Ghost Type Pokémon in RBY 

whoever the one person who suggested this for the obligatory slightly silly April Fools vid a while back was I hope you're doing well

Gengar coming out and Countering something that killed an entirely different pokemon is probably the most "ghost" thing you can do in any pokemon game

I like the implication that Tajiri ran into a ghost and a dragon while exploring the country side.

Can't believe you didn't mention that Gengar's Explosion has a 1/45 chance, on a noncrit, to put a full HP Jolteon or Snorlax in the 255 damage glitch, making them unable to Rest. With such crucial info left out, no wonder people will still pick Charizard as their lead in OU.

What’s more mind boggling than only 3 ghost types, is in Gen 2 when they made a ghost gym, added *1* new ghost type, and it’s NOT EVEN IN THE GYM.

It'll never not be funny to me that ghost and dragon types exist in gen one, but each type gets one evolution line and basically no same type attacks.

I was going to say something about lick being able to paralyze normals unlike body slam, but then I realized.

Fun fact: The types are so imbalanced in this game, Gen 1 has more poison types than Gens 2 to 6 combined. Also, this would be the case even if the Gastly line wasn’t poison.

Small thing, but you ALWAYS kill it with the Pokemon names in your background footage. “Gengarfluid” had me on the floor

I love how ghost in Gen 1, in game was built up being this ultimate counter to psychic just to have 1 base 20 power move and the fact psychic is immune to ghost due to a fucking bug. Shit sucks

As a quick note on the type diversity of Gen 1, the devs found out late into production that they were going to be getting a second game on a bigger cartridge, so when it came time to cut down the original ~185 pokemon for space, they knew that they would get to put them back in later, so they were more considerate of the region itself over fair type distribution when making cuts, and since team rocket is a poison type team and the most memorable and common trainer type, they wanted them to have the most diversity. So poison types were basically given a free pass over in the dex, hence why there's so many. Now, as for why they don't have many ghosts despite having an entire town dedicated to them? That's a mystery we'll never solve. Also, it will never not be funny to me that Lance is a flying type trainer and Agatha a poison type. (Also, I think DEER may have been a ghost type too, it looks undead to me)

I want to make a comment contributing to the discussion, but can I just say I love the visual gags in this video? The Ghost of Chansey coaching Gengar, Lickitung not knowing what to do with the ice cream, Gastly at a job interview, even stupid shit like the repeated use of Gastly, Haunter, and Gengar's flat and unamused face is just so entertaining to me.

I get why Ghost was physical for Gen 1 because the only damaging move that wasn’t set was Lick, but I really wish they swapped its physical status with Dark’s special in Gen 2, especially given how Dark had a LOT of moves that appeared to be physical at first glance.

The lack of Ghost and Dragon types seemed like an attempt at making the types feel special. Gen 1 is largely designed around the idea that you have constant access to Normal Type moves, but that Special Attacks help you against common resistances. Ghost: Only type immune to Normal Type attacks. Dragons: Largely resistant to most Special Attacks.

Pokémon like Gen 1 Gengar and Dragonite have me convinced that at one point “signature Types” were a thing. That or they were so certain they’d make a sequel that they allocated resources towards creating a Typing stuck with either Poison or Flying. I’d love to see the alternate universe where this concept stretched so far that you have overly-specific combos like Fairy/Carbohydrate Daschbun and Psychic/Digit Unown.

Hearing that Golbat's harassing 7U with Confuse Ray is just incredibly funny to me, considering that's pretty in line with the experience of fighting wild Zubat and Golbat And considering 7U is basically the embodiment of a player's team in the early-mid game of a playthrough, that really could not be any more appropriate

The fact that shadow ball drops sp def & gengar's sp atk is so much higher than its phys atk always made me think someone in the design process thought that ghost moves were special b4 the split

I don’t have much experience in RBY, but think the funniest thing about the Ghost type in early games is Misdreavus, which no trainer has in GSC and is only available in Mt. Silver. It’s like they’d almost finished the game and then someone went “hey did you guys see this ‘Ghost’ type we got?” and everyone panicked to add something as quickly as possible.

