it
It's like Paper Mario or M&L Paper Jam in that way.
Well psychic being immune to ghost was a bug which helped make the psychic type OP (and ghost types worse) and was also confusing as multiple NPCs say that ghost should be supereffective.
The 1/256 move miss glitch we all must have encountered a number of times.
I used to get save file corruptions all the time, as well as the game simply freezing often.
@@hanezutchins2786 This, stuff like Missingno you HAD to go look for, not like it just popped up.
Badge boost glitch says hello
Going between older and gens and newer gens every so often, I get the feeling really often that there are things about Gen I and II that are lacking in the modern games. At the same time, that fondness for the older games makes me go back to them often enough, just to realize how far a lot of concepts have come in over 20 years. I think Pokémon does something kind of unique for JRPGs, and no game is really invalidated by any of the ones that've come after or came before, and I'm not sure that there's a "definitive" Pokémon experience within a single one. RBY just gives you very similar tools to the rest, with a different set of priorities from modern games, which helps it stay distinct and worth playing.
I honestly didn’t see the stuff representing being from a child’s perspective, and hearing it now it feels really interesting. I enjoy how in depth this discussion is considering how it feels like most people like to just generalize these games due to how they’re the oldest games. Personally and this might be a big hot take but I feel the Glitches make Kanto so much more enjoyable considering how with the knowledge of all the glitches and stuff the game goes from a fun rpg into a really wacky game where many impossible things are possible. If I ever play Kanto I always choose the VC because of this and it’s mainly why I feel FRLG are the worst remakes of the entire series since the games that predated them were good BECAUSE of its faults
Does that mean that you feel that the Let's Go games are better remakes than FireRed and LeafGreen? I'm curious about your reasoning for feeling that way if so.
@@Deoxys911 I feel Let’s Go are more experiments then remakes considering how it’s designed less as a major love letter to Kanto, but to bring ideas from Go into the main series. As a result I feel it’s charm allows it to be an enjoyable game that’s hard to compare with other remakes. Usually I avoid LG when discussing remakes but I’d argue while it does a lot of what FRLG does to make Kanto less special to me it still has some wonder with its ideas to feel more fulfilling to play
@@tylerr2016 Where Let's Go is a love letter to Kanto (and to us 90s kids), FR/LG was a corporate decision.
So basically glitches and bugs make a game better to you? Logic
@@LightHikaru in some situations I’d argue bugs and glitches improve a game. Basically if the glitches are enjoyable and aren’t taking away from the players experience then yes glitches can make a game good, if glitches don’t do that though then they don’t make a game good at all
I totally agree that Gen 1 is really good and sort of underrated. Kanto is a super nice region that allows for a ton of exploration. Plus they had 150 Pokemon right out of the gate, which is kind of crazy and was unheard of at the time, an RPG with 150 possible party members.
Atlus: *laughs in SMT*
i still remember as an 8 year old when it was announced johto would add 100 more and i went all philosophical in my head - for the probably first time - "how am i gonna handle another 100 pokemon? will i be able to remember the specific differences between all those pokemon? how many more pokemon can a human brain even handle?" i was naive.
How did you post this two days ago?
@@CCaptinnemo The video was probably unlisted for a few days and only select people allowed to watch - maybe Patreon members or something.
@@CCaptinnemo Tama released this vid to Patreon supporters on Wednesday, so we had early access
Man, when Lance pulled out that 3rd dragonite in Silver... My 7 year old self just stared in awe at how powerful this champion really was, listening to his iconic theme.
It was amazingly difficult, and that difficulty made it all the more worth beating it.
Same. I was cheering because I took down his Dragonite... Only to find out there's two more...
Replaying this or FRLG makes me appreciate how gameplay-focused they are. It's really refreshing to go from town to dungeon to gym over and over with no interruptions. There's also way more trainers, which is great because I love exploring every inch and fighting every trainer.
Eh FRLG aren't bad but I can't say they're much better than the originals
@@ChangedMyNameFinally69they are the best way to experience Kanto because:
1) Natures
2) Abilities
3) improved type balance (Steel moves & Dark moves)
Even then, this system had its flaws. Then Gen 4 came in with the Physical/special split and standardized battling for the foreseeable future. As much as I love R/B/Y and muh nostalgia, I can realize that this game has its flaws and needed FR/LG to keep it relevant, balanced and updated
@@BruhMoment-mn9kn The games are perfectly fine as one and done adventures. People wanted shorter games with more content nowadays.
Who gives a shit about the physical/special split? Yeah there never should've been types assigned to one or another but it was never that important in single player.
Looking back at it, getting stuck at a part was a learning experience. I will always remember the times I had to overcome part of the game because my older cousin wasn't around. It helped teach me to stop, think, and look around to see if there were any solutions to my problem nearby and this has come in handy for countless games and real life scenarios.
Also, I learned how to read playing Pokemon Blue and my mom got a phone call from the school when I used "flamethrower" as the longest word I knew. My mom didn't bat an eye when I asked her how to say it from the backseat of the car and proceeded to spell it out.
I remember being stuck for almost a month in Mt Moon cause I didnt use flash cause to me it was pointless as a move to have on a pokemon
I got Yellow version when I was 6 as my first video game ever. It took me weeks to beat Brock because I didn't understand that when it told me Pikachu's Thundershock didn't affect Geodude, it would *always* not affect Geodude. I ended up beating him with a level 30 pigeotto or something. Good times.
@@dinolover I believe you mean Rock Tunnel. :)
I got stuck at the same part as a kid because I didn't know that Flash existed! It took me at least a month to get through haha.
@Naeanz
I can totally relate to the reading. I played Paper Mario: TTYD so much back in the day, and it had a crazy amount of dialogue. Role playing video games were the perfect game genre for kids; they were essentially novels in a playable form.
Speaking as someone who grew up on DS Pokémon and has no nostalgic connection to gen 1 at all, playing through yellow earlier this year was so much fun and I think all Pokémon fans in my position should try. It doesn't really take that long to adapt to the lack of QoL features and what's left is one of the most focused and satisfying Pokémon games Game Freak ever made. The dialogue, map design, Pokémon choice and encounter locations all feel so much more deliberate and cohesive compared to most modern Pokémon games. Fire Red and Leaf Green are more player friendly but idk I feel the Kanto in them lacks a lot of the heart and care that the originals clearly had. I still think there's a lot of value in gen 1 so long as you view them from a different perspective to later games that adapted and perfected their formula.
They still genuinely hold up after all these years. Yellow is one of my favourites in general. Battles feel faster than some of the later games, especially 2 and 4, and the core gameplay is still accessible to a wide audience.
