Pokémon Red and Blue Retrospective 

hello yes I have read your comments about how psychic type weaknesses are based around common phobias, thank you very much I definitely missed that, please don't spam me with that thank you for watching

Man, Pokémon fever in the 90s was one hell of a time to be alive.

I remember interpreting “if you lose against the elite four, you have to start over” as new game start over. After a ridiculous amount of grinding while watching my Saturday morning cartoons, 6 year old me lost and was briefly mortified.

To answer your question, Psychic is weak to Bug because Psychic's weaknesses are based on three of the biggest phobias: darkness, ghosts and bugs.

This video only has made me realize how much the commercials for the show talk about how Ash has to catch them all, despite the fact that he absolutely NEVER tries to do that.

For the longest time as a kid, I thought the guy guarding cerulean cave was one of those British soldiers wearing one of those tall hats. But then he moved and I realized it was just the cave opening lined up perfectly with his head line.

"Why is psychic weak to bug?" Psychic Pokemon are weak to Bugs, Ghosts and the Dark (Dark Types), things people are irrationally afraid of.

"Hey, you can catch a Nidoran and have it learn Double Kick to beat Brock. That's not true." >Nidoran learns Double Kick at level 43 in R/B, 12 in Yellow "Oh."

No joke, when I fought Agatha of the Elite Four, she kept using Dream Eater on my Pokémon when they weren't even asleep. It made her battle incredibly easy.

I loved how even without the internet, stories like Pikablu and "Mew underneath the truck" still spread across the country like wildfire. That's kind of crazy and amazing if you think about it.

Putting Ho-Oh in the first episode tells you how confident they were that Pokemon would be huge

I remember my first time playing Red version, I managed to somehow catch a Pikachu in the wild but because my friend had Yellow Version we couldn't figure out why my Pikachu couldn't follow me oh, so I went into the settings for Pikachu and selected the release option thinking that he would follow me around, never caught another Pikachu after that, too rare. Sad moment.

90s playing pokemon at school during recess was lit

As for "stories made up by children", my sister wouldn't let me play Pokémon blue at some point because when the player misses the cruise the game tells you there won't be another one for a year, and my sister was waiting for it to arrive again. Eventually I got ourselves out of that, and continued the game, but I still think fondly of my sister waiting for the cruise. Only inexperienced kids would take that seriously, oh how I miss those times.

King K: The remakes would make my video 3x as long Someone who watched the 3 hour God of War review: pathetic

I always put the Bug/Psychic match-up in my head as an image of someone meditating being constantly interrupted by a loud cricket haha

The greatest memories of my childhood were all Pokémon red related. The day I got it and a gameboy colour, Fighting and trading at school, reading the manual back to front nearly every day. What a good time.

*Picks Charmander * Brock: So you have chosen death.

Drake Bell was in one of the og trailers for pokemon?? Damn that's some nostalgia right there lol

Bruh, the sense of achievement I got as an 8 year old finally getting through Rocket HQ/Silph Co and Victory Road was immense. The more I listen to you discuss the battle mechanics the more I realise just how much Red and Blue shaped my play style to the point I really, really struggle to adapt to modern competitive play. I'm still completely obsessed with type coverage over everything else.

Personally the majority of trading I did with Red and Blue were with my brothers. My mom owned the original Gameboy when it came out and when we started discovering how fun the pokemon series was, she didn't like it. She was a big Tetris fan and she wasn't able to get the console away from us. Soon she relented and got two Gameboy pockets for us to share. And we all got one cartridge each to pick. My mom got back to her Tetris and we succumbed to the pokemon addiction :)

The whole segment about the early game and Brock in Red/Blue I was thinking, "Doesn't Nidoran learn Double Kick pretty early and then go on to evolve into one of the strongest and most versatile Pokemon?" Then I found they learn it at level 43, and only in Yellow did they change their learnsets to get it at level 12. I also understand they probably did this for consistency, but it's pretty obnoxious they didn't fix the obvious "Psychic is immune to Ghost instead of weak to it" error, even though it wouldn't really matter anyway since the only damaging Ghost move is Lick with base 30 power, and the only Ghost types in Gen 1 who could get STAB are high special, low attack while Ghost was based off Attack, and to top it all off the final stage was a trade evolution. Man what a fucking mess.

