A look back at: Pokemon Red/Blue

 

I gotta admit, one of the hardest things for me is to make a full review of something that is immensely popular. And I mean immensely. Explaining the original Pokemon games, stuff that I literally grew up with, is actually kinda hard to do as I have to explain things as if the viewer has never heard of it. I never even knew how to play the original Pokemon through explanation, just by watching someone else play as a child and then after getting my first Pokemon game I would use what I know from watching them play. And then that's where I stand. My main review for this game outlines basically all the mechanics of the game, but this post will talk about my main grievances with Gen-1, as well as how it compares to several contemporaries at the time.

First of all, a major positive is that it gets the whole monster catching aspect right. It's pretty strange really that I'd say this here, but let's face it, Pokemon did it better than other games I played. Like Jade Cocoon? It did well overall, but a big issue is that the monsters you collect have to take up a turn to be summoned, giving the enemy a free turn. And that game didn't have much of the equivalent of trainer battles, in which this series also did well with. Then there's Robotrek, which seemed okay in most cases but was surprisingly slow-paced and awkward to do. I haven't really played any other Pokemon-like clone games as of yet, which goes to show you that Pokemon reigns supreme over the actual contemporaries*.

So I've played several ROM hacks, the vast majority based off of the Gen-3 engine games and a few for Gen-1 and Gen-2. Considering that we've finally replayed the original Pokemon Red/Blue (and I played both in tandem, constantly switching between the two!), I'll say what I gotta say about Gen-1 that I still have concerns with.

-To start off, the odd popularity that Gen-1 has over the rest of the gens has never struck me at all. People who love their nostalgia seem to prefer the Kanto games over everything else, even the Gen-3 remakes.

-Of course, the types in this game have always bugged me for numerous reasons. Bug and Poison were both super-effective with each other, while Bug was the only type effective against Psychic (an actual bug made it so Ghost type moves never affected Psychic). Oh! And speaking of moves, Ghost had only one good one, Lick, as Night Shade was a level-based move. And then there's the only Dragon type move which was the fixed-damage Dragon Rage, making Dragon types (of which there was only one line I might add), not all that amazing anyways! And Bug of course was never popular, with lackluster moves that wouldn't really dent the Psychic type much, and that's considering that Psychic types have bad defense stats.

-Speaking of stats, Special used for Special attack and defense, as well as classifying moves based on type instead of by the preferred method of whether a move is physical or special in the way that it would make contact or not. Maybe I got used to Gen-3 abilities where this was something that could have been considered, or Gen-4 actually doing the (infamous) physical/special split, but I honestly had no real qualms with it then. This? Awkward.

-The dreaded "Gen-1 miss", which is an odd phenomenon that only occurred in the first gen that made even 100% accurate moves like Ice Beam and Thunderbolt have the chance to miss even under normal conditions.

-Honestly the mon designs for the original game definitely didn't look clean. Sure, some definitely had a monster feel, but I wasn't a fan of most of the original Pokemon designs. Man, Pikachu used to look so fat.

-Many mons' move pools were utter garbage. Sandshrew, Ponyta, Koffing, hell, even Rhyhorn. They ended up not learning good moves of their own type (where they get a damage bonus).

But even with these grievances, this series clearly did a number by being great enough to be loved by many, and improves on the formula with several new concepts each new generation. This is all even when people often say they keep milking the same thing over and over, because there's always at least one thing new each time.

*Note, I don't count the tactical RPGs or Wizardry games or what not where you create characters, since character creation didn't involve battling and catching them, just creating them out of what you have and dealing with stats and equipment accordingly. Okay, Robotrek was this too, in a way, but your main character throw the robots to battle from his capsules, so it counts, okay? Pokemon-like RPGs are frickin' complicated.