I can't say the same for the early Pokemon anime seasons though, especially Johto.
I didn't enjoy kanto very much it was boring. I Grew up with Platinum and hgss both games are also difficult
@@jointser1008 Yeah, cuz you're a Zoomer and young people don't like older things because they're close-minded
@@ultrairrelevantnobody1862 What? The early anime was far better than the later shlock
@@jointser1008 No, they aren't. They really aren't
Looking back at Gen 1 before Pokemon became the powerhouse it is today, I always felt the story was basically an 80s movie like Stand By Me, ET, or the Goonies turned into a simple RPG. It a charming story about a kid exploring the world and going on adventures that, due to the meddling of adults, become grand yet dangerous.
One of the best thing about the Gen 1 games is because of how we can take on most gyms in any order, these games are one of the best when it comes to team building variety. You can use Pokemon that are in what are supposed to be late game areas by visiting those areas early.
most of the gyms.
Finally, a review that *explains* why the psychic and dragon types are powerful instead of claiming they detract from the game. Though I never thought about it from the RPG perspective until now. Thanks for this much needed essay!
Tbh it’s unavoidable that Psychic Pokemon being overpowered was an oversight. Bug Pokemon are easy to find and available in the early stage of the game and ghost Pokemon are everywhere in Pokemon Tower, which you have to clear to progress to the game anyways. Buuuut bug Pokemon had no good bug moves to use. And a programming error made Ghost type attacks ineffective toward Psychic Pokemon. On the other hand, I think fans over exaggerate how OP psychic Pokemon are. The game balances them out by making most of them physically frail. Use Slash with your Charizard or Persian and Sabrina and Gary’s Alakazam go down before they can ever attack.
And Mewtwo is intentionally meant to be uber powerful. He’s the “true final boss”
and since most kids who were unaware of his existence probably wasted their master ball on a legendary bird or a random wild Pokemon (fun fact: My first Pokemon game was Gold when I was 8 and I wasted master ball on a level
30 Poliwhirl) if a player wanted to catch Mewtwo they would need a lot of ultra balls, probably a good status changing move, and patience.
But also yes Dragon Pokemon were clearly always intended to be op in gen 1 and the game practically rewards you for taking the time to go to Seafoam island and going through the dungeon to find and catch Articuno who will let you sweep through most of Lance’s team.
I still don't agree with the video's points on Psychic and (to a lesser extent) Dragon even from the perspective of a singleplayer RPG campaign.
Firstly, With Dragon, you could argue it's meant to be a rare boss type. That's why Dragonite is kept a secret. Why Dratini is so rare. Why Lance is the last member of the Elite 4 etc. But Psychic is meant to be more common. Pokemon like Abra, Hypno and Mr. Mime aren't uncommon. The player has come across Psychic before. If Psychic is supposed to be intentionally stronger like Dragon, then why aren't the Pokemon associated with it as rare? Why is there an entire gym dedicated to them? If Mewtwo were Dragon Type or was the only Psychic type or is Psychic was way more rare, then you could argue it makes more sense. But Psychic isn't like that. The game treats it like any other type rather than something more powerful than usual. Plus, not to mention that even its checks don't work properly. Ghost was supposed to be Strong against Psychic but due to an error, Psychic is immune to it and the only good Ghost type, Haunter/Gengar is part poison and thus weak to Psychic. Bug is garbage. At least Dragon has Ice be super effective against it but Psychic doesn't. So even from the perspective of it being a harder challenge for Singleplayer for children, it doesn't work and is unfair because even the intended answers don't work properly.
You could counter that by saying the most powerful Pokemon in RBY Competive aren't even Dragon and Psychic types. Normal is the best type thanks to Tauros, Snorlax and Blissy being unstoppable due to their movepool, exploring crits and that Fighting and rock type Pokemon are terrible. Or that Starmie or Blastoise using Ice Beam deals well with Dragonite. But those are from Adults that have played the game enough to see that the official answers were wrong. The average child playing RBY isn't going to have the knowledge to know their basic tools don't even work properly.
Secondly, In most other RPGs, even those that let you recruit bosses as party members, those bosses tend to operate differently from when they're a boss to when they're a party member. This is a common meme that that when you recruit a boss in a JRPG they are much less powerful. That's fine in those games because it's clear that bosses operate on a different logic to the player. But RBY sets up that everyone plays by the same (at least it tries) rules. Your first rival fight against Blue has Oak teaching both you and Blue how to do battles. Basically telling you that you and Blue are playing the same game. Anything your rival can do, you can do as well. Conversely, anything you can do, he can as well. That was a selling point of Pokemon.
To quote the post "Five things Pokemon's battle system does right" from r/truepokemon
"5. What you see is what you get
Games that could learn from this: Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy VIII
Oh yes, this is the big one. You know how in almost every other RPG ever, when you recruit a enemy character to your team, their stats mysteriously take a nosedive? Or they lose whatever amazing ability made them a threat in the first place, all in the name of “player balance”? Not here, kiddo. You too can be Dragontrainer McBadass if you're willing to raise a Dratini all the way to lv 55, so you can sweep people just likehow you got smacked around by Lance in the Elite Four. Or you can be whoever else you want, because every single Pokemon the NPCs use are exactly the same as the ones you can obtain and use in game. There's an incredible feeling of accomplishment you get finally managing to catch or raise a Pokemon that gave you an enormous amount of grief or did something cool and unusual when you battled it earlier in a playthrough. Its what keeps me interested in finishing the Pokedex and continuing to raise my Pokemon after beating the game."
So a standard boss JRPG doesn't really work in Pokemon since you should be able to fight the boss and fight exactly like the boss. So this philosophy that Dragon or Psychic are meant to be JRPG bosses conflicts with a core design of Pokemon.
You could argue there's a GIANT difference between the justification behind doing something and whether or not it's a good one. I think it's perfectly acceptable for there technically being a story reason for Psychics and Dragons to be stronger than the rest while slso acknowledging this is blatantly unhealthy design even within the game itself, while also spawning several sequelae some of which still plagues the series.
Although one of the reasons why psychics were so powerful in gen 1 is they messed up their ghost type advantages. That was literally just a mistake.
.
There doesn't need to be a reason why dragons are so powerful in gen 1, because dragons are not all that powerful in gen 1 anyway. Lance is strong, but that's because of hyper beam, not dragon types (which again, you could argue was strong due to a mistake).