Imagine this in an alternate timeline Satoshi: "When designing the first Pokemon game I would think back to my childhood where i climbed ancient mountains and explored haunted houses. I guess its no surprise there are so many Ghosts and Dragons huh?"

Golbat's Confuse Ray also comes up in Ubers where, uh, you can use it to annoy the shit out of Mewtwo after doing your job of walling Body Slam-less Mew.

My biggest problem with the gengar line being poison type isn't even for balance reason. I love poison types even when it's a hindrance. The issue I have is thematic. Haunter and Genger don't really feel like poison types they feel like mono ghosts. If anything I think Gastly might have my favorite design of the line because that's exactly how I imagine a toxic ghost to look

just wanna mention that gengar has been using psychic in OU more often. it’s main use over mega drain is being good vs other gengar, while also still hitting rhydon pretty hard since a neutral special attack still hits hard considering gengars high and rhydons slow special, currently in spl gengar has used night shade 14 times and psychic 10 times, so it’s not far behind

I never saw Pokemon as a BAD broken mess, but as an ambitious mess held together with scoth tape and spit.

I always found in interesting that generation 3 affectively introduced the ghost and dragon types into regular play - for not just were they nothing in gen 1, but they doubled down on this mentality in gen 2 - for the one new dragon was trade-only, and the new ghost was only available in an area where there was literally only a single trainer in the game left. It seems to me that they were intended to be "special" types due to ghost's normal immunity and dragon's many resistances (effectively only being weak to ice in gen 1) to only be found in extremely rare pokemon, until they said fuck it and made regular dragons and ghosts that could be pragmatically used.

I honestly love how drastically competitive gen 1 STILL changes. I feel like it really speaks to just how nuanced the game really is

The weird thing about Ghost being Physical type is that in Gen 3, you started getting Ghost Types that were specifically tailored to be physical attackers. Banette had a good amount of physical attack, and Dusclops was a bulky physical attacker as well. And then they got screwed over the very next gen, and were stuck with… Shadow Claw and Shadow Punch.

Epic nerding about beta Pokemon because this video gives me an excuse to write an overly long comment about them: I remember people saying that "Barunda" is probably a very, very early concept of Jigglypuff (the balloon pokemon) since you can kinda read "Barunda" as containing the way you'd say the English word "Balloon" in Japanese. And you know, it just _is_ a balloon. On a similar note, "Tsuinzu" is basically just how you'd say the English word "Twins" in Japanese. It kinda makes sense, since a lot of older Pokemon are just English words, like how the legendary birds are just called "Freezer," "Thunder," and "Fire." Finally, Crocky. I have nothing interesting to say about this one but god DAMN if there was a single unused Pokemon I wish was in the game, it'd be this one.

It might be because it's 2am and I'm delirious but Tentacruel getting swatted for sleeping made me die laughing

People really overstate the case for how buggy Gen 1 actually is. Most bugs in the game are either not something your average player would encounter in a normal run or mostly subtle and not that noticeable for the average player. People know about a lot of the bugs in the game because it got played so much by so many players taking it apart. Meanwhile as a small child I managed to break out of the map in Wario Land 1 and got into the glitchy mess area for example. Just imagine how buggy the perception of a game like that would be or frankly any game at the time if it got played as much as Gen 1 Pokemon.