Gosh that Red/Blue ad brings back memories...

"These games are glitchy" These games are miracles of programming and the fact they run at all is a miracle. They pushed the Gameboys hardware to its limit.

Most people started playing gen 1 but I played gen 3 Pokémon Sapphire, playing the game reminded me a lot of my home town and since I live close to the beaches. This game made me feel all sorts of things happiness, anger, excitement, and appreciation for something of a small game like this. This game is what made up my years from 10-14. If I could do it all over again I would.

Despite all its obvious flaws, there will never be a game that enthralled me the way the original Pokémon games did.

Man, I was a child in the 90s, and let me tell you when the first film came out, the theatre gave out special Mew cards, burger king had all of the toys, Pokemon was literally like Beatlemania of the late 90s. It was utterly EVERYWHERE. Every teacher talked about it, every kid had a gameboy, everyone on the playground traded cards and linked up. This shit wasn't just any game, it was like a revolution. It sounds ridiculous now with smartphones and whatnot, but back then, having a gameboy color in your hand was the norm. So nostalgic.

Oh man, the diamond and pearl retrospective might make me cry

This almost brought me to tears, I remember when red and blue first hit shelves, going to school everyday talking to friends about it. Spending hours walking in a patch of grass someone said they found a Pokémon I wanted in. The 1st gen was the hardest. People fail to remember that when they came out we had no idea about strategy and type advantage then. I use to order my Pokémon by level said them out in order from lowest lvl to highest. So many memories…

KingK: You don't see a lot of Golem Golem: Is literally one of the strongest, most used Pokemon in Gen 1, being used interchangeably with Rhydon

I’ll never forget- I was about 5 years old and my mom would always drag me along to go to garage/yard sales and I would be upset the whole time and wait in the car. She would come to the car if she found something she thought I would like and ask if I wanted it. One day we went to a sale and she came up to me with Pokémon yellow in her hand. We had a game boy at home that belonged to my dad but I would use it to play Tetris. When she showed me Pokémon yellow I said no, I don’t want it. She said it’s only 25 cents, are you sure you don’t want it? I said no, I don’t want it I want to go home. She ended up getting the game for me anyways, and I’ll forever be grateful to her for that. It became my favorite game of all time, I always played it on the bus on the way to 1st grade.

11:13 because Psychic represents the mind and its weaknesses are all common phobias. Bug, Dark and Ghost. There is logic there.

I can't wait to do a retrospection on all these retrospective videos in 6 years.

"You're a kid and you went to school with other kids with Gameboys." Unless you were me as a kid who went to a private school that banned Pokemon because Pokemon was the devil. ;___;

39:35 Ive never thought of the Rival this way. Brilliant thinking.

19:40 Golem actually is quite useful in gen 1 though. Sure, he could never stand up to Alakazam, but he is cruical to hard walling physical attacking, and electric/ ghost pokemon of that generation. Like Tauros, Snorlax, Zapdos, Jolteon, and Gengar. Unlike Onix, Golem has its amazing physical attack stat to go with its amazing physical defense. As well as access to a good move pool. Like Rockslide, Earthquake, Hyper Beam, Double Edge, Body Slam, Counter, Submission, etc. But most importantly, it also had access to Explosion. Which it could use in a pinch if things got rough. So Golem actually was very very good in gen 1, he was just very situational. He had to pick his battles wisely.

I'll forever feel so lucky to be around when all this started. It created so much magic in my childhood.

Back in '98 the "swimming along the island cheat" was so legendary we felt like bill gates when doing it