Of course. Dragon type was supposed to be rare, not like now where everything is a dragon nowadays.
honestly yes, lots of people take issue with this or that aspect, how not everything was perfectly polished yet or how it was improved upon in the sequels, but at the same time red & blue have aged very gracefully and most triple a game franchise's first outputs have nothing on pokemon. personally - and it might be nostalgia - , i also still replay the games quite frequently.
Your point on how noticable the bugs/glitches actually were was a great one - the context we look at R/B/Y now, with enormous amounts of information on the internet about every bug and how to replicate it, is an entirely different environment to the primarily offline world when they released. Missingno was the only one I came across as a child because of being told about it. Even very common ones, like Bide and Focus Energy not behaving as intended, weren't really things I picked up on at the time. People scrolling through enormous lists of glitches and declaring the game a mess is imo a bad representation of how anyone is likely to experience the game
To compound on the idea "The games haven't gotten easier, you just grew up," I believe I can offer a good perspective on this. I was born in 2004, I had a DS, I had Diamond, got Platinum when it was released, and played through Black 2 upon release. When X and Y came out, I was 9, 10 when I got the game. Meaning I was the prime age range for Pokémon, and even then X and Y were some of the easiest games I had ever played. I never blacked out, once. Same with ORAS. And Sun and Moon. I still enjoyed these games, but they were not difficult. At all. And that absolutely takes away from the experience. There weren't any obstables in my way in X, Y, ORAS, Sun and Moon, etc. I will never feel anything like **finally** beating Cynthia, or finding that one item in the Underground, or stumbling across that item I needed to move the Psyduck. The games are so tailor-made to make them as such an easy and comfortable ride that, atleast in my opinion, a ton is lost. I hold a lot of sentimental value towards Gen 6 as well, but barely any of that is with the singleplayer itself. Most of it is the online. I wish it'd change, go back to the older design philosiphy, but I guess thats just how it is now.
The worst part (to me at least) is that they seemingly began to be TERRIFIED of players getting lost. The flags that point to where the next destination is, the massive amount of cutscenes (that aren't skippable), making legendaries mandatory to catch, the lack of side areas etc. The idea of replaying games like Sun or Moon is absolutely draining to me. I'd have to sit through a rather long tutorial sequence, and essentially walk down a path I've walked down 3 times already (I played Sun/Moon twice, and Ultra once) with little variation. I love the characters, music, aesthetics, new Pokémon and more of Gen 7, but to experience those things I'd have to explore what is essentially a straight path, and that drains the life out of me.
I think Nintendo literally told people that they had to make the games easier to play, else kids will just move on to something else. Lot more options now
I was three years old when I first played Super Mario 64. Discovering everything at your own pace to 100% the game and fly around outside of Peach's castle for doing so is a feeling I barely get in most other games.
This makes the recent DP remakes really jarring. The modern games practically drag you through the main game so much with so few side areas that when you get an example of the opposite, well...
@@J.R.Unbound they are so terrified of players getting "lost" that in swsh every route in the entire game is essentially a hallway that has one way in and one way out with no room for exploration
I think your point about competent children vs. incompetent adults is a really worthwhile one. In a lot of children's media, you tend to see children as the voice of reason, and adults as the nonsensical, inexperienced ones. The best example I can think of Goosebumbs; throughout all those stories, children are the ones who totally get what is going on, while adults are dismissive and/or clueless. It's something that really resonates with children (and is important in media aimed towards their demographic) because it allows them to be able to say 'look, us kids actually can be the right ones sometimes, not just adults.'
Now edgelords hate that message
Pokemon Gen 1 was coded and optimised for the Gameboy. Yes, there are a few bugs and glitches, but can anyone name a game which cannot be glitched?
Compare these to the modern masterpiece that is the Grand Theft Auto Trilogy: "Definitive" Edition, intended to run on such powerhouses as the PS5 and the XBox Series X.
One was playtested and is fun to play, if a little rough and with room for improvement. The other was a rushed mess with no evident playtesting and is full of terrible oversights.
lol i wouldn't exactly call gen 1 optimized. Let's not be crazy here.
@@svenbtb At least it ran at a steady framerate.
Compared to the GTA Defective Edition it's optimised for its hardware.
Ehhh GTA Trilogy Definitive is at least more enjoyable than Cyberpunk 2077
I think a large reason why there are so many documented glitches is people (myself included) find it fun to break the Gen I games, and feel the bugs add to the charm rather than just being a symptom of the game being a cheap cash grab. Missingno helped to whet their appetites, and then they fall down the rabbit hole, where things get progressively more chaotic as the game struggles to make sense of what is going on. These games are pretty easy to break if you know where to look. The glitches are also very reproducible, leading into the ability to share new glitches and easily experiment, very similar to finding new Pokemon in the actual game.
Man, after growing up with the first two generations for almost two decades, and then finally getting a new game with Shield, I really couldn't help but wonder why they decided to go all out with holding the player's hand, and to be honest I still do.
Me who never played a video game until Pokémon Sheild: uhhhhhhh
@@thomasedwardharrison2879 how
@@thatonecookie242 (young person)
@@thomasedwardharrison2879 hey, welcome to video games then!
One of the things I really like about Gens 1 and 2 is the stat experience that came before EVs were a thing. You could in effect max out each stat, with a lot of grinding. I like it for two reasons. Firstly I don't have to worry about getting EVs in the wrong stat which doing just a touch of more modern competitive battling has made me afraid of. Secondly, it kind of makes some early game weaker Pokemon viable much later on as they'll have much higher stats than an NPC Pokemon of the same level. It makes your team-building options bigger than they look like on the surface.
If someone doesn't like the earlier Gens I completely understand, but I think they are very much worth a try as they do bring a unique experience. If nothing else worth a try from a historic perspective and to better understand the mechanical growth that would come later on.
@Anthony O. Yeah, I like that point!
@@Drowmerc EVs were a thing in gens 1 and 2. Your thinking of IVs which in gens 1 and 2 they had a different system called DVs. In say Red version if you were to level up a Charizard the normal way by battling it would have way higher stats then a Charizard that was leveled up by rare candys.
@@alucard8433 Oh trust me I know. As I have played RBY all in a year through virtual console. I am not mistaking IVs and DVs. Check Bulbapedia but it is completely okay to call EVs in those gens stat experience, which I did because they work differently from traditional EVs. Or as I said in my own comment.
"Secondly, it kind of makes some early game weaker Pokemon viable much later on as they'll have much higher stats than an NPC Pokemon of the same level. It makes your team-building options bigger than they look like on the surface." I understand grind leveling works differently than candy level, especially in RBY.
@@Drowmerc No EVs still worked the same way they do now. The only difference is that you can max out all of the stats instead of being limited to 510 Effort Value points total from Gen 3 Onward.