I almost feel like the ghost type was "accidentally" balanced for most of its life, up until gen 8. Gen 1 was probably the roughest inherent gen for it both due to gengar being weak to psychic and ground, as well as the fact that a "real" ghost-type attack (like shadow ball) would thud against most relevant pokemon (even if psychic was weak instead of immune, the dominance of the Big Three means that there are at minimum 3 ghost-immune pokemon per team, and while it *probably* won't happen, shadow ball -> tauros switch-in -> lose speed tie -> crit eq would be a funny way to lose a match.) Gen 2 added an actual ghost-type move, but it also added dark, steel, and particularly Pursuit, which makes it much riskier to leave a ghost-type on the field for extended periods of time, mitigating the fact that it has two immunities. Gen 4 added the physical/special split, which allowed special-attacking ghost types to use their STAB, but it also made Pursuit much more dangerous now that it's a physical move. Gen 6 notably removed steel's resistance to Ghost (and dark) in what feels like a targeted, pre-emptive nerf to Aegislash, and rendered ghost-types immune to trapping (not that it would matter much for Smogon, seeing as arena trap and shadow tag were on their way out,) but it also buffed Knock Off's power and distribution. For much of the generations, the ghost type has been getting inherently better and better, but answers to the type have similarly risen to the challenge to keep them in a healthy spot. Then gen 8 removed pursuit, which I never agreed with, especially considering that gen also buffed teleport and added HDB, making it really hard to stop the opponent from walling your attacks and getting their attackers in for free, especially regenerator 'mons like slowking. And now we're in gen 9, where the meta has been warped around a ghost-type who can block almost all forms of hazard removal just by switching in, and who can simply switch out of your answer just to switch back in the next time you try to clear hazards. If Pursuit were still in the game, I would probably be defending Gholdengo due to the mindgames needed to block hazard removal without getting trapped, but as it stands the string cheese man is simply too riskless to use. (Also, let magnet pull affect ghost/steel types. I can understand ghost's ability to escape things like wrap and arena trap, but I think it's entirely reasonable for a powerful magnet to trap the metal parts of Aegislash and Gholdengo that they wouldn't want to simply leave behind.)

This is officially my favorite thumbnail (and potentially video) you have ever done Yellow, keep up the amazing quality, and Happy Fool's Day!

The 'Lario' base image has to be the greatest thing ever drawn by a human. It needs to be framed and put in a museum.

Yellow can I just say i absolutely love it when you edit the sprites to make them show different emotions.

I always appreciate the nicknames you’ve got in your showdown footage; I laughed out loud at “Nine Inch Tails”

Sometimes I wonder how Gengar would have done if it was a pure Ghost type and didn't have the hinderance that was the poison type in RBY. Man talking about my favorite type like that hurts but it do be like that

that spiderman/tentacruel scene LITERALLY killed me _i_ am now a ghost-type

I think a lot about dragon quest’s influence on early pokemon ; DQ2 inspired the games trading feature, and DQ5, while not the first monster taming game (that honor would go to megami tensei digital devil story on the famicom) it was very influential in the japanese design space. That game has an early game area where you rid a tower-like manor of ghosts, said ghosts just being some of the early game candle, fire spirit and, who could forget, Dragon Quest Fat Rat. Not many enemies you could point to as an obvious “ghost” though. Gen 1 is odd for so many reasons, but the discussion of ghost types in this vid reminded me of that area. Another sudden thought ; why was marowak not a ground/ghost type? Would make perfect sense

Shotouts to the Stadium Rentals format (where you can only use the rental pokemon from Stadium), having both Haunter and Gengar viable at the same time, thus having the biggest amount of viable mons in RBY tiers, with 2. Also Dragon Rage is viable there due to both being a level 50 format and due to Aerodactly being forced to run it. It's also a really good move there too. Funny as shit.

One thing that's always fascinated me about RBY that I don't think is in any other Gen (that I've heard of, which tbf I don't know too much about other gens competitively), is how extremely different the metagames between OU and UU is, so much so that often when pokemon fall out of OU, they immediately go past UU because the metagame there just shreds them, Golem being a prime example. I'd love to see a video about the how and why OU and UU are so extremely different in Gen 1

I'm a huge fan of Gengar being a speedy, trolly, high risk high reward mon with the lingering threat of certain moves Fits them perfectly

It's so bizarre how the Gastly line is a special attacker despite both of its types being physical before the physical / special split.

for what it's worth, i've heard that Barunda was probably Flying type, which is why Bird type exists in the game at all, being initially to distinguish between things that fly because they are birds and things that fly by other means

I understand there being one ghost line. Everything that dies and becomes a ghost winds up as a ghastly. From a game design perspective, it's weird, but there's nothing inherently wrong from a world building perspective for there to be one kind of ghost and everything else about a haunting being decided by strength and personality

There is a 4th Ghost in RBY. It has has sprite and can _sort of_ be encountered as a battle. Yes, it's "Ghost" in Lavender Tower. I always thought it looked really cool. Too bad they never made a playable version of it.