*>" Secondly, it kind of makes some early game weaker Pokemon viable much later on as they'll have much higher stats than an NPC Pokemon of the same level. It makes your team-building options bigger than they look like on the surface."
You mentioned the extended series of keys, and I think that actually harps on one of my favorite aspects of Gens 1-2 that got especially lost starting with Gen 5: beyond JRPGs, they also function very well as top down Metroidvania. And the nonlinear mapping of the world enhances this feeling even more. A lot of later Pokemon games really lost this aspect and it actually made them feel less organic in some ways as a result.
That's not so much a metroidvania thing, as it is just an old jrpg thing. The first couple of Final Fantasy games are all about getting the key, so you can get the key to get the key to access the place with the key. Or unlocking specific abilities or vehicles to use as a key to access new areas. Especially FFI and FFIII.
I really enjoy that aspect of those games, and in the older Pokemon games too. It makes for good world design and structure, and a sense that the entire world is a puzzle box to unlock. Like in the metroidvanias indeed.
@@RobinOttens Yeah the overworld feels incredibly pointless in newer Pokémon games
I agree. It is one of the reasons why I love the design of Pokémon Diamond and pearl
I'd argue non linearity is a weakness of the old games. The most clear example of this is in johto, where the non linearity after you get to ekruteak is the main reason the game has such a horrendous level curve.
Games, in general, have shifted towards telling stories instead of giving you areas to explore
They have aged in some areas, but they're still fun games with some great design. Alongside Emerald and Platinum, they're some of my favourite Pokemon games. Fast paced battles, great music, a lot of variety, and a difficulty curve that's just right; not much in the way of heavy grinding. A Minus.
I'm 20 years old so these games predate when I started playing Pokemon with X and I absolutely love the original red and blue. I think the way the way the map wraps around is great and makes it so towns are never to far away once you have all the HM's I think its the best layed out region to this day. Over the summer I played through it on a game boy pocket for the authentic experience and I had so much fun that I haven't had with Pokemon games in a while.
I always love seeing your analysis of the Pokemon games, it's really unique and factors in the context of the series and gaming at a whole into account when discussing their merits and shortcomings, which I something not many people do when talking about older games
I love your analysis videos so much, they always offer a fresh new perspective on things. Kanto isn’t among my favorite regions but I don’t think any Pokémon games are bad, and like you said, these were amazing for their time and people tend to forget that. Context makes everything better.
The thing I love so much about your videos is that even when I agree 100% with every point, I still always leave learning some huge new thing about the topic.
I really hadn't thought about the way the game is viewed from a child's perspective, and the intentional crafting of Dragon and Psychic as boss encounters, and it really goes to show how much thought GF put into the games.
It's sad to see how much legitimately incredible design choices from these games are pushed aside by the fandom as a whole.
I also think
The main theme of Kanto kind of became the theme of the series in a meta sense
Pokémon has progressed a ton over the years. A lot has been added. But a lot has been lost as well.
Personally, I love all of the games, but I do understand why people lament some changes.
Especially since I’m playing Shining Pearl, which gives me equal parts “they don’t make ‘em like they used to” and “I’m glad they do do this anymore”
Nice to see a video that isn’t “The graphics are a joke but it was a good game for its time…”
I revisited these when they released on 3DS and all I remember is how much more enjoyable they were than Sun and Moon… It’s hard to appreciate these games in the same way I once did, solely due to how many times I’ve played them, but this video made me do that ☺️ …Maybe I need to replay them again…? 🤔
The graphics aren't even bad. The Pokemon all look extremely unique and it was miles better-looking than most original Game Boy titles
dunno, i always thought the red and blue graphics were excellent and fit in very well with the overall graphic vision of the games (together with trainers + overworld). yellow's re-do of pokemon sprites to look more like in the anime to me is kinda like the breakfast "biggest downgrade in movie history" meme, where they give the goth girl a make-over and she just ends up looking kinda average.
@@robiu013 ya the red and blue sprites are the most detailed imo.
Nah its horrible
@@ratedr7845 Contarianism is pathetic
This is a FANTASTIC video, honestly, and a great articulation of a lot of the je ne sais quoi Gen I (and, where applicable, other JRPGs with similar design philosophies) has for me. As a kid, I didn’t get things like, say, Brock’s typing a placement in the game progression, stuck in my craw too much because overcoming stuff like that was, in my mind, part of the challenge of the game. I actually think he’s a pretty clever inclusion for how he can force a player to stop and assess the resources available to them. Said resources could’ve been doled out a tad better, sure (and I’d take away Brock’s Full Heals to make Poisoning his Pokémon a more viable strategy), but it’s absolutely something you can overcome and that teaches you about type matchups. Pokémon Tower, with all its Ghost-types, is kind of a harder (at least on paper) reprise of this same concept, actually.
Sure, it’s easy for me NOW, with my knowledge of the ins and outs of the game and of Pokémon in general, but it absolutely puts up a good challenge for young players and puts them in situations where the way forward is something they have to deduce for themselves rather than something that’s simply handed to them.
Also PVP JRPG gameplay kinda wasn’t a thing before Pokémon like at all?? At least to my knowledge??? So I really can’t fault them for balancing things around what they had a frame of reference for, which was the single-player storyline context.
There’s just something so iconic about gen 1 on an original game boy that an emulator can’t replicate.
Gen 1 did a lot of things right for the first game in the series. There are some things it doesn't do quite as well as many other games but it was a very well designed game for it's time and still holds up very well today. A game doesn't have to be complex to be good. Sometimes something simple can be something really special.
honestly it was a good groundwork plus the jank can be used by you as well as against you.
I think this is what’s really appealing of the first generation of Pokémon because I think of those of us at the advent and after have always known this but never realized or understood it. The connection between urbanization and nature and how humans affect the balance of it through Pokémon. Even the first season of the anime showcased this concept like with the Tentacruel episode and Bye Bye Butterfree.
Nice awkward conversation with Matt VS Japan 😂
The infrastructure of Pokemon is definitely interesting to think about as an adult. Great angle to tackle the man vs. nature themes from. I never noticed that the Pokemon get stranger as you progress into the more Urbanized areas of the game.
You're 100% correct about the bugs in the game and how people perceive them and go too hard. When actually playing the game most people aren't going to notice any notable bugs. I certainly didn't encounter anything on my own outside of being told about how to encounter missingno from an outside source.
In contrast even as a small child I found a way to break out of normal play areas in Wario Land and experience super glitchy areas. And that game is significantly less ambitious than Pokemon was.
Putting any game from that era under as much scrutiny as Pokemon would no doubt yield tons of bugs.
As someone who grew up with Red, Blue and Yellow what I love about those games is their simplicity. The newer games have so many needlessly complex systems that its less about the pokemon and more about exploiting the system. Where in Red you can just hop in and enjoy the world.
I grew up on the gen 5 Pokemon games myself since the GameBoy era was kind of before my time. I think nostalgia does kind of help with replay value like this, I for example can always return to a Unova game and barely miss anything from the latest ones because like you said, I'm used to it. Maybe one day I'll pick one of these games up on virtual console (you put Crystal on my radar because everything you praised it for was stuff I'm into with RPGs), but even if I never get the chance that's kind of what videos like this are for to me. You get to live vicariously through someone else for a little while and experience a game you otherwise might never be able to. I think that makes them a pretty important form of content which makes me wish UA-cam was more friendly with it. So thank you for taking the time to make these amazing essays! It's really an honour to tour the Pokemon with you.
What an incredible video. So many great ideas you talked about in this one, I can't possibly comment on all of them in a single comment. Just let me say thank you for the great watch and congratulation on such a remarkable piece of work.
I think it says a lot that the foundation laid out in the first games was robust enough to support all the future games without heavily changing most of the core mechanics. Great video!
Man I clicked on the video thinking I was gonna find a new UA-camr to watch but I accidentally stumbled upon my favourite UA-cam channel when I was like, 12 years old lol. Weird to think about.
You've improved a lot! Glad you're still making content!
Really glad I found your channel again, you're one of the major reasons im so into the Pokemon series in the first place :)
Yet another amazing essay! Tama, you have a really great ability to be compelling and interesting regardless of your side on a topic, and I enjoyed hearing your reasons for why the original games are so dear to you. Just because a game hasn’t aged well and had flaws mechanically doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad game or there aren’t things about it that can’t be enjoyed, and although I personally don’t enjoy playing Gen 1, I’ve honestly gained a newfound respect for them and can totally understand why people prefer these to any of their remakes. I definitely agree that depending on where you started in the series, certain quality of life changes or graphical improvements might be deal-breaking for you (I started with Gen 3 so it makes sense why the first games frustrate me so much)! Your takes are always so enjoyable to watch and I hope life is treating you well. Can’t wait for the next essay!
Ahhh it's so nice to see you put out a video again. You've always been one of my preferred UA-camrs and seeing you upload a new video after 10 months definitely made my morning.
These games have great jrpg balance mechanics like late game Pokemon being stronger than early game to reward catching and using new stuff, non linearity, centralised locations with quick backtracking, and good rewards for talking to optional NPCs.
It feels like the fandom often forgets pokemon is mostly the adventure, not the post game. Which is funny, bc that's the crowd who talso tends to drop a pokemon game in a year and not sink their teeth into the rpg world of the post games.
I remember back in 2012 there was a big pokemon craze at my school and I ended up finding my sisters blue cartridge and buying a gameboy colour to play it. I was addicted and beat the main campaign and caught all the legendarys. I would say it definitely holds up
Wow! So professional, enjoyable, and insightful. Thank you so much for the content, this video was lovely.
I never played an official game that came out before Pokemon Emerald, but I'd love to try to play Red or Blue on an emulator -- some of the old-school appeals you mentioned sounded really enticing. The main reason why I haven't played them yet were for Red & Blue's infamous bugginess, and for its poor quality of life. So it's exciting to hear that both of those claims were greatly overstated.
What an amazingly fresh perspective!
19 y/o here. I grew up playing white and soulsilver with ss being my very first Pokémon game. Beating red a few weeks ago marked my completion of every mainline region. What I can say is that the experience still encompassed what I think to be the true spirit of Pokémon. Despite its graphical and qol inadequacies, the game still takes you on an adventure through a lush world. It still manages to immerse the player and allows your imagination to fill in the gaps where necessary. (As any good retro game should for it to hold up in 2021) In that respect, it truly shows the creative direction was being limited by the capabilities of the hardware/development team more than anything else.
This is something that I feel took a sharp turn from gen 6 onward, where gf/pc/nintendo made the capabilities of the hardware one of the major driving points as they forced a direct translation of Pokémon to be “3D.” (Although I long for the return of megas) All just for it to fall on its face in swsh and solidify its current state as a modern triple A game where they’ll rush anything for a holiday release.
That being said, I definitely don’t see gen 1 as perfect and honestly think it deserves some of the shit it gets. It very much is rough around the edges and leaves a bit too much up for the player to find their own fun/build their own world (for my taste at least). I think it deserves respect, but it is in no way underrated. Genwunners is an old, dead meme and no one is sucking off the recent games. Gens 3-5 were peak imo for good reasons. They built upon a very strong foundation from 1 and 2 and used the better hardware to realize their creative direction more vividly rather than rely on it to sell copies. It was a solid attempt and first entry into a beautiful idea of a franchise, but no first try is perfect.
I can’t imagine my opinions are unheard of or unpopular, but it definitely isn’t clouded by nostalgia lol. Great vid and hoped a take from a younger Pokémon fan reassured that not everyone hates gen 1
I love this! Thank you so much, you pretty much hit every point I've been trying to make about these games for years.
While I tend to be a bit evasive about my age on the internet, for this I feel it's important: I was a preteen when this game was announced, and already loved RPGs like Final Fantasy VI and Super Mario RPG, and I actually fell in love with the idea of an RPG where you could add random battle monsters to your party. With over 100 possible monsters you could use?! On the flippin' GAME BOY?! WHAT?! It's hard to emphasize just how important the context and the time period were for the game. Especially since the original Game Boy felt, even at the time, that you were accepting the limitations and restrictions for the convenience of portability, but Pokemon never felt like anything was getting sacrificed by it being on the platform. And again, as you said, graphical presentation and QoL aside, it still holds up as just a fun RPG
The sense of exploration and discovery is what made the early games great. The maps were non-linear, paths were inaccessible because you have to earn some item and task, and it really made you feel accomplished when you finally unlocked the path. The new games maps are WAY too linear, especially SWSH.
Another triumphant return! Your analyses and insights make my heart and mind sing!
as you said, the game is 100% playable without encountering any glitches.. until you actually go and find them
Your essay videos are always my favorite format you do. You’re able to articulate my thoughts in an actual comprehensive fashion. So glad to see people move past the “haha buggy game” argument and look at the game in the context of its release.