That thumbnail perked me the hell up, I love Lario edits.

Thinking about how ghost had only 1 weakness in Gen 1(itself) and how the only ghost move was lick which is terrible. It makes me think that GF might've been trying to design ghost as more of a defensive type with a lot of immunities, few weaknesses, but very few ways of dealing damage. After all it makes sense since ghosts can phase through stuff in most popular media and it makes sense to make them more defensive to reflect that. It makes me want to see what would happen if a bulky ghost like cofagrigus was added into Gen 1.

“one of the decisions of all time” and “his ass is NOT optimal!” are just examples of the small things that make me love ur sense of humor and editing

I feel so bad for Tentacruel Lapras dropping to UU shook the tier up so bad that Tentruel is debated to not even be top 5 anymore

The best description I ever heard of Gen 1 is this. “Gen 1 is a game held together with ducktape and dreams that turned into a success. It’s what modern sonic games wish they could be.”

Putting a silly cat face on top of Gengar's artwork was really funny to me because I have a cat named Gengar!

Something about the “His ass is NOT optimal” image makes me keep returning to this video it’s frying my humor centers

I suspect part of the reason there's only one ghost type is that the ghastly line was originally supposed to be the ghosts of Pokémon, rather then just a pokemon species of their own that happened to be ghostly. This is how the lore in the game treats them, as well as the Kanto Anime. Later this changed but it does make more sense to only have one ghost pokemon line if the idea behind it is that it is just what pokemon are like when they come back as ghosts.

Nice to hear that RBY NU, the most luck-based RBY tier, is mostly unaffected by confuse ray.

I'm in a rough spot right now with anxiety and major tooth pain (cant see anyone til monday, of course this happens on a Friday afternoon) , this video came at the perfect time to help calm me down, thanks BY

Using Gastly in RBY ZU felt like playing with cheats on when you landed Hypnosis. It was so good.

Can you talk about the dark type in gen 1 next?

Calling a Pokémon game a passion project in the modern day is a wild thought

People always say “Charizard should’ve been a dragon type!” but no one ever says “Literally any Pokémon that isn’t in the Dragonite line should’ve been dragon type!”

Your edit jokes are so good! The gengar with egg and suspicious chansey had me rolling.

it took me so long to realise that Gengar Neutral was meant to be a riff on gender neutral. i pictured it as just two Gengars in a fighting game, playing in neutral.

to my understanding, one of the big reasons rby is so buggy is they had to get VERY creative with the code to make the game actually fit in 1mb. Also iirc it took until gen 7 for the total number of poison types not added in gen 1 to exceed the number of poison types added in gen 1 alone. Also also not only were there more dragons planned that were scrapped, scyther was originally a dragon with bug elements that got reworked into a bug with very very loose dragon elements that didn't really make it into the official art.

Big Yellow is my go-to listen to while doing chores. I love his commentary style and just the overall topics that he covers

Ive been having the worst day tonight. It's freezing cold. I had a miserable drive home cuz of the near lethal blizzard, amongst so many other things. But coming home and seeing Big Yellow upload a video. A really fun video about really fun things. That made my night. Thank You Big Yellow. Thanks for being such a cool person. Thanks for these wonderful videos. Thank you for giving me something very enjoyable to smile at :) ❤️ I hope you have a wonderful day.

An underrated aspect of these videos is the fucking clever nicknames. Laptoptier, Nine Inch Tails, they're all so much fun to spot.

The editing in these types of videos keep getting better and better. I've only discovered your channel fairly recently, but I love your content. Keep it up!

I'll never get over the fact that they added a second Ghost lineage in Gen 2 and Morty still only used the Ghastly line

Nice to hear rby getting some love. They may be broken and dated by today's standards but having a full rpg with 151 collectible characters on a handheld was revolutionary for the time. And they paved the way for what the series would become.