Also very happy to see discussion on how well developed the “key sequence” of the mid game is with the Silph Scope, people will shit on it but then go on and praise Metroid and Zelda games which have fundamentally the same gameplay loop lol. Also glad to see your analysis of the themes of industrialization destroying nature. I thought the environmental storytelling with Team Rocket killing the Marowak and the journals in the Pokémon mansion was very well done too.
Appreciate your hard work Tama! Keep it up!
The ole reliable “go back and review the original games” video. Working like a charm ✨ 🤍
Something I'd like to comment on further is the experience of playing games made by one people or a small group. An experience that remains fairly similar to this day.
Making and coding video games is extremely hard, which is something the average person probably wouldn't know because of how much of a monolith big developer teams and publishers are.
Playing red/blue for what they are is just like one of those very indie gaming experiences. You have to be ready to forgive and glance over the rough edges in order to enter the wonderful and deeply sincere world that the hearts of one or a few people have managed to pour out. Worlds that those people found so worth to see assembled that they went through with the hassle of game development, just so they could see it brought to life.
I have to say, I really appreciated the way this video focused more on the big-picture elements of an RPG that often fade into the background, not only in the form of the structure and theming of the game, but also the context and creative intent behind it. It was one of the rare times I feel like someone talked about these original Pokémon games as, well, art, and not just a template for other games, or the start of a big media franchise.
In short, this video made me think about and appreciate these games on a deeper level than I would've otherwise, and reminded me not to take games like them for granted.
I think nostalgia's a thing. I'm played Gen 1 when it was new, and I remember when Pokemon Yellow and Pokemon Stadium both came out. For their time, they are VERY good games, and arguably the best games released on the original Game Boy. Only other contender is Link's Awakening.
That said, having played every other game over the years, Red and Blue have definitely aged, and there are much better ways to experience Kanto. Honestly, I'll play FRLG any day of the week, because it's a much better version of those games, with fewer bugs and better balancing, and it's much nicer to look at. Let's Go is.... okay, but what they took out and what they added don't quite make it better than FRLG in my book.
TLDR: In my opinion, FRLG is the best way to experience Kanto, and while good for its time, I have issues going back to RBY.
I respectfully disagree with the FRLG comment, but as a fellow 90s kid I also have to admit that you cannot see Gen1 or RBY without seeing the Pokémania that happened in the late 90s. Yes, there was the MCU a few years ago and all the power to Endgame fans, there is Fortnine and Among Us today. There's K-Pop being listened all over the planet and Minecraft even to this day is massive. But I can't think of many cultural phenomena that turned the world upside down so fucking brutally as Pokémon did in the late 90s.
Pikachu was in the motherfucking cover of TIME magazine, the Pope talked about Pokémon, Pkmn The Movie was the best selling kids movie of all time (until Finding Nemo 2 years later). Gen 1 was a worldwide phenomenon.
You are weak
Same here. It's fun to start up the og games every once in a while to play for a bit, but I always go back to FRLG if I plan on playing through the entire game. I just don't have a desire to complete the originals again when I could be playing a version that's more polished in pretty much every way. I feel at this point the only reasons for the average person to play the originals are either for nostalgia purposes, or if you wanted to experience them in their purest, unfiltered form, cracks and faults included.
People are gonna flame me for this but imo the best way to experience Kanto, are either the Let's Go games or Heart Gold/Soul Silver
@@rikustorm13 the proprietor of the smoothest brain on the internet right here
Main reason why I love Gen 1 and 2, so much exploring and both generations are simple to pick up.
No long un-skipable cutscenes, no mystery gifts of mythical/legendary pokemon, etc. Everytime I replay Gen 1 and 2 I always find new things, even 25+ years later.
Thanks for this awesome video. ❤
honestly i still love gen 2 cause it's got a lot to do and it's fun and cute
Great perspective. I really love these essay style videos! I'll admit Gen I is hard for me to go back to. I find Gen 2 much easier, but there's still a lot of value there in the experience. Some stuff you mentioned like tedious menus and inventory space reminds me of the same problems Earthbound has. But if you can put those aside and know what to expect going in, it'll be a very fresh experience.
Tama talking the OG Red & Blue games! This made my day!
The real problem with this game is the lack of some quality of life features, thats why i could understand why someone wouldnt like too much this game today, but at least for me, Gen 1 is the definition of a flawed masterpiece, for a 1996 portable black and white game, this was just unmatched, and i was impressed how even today i was having a lot of fun. The simplicity, the artstyle, the nonlinear exploration along with Kanto map design and a lot of the different gameplay mechanics compared to newer games in the series are also why i really like it.
As someone who started with R/S/E first (born in 1993, started in 2002) and played R/B/Y and G/S/C after finishing Sapphire, and there is a charm and simplicity to Gen I and Gen II that I haven't experienced anywhere else. Yes, Gen I is flawed, but considering the technological limits at the time? It's impressive that these games still hold up fairly well and are still a challenge. Love you content, and keep up the good work!
Thank you for this video! This is an awesome analysis on a topic I haven't seen discussed before and it's done in a way that doesn't go out of it's way to appease anyone while also treating the subject with respect. You bring up a lot of really great points I hadn't ever considered before, but will keep me thinking for a long time.
I've got to say your newest pokemon reviews are some of my favourite videos on the internet. The way you actually take a new approach on reveiwing them is lovely, and I think they really capture what's special about the games.
Lovely analysis that's original and really gives pause to normal discourse surrounding these games. Playing Dragon Quest and reading the Helix Chamber articles of this gen really gave me a chance to re-evaluate how these games were built. In Dragon Quest, the story is usually rudimentary and more about going to each location and seeing stuff kind of play out around you. It's very similar to how the Team Rocket plot sort of transpires as you're trying to hunt for Pokemon. I do think your points on how exploration is prized in these games most is very notable as the game does not really have a clear goal. More recent Pokemon games always tell you what's happening next in the Menu. By the time you Cut the tree in Cerulean, the game practically throws you into the middle and you have to figure out how to get to the bottom of the map with very little to go on. Further, I really think Pokemon types being mostly based on giving certain teams a 'final boss' feel is well identified.
For me, I have not a lot of love for Gen I simply because I never played these games through as a kid. My first Pokemon game was Pokemon TCG and then Gold. I do know how to get MissingNo because I was a schoolkid in the late 90s/early 00s and had some exposure, but my only real context for these games is from challenge run videos on UA-cam. So I look at these games as a curiosity more so than any real major pangs of nostalgia (Gen II on the other hand is all nostalgia).
It's so cool to see how your analysis has become so sophisticated. I'm not sure if you've ever read the Helix Chamber articles about how the Pokemon in Gen I were developed, but you should check them out. There's stuff in there how Types were introduced a bit later, hence why Normal types learn so many moves as they were mostly the earlier Pokemon developed.
These are my favorite Kanto games too. I love the simplicity. It's so refreshing. I by no means think they're the best Pokemon games, but for me at least, they're among the easiest to go back to. You can immediately jump into training Pokemon without a dozen mandatory tutorials and no complex mechanics. Plus it takes me back to a simpler time like you said.
A big thing people tend to miss when saying that Pokemon was never difficult is that there's more to difficulty than just the design of individual battles. There's the difficulty of exploring a complex dungeon, or solving a tricky puzzle, or making good use of limited resources, or figuring out a complex sequence of events to progress. There's so much stuff you do outside of battle that affects a game's difficulty. If you look at these elements in gen 1 compared to later games, then they're... still not extremely difficult or anything, but they are substantially more challenging than what you'll find in most modern Pokemon games.
Bring back limited carry weight and Poison affecting Pokémon outside of battle.
Okay, I have NEVER put two and two together with the safari zone / nature preserve thing. That’s such a neat detail and good observation.
I agree with a lot of this. I grew up with Gen 1 and have spent thousands of hours playing these games over the years. There's something really charming about how simple everything is. However, I have come to prefer FRLG over time because I'm intimately familiar with the deeper mechanics of all Pokémon games, and Gen 1 is much more difficult to build diverse teams for, due to how many Pokémon are just awful. Both games have strengths and weaknesses though and I'm really glad they both exist to scratch those different itches.
If you're familiar with the Universal Pokemon Randomizer, randomizing moves, grant 4 moves at level 1, force 80% good moves and Update Moves to Gen 8 does wonders for viability.
Bug gets 25BP Pin Missile and 80BP Leech Life, Fighting gets (High) Jump Kick which keep their 1 point of recoil from gen 1 and get 130 and 100 base power respectively, as well as a 50BP Fighting Karate Chop that always crits for fully Evolved pokemon.
Fly becomes 90 / 95 and Drill Peck gets spread around.
Dig is a minor casualty, dropping to 80 power, but the consolation is a lot more pokemon naturally learn dig and EQ under these settings.
Gen 1 is really fun just doing this and leaving everything else the same. Or you can ramdomize Pokemon as well for a more distinct and unpredictable experience
Honestly even if you didn't say anything "new" in these videos (which you do) your videos now are so different I'd love to see anything pokémon-related you make.
You’re a boomer.
Also great video! I think my favorite part of your analysis videos as of late has been how you bring the perspective of the dev teams life(living in tokyo being urbanized ect) and how it comes through in the Pokémon games story and themes. It’s something I literally never thought about until the RS and now this video
Also glad you touched on the bugs being overplayed. Yes they’re buggy, no it didn’t bother me when I was 7, and actually they were super fun. Missingo was very useful lol!
There’s something so nostalgic and relaxing about your voice. It brings me back to when I first discovered your channel what feels like over a decade ago.
The point about facing dragonite during the Lance battle is an interesting take. I've never heard it before, but it makes total sense. Without a guide book or any previous knowledge of what he had, that fight would have been even more incredible.
Yup and it was a day before internet really. So you had to ask a friend for information now you can pull up a typing chart in an instant. Good times.
Being 36 years old, I started with gen 1, even though HG/SS are my favorite Pokemon games. I've played most Pokemon games up until the current Bad Era on the Switch. They're not my favorite, but I _LOVE_ Red and Blue because of how different they are from other Pokemon games.
Their code is held together by tape and glue.
Their sprites are unlike what Pokemon even in the anime looked like at the time that the anime Pokemon seemed like a completely different species than the same Pokemon from the games, like Growlithe, Exeggcute with the giant "master egg," Koffing with the skull and crossbones on its forehead, "realistic" Pidgey, fat Pikachu, etc.
The inventory system is awful to the point it makes the game difficult and your bag and PC has extremely limited space (especially if you do what I do and save all your TMs, to either later duplicate with Missingno or use on your best Pokemon party members.)
Some of the routes throw 30 trainers at you at once, like the trek from Lavender to Fuchsia, or the Silph Co. takeover of Team Rocket.
The learnpools in gen 1 are atrocious, because breeding didn't exist back then, so some Pokemon's first level-up move wouldn't be until level 37!
They don't force some HMs onto you, so unless you explore, it's easy to get lost and not know you have to go deep into the Safari Zone to get the HM you need. And some people can go the entire game without having ever found the HMs for Flash or Fly. The game punishes you for taking shortcuts and skipping things.
The levels of opponent Pokemon are often much higher than your team, like those powerful lv. 33 Dugtrio in Diglett's Cave and your rival's team jumping like sixteen levels by the time he's the Pokemon League Champion.
Speaking of which, your Rival is also a jerk in gen 1 and actually motivates you to want to grind and beat him, unlike all the soft rivals from gen 3 onward.
The game is the total opposite of today's hand-heldy games and it's easy to get lost in them, but even as a child, I still managed at beat Red and Blue no problem.
And so on. Everything about Red and Blue is unintentionally hard (relative for a Pokemon game), which makes it a lot of fun! Even Yellow isn't as fun because of the improved sprites, giving you all three starters, and the removal of (an easy to encounter) Missingno.
Everything about Red and Blue is such a unique experience from the easier games from gen 3 onward, and the sprites are so unique, I love going back to Red or Blue every year or so due to its unintentional difficulty and chaotic code. The gen 2-5 Pokemon games are fun too, but lack that chaos and difficulty I love about Red and Blue.
I love this review soooo much. Thank you for putting in the time to explain why gen 1 are still wonderful games.
I have so often wondered why people have maligned pokemon RBY as often as they do. I feel it has to do more with recency bias than actual objective data.
Not even recency bias, most of its haters are Gen 4 and 5 elitists
I still have my Blue version cartridge I played back in the day, and as much as I would love to crack it in and have that old nostalgia trip of playing on an authentic gameboy again, I just can't bring myself to erase my team I made back in 2002;
Sandslash
Gyarados
Starmie
Pidgeotte
Raichu
Muk
(Yes I play in an emulator sometimes but it's not the same).
anyone can say whatever they want about gen 1, but the battle system they came out with is insanely good. they essentially made chess with 100 different pieces. That's pretty impressive
Good but extremely broken. There’s a reason why 6 Gens later they were still changing things. Around.
I thought I knew about as much as I could about gen 1 but here we go.
Really thoughtful analysis that took me back to why I fell so in love with this series as a kid, for reasons I never fully realised until now. I particularly like your points about how the environment itself tells the story, and how the game makes more sense as being from a kid's perspective.