Thankfully gen 2 came and fixed the lack of ghost types and all was well

For anyone wondering, gengar is currently doing very well in gen 9 being a UU superstar, essentially being to UU what dragapult is to OU just without the ability to run physical attacking sets. It runs a large variety of sets from specs, scarf, substitute and nasty plot allowing it to shred through just about everything except for a tera poison gastrodon without setup.

Was waiting for another one of these! Keep up the great work!

Thanks to this channel I have an ever increasing knowledge of gens 1 and 2 formats that I'll never use because my favorite formats are nat dex monotype and metronome battle.

I am not the greatest fan of RBY (The GameBoy games). But RBY (The Smogon competitive scene) however... it might be one of the most fun competitive games I have tried in a long time.

everybody wanna be a normal immune

UR RLLY PRETTY IN THIS VIDEO BIG YELLOW

I like the little edits done to the sprites, those are a nice touch

I love your drip this vid. Great work as always!

3:15 he looks absolutely demented thank you very much for making me aware of Crocky

I always love seeing what you name the pokemon in these videos. Absolute comedic genius

I saw this got posted when I was at work and I’m so happy I can come home and watch it.

Thinking about it, Marowak was probably meant to be a Ghost type. It'd make sense, you fighting it as a literal ghost, and it would be pretty Gen 1 to make the skeleton pokemom using Bone Club accidentally Ground because it also starts with a G

If RBY were made today the Cubone line would absolutely be Ground/Ghost.

Your sprite editing and nicknames are always on point.

Great analysis video! Thanks for uploading!

The Tentacruel sleeping cutaway gag was perfect.

Gen 1 CAN be glitchy and buggy. As a kid just playing it straight? I noticed almost none of the oddities. It was incredible to me. It felt huge. And mysterious.

You’re quickly becoming a staple in my night time wind down routine, your videos are easy to throw on and relax to, your sense of humour is on point for my tastes. And it’s informative, in depth content. Been watching for months, finally wanted to express this.

putting the visibility in trans day of visibility cause ur a sight to behold damn

Gengar didn’t really get usable STABs until Gen 4 despite being added in Gen 1. The fact the physical/special split wasn’t in the first three generations always surprises me

One thing that always confused me about the ghost type in Gen 1 isn't even from the games, it's that the anime showcased them as a counter to Sabrina's psychic types, but A) they're weak to psychic attacks from the poison typing, and B) ghost type moves aren't super effective against psychic in Gen 1, even if that would only be Lick. I guess they just did it to explain why they backtracked to Lavender Town like the games.

Dude your videos are awesome. I listen to these to go to sleep. Not in a bad way, they just induce deep pokemon mechanic thought that put ne into a type of trance. Your speaking cadence is top notch too.

Big Yellow! Always a good day whenever there’s a new upload from you. Loving the hair too!

Unlike Growlithe not learning Growl due to translation differences, I can't for the life of me think of a reason as to why Lickitung couldn't get Lick. It definitely is weird that a mon that could kiiiiinda get some use from Lick can't, despite it making sense for it to use the move. Amazing video and amazing sprite edits! I love the sprite edits so much as some extra charm to the pokemon, if only they were that expressive in the games...

20 BP Electric move that is guaranteed to paralyze? Get that trash out of here! 20 BP Ghost move that MIGHT paralyze? NOW THAT'S THE REAL GOOD SHIT

Love these videos, keep up the great work!

5:20 this broke me 😂😂😂😂 I love your videos touching on deeper topics in the og games it’s so nice to kick back and listen to while playing RBY

Liked purely because you played Marionette in the video. Couldn’t even pay attention to the video was to busy vibing.

The lack of type diversity can be easily alleviated by making Pokemon based on fish and funny bugs, but making them a different type

Love your channel Big Yellow!!! 🖤💛💜

I think I've watched your other rby videos 14 times each. Thank God for the new vid bro!

>only 1 line of ghost pokemon >make them special attackers >make ghost a physical type Wtf were they thinking?