The death of the proper dungeon in mainstream JRPGs in recent years has been one of the primary reasons I've fallen out of touch with the genre as a whole. It almost feels like JRPGs are ashamed of their own mechanics these days rather than trying to innovate on the experience point system in meaningful ways, settling for using the same mechanics while focusing more on non-gameplay elements like storytelling to appeal to people instead of using the gameplay as the selling point.
As such we've seen a decline in the genre, both in Pokemon and in general
Story matters though, it elevates games beyond meaningless lizard brain shit
@@ChangedMyNameFinally69 Chess exists completely without context or a narrative and is still one of the cornerstones of tactical game design to this day, you absolutely do not need a story to have a good game
Furthermore you can keep believing that story is what elevates games instead of gameplay while Pokemon continues to deteriorate in quality. There was more good "narrative" experiences in the relatively more difficult dungeons of Gen 1 than any attempt Game Freak has made at telling an actual story because running out of resources and fighting tough enemies creates its own stories independent of whatever junk the developers are trying to force on you. Sun & Moon and Sw&Sh have almost as much in cutscenes as gameplay and it's generally agreed the story parts of SM bring down the experience while in SwSh it actively makes the game worse
@@darkfireslide Okay lizard brain
@@darkfireslide chess is a board game
So is D&D yet it was the backbone of most RPGs to date
Educate yourself about games
I really love this review. It's refreshing to hear someone not call these games "unplayable because of the glitches" or type charts. As you said, I really had to go out of my way to try and encounter glitches when I played these as a kid and even now. I also remember encountering Lance for the first time and going against his Dragonairs and Dragonite, having never seen them before and overcoming the challenge of defeating these pokémon despite having no idea about their weaknesses. I think it's ok to have some types to be better than others, especially here where Psychic and Dragon types are rare to come across and present a memorable challenge to beat.
I've played almost every generation of Pokémon (I missed gens 6 and 7) and I would also have to say that the music in gen 1 still holds up incredibly and has given us the most iconic tracks of the pokemon gaming franchise.
I also love the simpler story of this and gen 2. You're sent out on your own adventure as a 10 year old and happen to take down the criminal organisation. I've always found the storylines where you save the world, because it's expected of you, to be way too over the top personally. Despite it's own issues, Pokémon Sword and Shield did well in this area.
Back in the summer of 2016, because of the 20th anniversary of Pokémon, I wrote a few articles on my blog revisiting the earlier Pokémon gens. I did my research on gen 1 and, of course, part of it focused on how the games were developped by a small team and all the glitches. That was the time Pokémon Go was exploding and, as people may remember, crashing out every five seconds or so. Back then, I realised the guys at Niantic were going through similar issues Game Freak went when they made Red&Blue: a small team, making something that had never been made before, something that became bigger than what they ever imagined, that ended up a bit rough around the edges.
What I love the most about gen 1 is how simple and classic it is -- even if this is just the nostalgia talking. Games aren't like that anymore. And the soundtrack! I'm listening to it right now, while I'm typing this, and it's striking how such simple themes (some of which became staples on Pokémon) acomplish so much. I mean, don't you guys get that "Oh no" feeling everytime you listen to the Rival's theme? And the creepiness of Lavender's theme? And the growing tension of the battle themes?
I'm going to replay these games one of these days. 🙂
I think the magic of Gen 1 that will never be replicated comes from the fact that we didn't have the internet back then, I didn't know what "Special" meant, I didn't know the psychic type was OP, I didn't have a catch rate calculator and thought it was impossible to catch any of the legendaries without a master ball.
We were dropped in this world without knowing how it worked under the hood, now we can find out what the best team is, every secret and learn about every game mechanic.
I really enjoyed Sword with the expansion pass, but it's a completely different feeling.
Good video, but I don't think multiplayer was introduced to Gen 1 until the very end of development. The official sources I've read all seem to claim that PVP was added at the very end of development (which is why it can be notoriously buggy even for Gen 1) which would mean that the games were single player RPGs first and foremost.
That being said, I've been doing a 151 run of Yellow this year and I'm almost done! The game holds up better than I expected; definitely moreso than FRLG or LGPE I feel where the changes made to the games in the remakes undermine what made Gen 1 so special to begin with.
Honestly this video helped me appreciate Gen 1 so much more. I love to rag on red and blue but this video opened my eyes to really appreciate how they stand up even today. Thank you.
Regarding the "Pokemon games are not difficult" section: No, Gen 1, and 2, where reasonably difficult games, the actual problem here is how anything XY and later is ridiculously easy to a point where you do not have to think and just play on auto pilot without ever facing the danger of even losing a single fight. They even made the rivals chose the weaker type ...
And in sword/shield they even went out of their way to have other NPC investigate things and told the player to just continue with the gym challenge.
Sword and shield are games that do not have any form of challenge or difficulty in the main story. There is not a single problem the player has to solve, outside of ridiculously cheap gym challenges, to progress. They even went so far to limit what you can capture at any given time by limiting the level of pokemon you can capture to the amount of badges you have just to limit your options even further. The game is outright hostile towards free thought and creativity.
Incredible video. I have watched countless videos of "surprising facts you didn't know about pokemon" since playing generation 1 as a child over twenty years ago, but your discussion of the themes of these games and how they were illustrated by gameplay and simple design choices I'd previously looked over was illuminating. Mewtwo as an allegory for the atomic bomb; amazing!
Who else came here after watching Matt’s video?
Be honest ,For Pokémon y need improve My English y pum somethihg of this Game number 1 in franquisias
who
Now i wanna try those dungeons. A neat thing aboung gen 1 was the speed.
I found this video enjoyable as well. Amazing job✌️🔥
Gen 1 and 2 Were the best in the series... There's a reason red and blue are rated as best rpg in all time
I am so glad you made a video again! It's so true people forget how much the world has been changed by the og games. They are still my favorite
I've always found the most hypercritical takedowns of Gen 1 seem to come from a place of jealousy. They're almost always voiced by someone who wasnt around when the games released and so they missed the unparalleled phenomena that was Pokemania. Pokemon might be popular today, but it's absolutely nothing compared to the late 90s.
Gen 1 were games designed by 9 people nearly 30 years ago, and they still have less game-breaking glitches than Scarlet and Violet shipped with.
Agree. I would also take 100 of hidden glitches over 10 constant ones.
I find it so weird that people use the glitches as something that makes the games worse or bad when I find glitches that add to the experience of a game as always a positive. Fun or useful glitches were always exciting to find.