The Brock Hard Wall was VERY true to my experience as a kid. I only got Red after my younger brother got his Yellow version and my parents learned that there was only one save file, so we couldn't share the game as easily. What that meant is that I obviously picked Charmander since I wanted an awesome Charizard like the one on the cover (still my favorite Charizard artwork to this day) and Brock obviously kicked my teeth in while I watched my brother sort of cruise by Brock because Nidoran learned Double Kick on Lv12 but ONLY in Yellow. I'll never forget how envious I was at that moment. Another thing I distinctly remember is how I was dreaming of catching my very own team and have a partner as tight as Pikachu in the anime. I would often daydream about things like these relating the series I currently had on my mind, but Pokemon stuck - I still remember those. Funnily enough, I actually *did* find a mon that fit the description. I ended up adoring Farfetch'd - the one you can trade for in Vermilion City. I'd always trade for that little guy and take him all the way to the Elite 4. With Farfetch'd and Charizard, I had some glaring weaknesses (I'd rarely get past Loreley) but I remember loving those two a LOT. The not so fun memories were tons of corrupted save files. We'd always play Pokemon together with the kids from next door but we had to promise to do it outside (because playing outside > playing videogames, obviously, so it was a compromise). It turns out, those cartridges don't endure heat very well. They don't take permanent damage from lying in the sun, but apparently they do lose the save data on them. I lost SO many Farfetch'd to the sun. It was always very tragic. I must have restarted the game dozens of times. Nowadays, I actually still replay Red, though by now, it's the VC version. In some ways the wonkier things about Gen1 make it really fun to me. Farfetch'd actually is useful, being the earliest learner of STAB Slash and critting with it 90% of the time. The balance issues of sleep and wrap allow pokemon like Arbok or Parasect to really shine despite their awful stats (Arbok being able to paralyze with Glare is especially evil). In a way, the mucked up balance allows mechanics to outshine stats in many cases. Sometimes, I get really in the mood for stuff like this.

I wasn't even a kid when these games came out, yet I still love them to this day.

I lost every linked battle as a kid because I refused to use Mewtwo, Alakazam, Snorlax, Gengar, Tauros, and Dragonite. Gotta catch em all my ass! Every goddamn kid used the same exact team and moveset. Even people who never touched the game could borrow someone else's team, follow instructions, and sweep my ass like I was Bandit Keith. Yes, I'm still salty. Also, I was just shit at the game.

A forty five minute video detailing the history and cultural relevance of Pokemon? By KingK? Don't mind if i doooooooooo.

Probably won’t see this but whoever does, all we really need is a Pokémon MMO now that would be amazing (: nice video I’m 34 and I remember when I got the game when it first came out and watched the first episode (:

I can't tell you how much I appreciate the clear ad breaks you put in your script so ads don't just cut you off mid-rant

Hate to sound like that "Born in the wrong generation" kid, but I sure do wish I lived the days where everything in video games were like mysteries.

The fact that I remember this commercial 0:08 and saw it on tv. All the time. When it was new. Makes me feel so old reading the comments

I remember I always used to spend hours and hours training with my charmander, because I loved Charizard, so I evolved my charmander right at the beginning, which massively helped with Brock, not so much with misty, that mess is something we don't talk about any more

I think the reason Moltres is hidden in Victory Road is because it's like the Olympic flame.

So here’s how Enemy Trainer AI works in R, B, and Y with some simple bullet points: - Enemy Pokemon always use super effective attacks, even when switching (Like if you are switching from Beedrill to Pidgiot your opponents golem goes from using earthquake to using rock slide, and they always choose super effective moves when possible, even if the move doesn’t deal damage, like in Beedrill v.s Lorelei’s Dewgong, it will keep using rest because it is psychic. -Your opponet isn’t limited by PP, they have infinite moves uses. - Your opponet can use any status healing item, at any point in battle, even when say, Giovanni’s dug trio is underground.

I feel old. I'm 30 years old and can still remember the day I got pokemon red for my 6th birthday.

Another interesting detail of yellow version is that all three starters are actually just given to you for free in different cities so its a lot easier to fill out the pokedex in yellow

I got goosebumps when the anime theme song hit. I'm 29.

Man, I was the only one in my class who got Red. All the other uncultured nerds got Blue. Also the school culture was the real deal. We spent hours figuring out the MissingNO trick and trying to find Mew in that truck. The lack of internet made the whole game mysterious and fascinating.

As someone who lived through the pokemon craze, this really brings me back. I remember spending hours of my childhood trying to find the mew in the truck, debated whether or not mewthree exisited, we played the cards, games, talked non stop about the latest episodes.... man... those were the days...

I love the ways you explain each gens region itself. The way it works, the themes and stories it tells, it's history, how the pokemon within it make sense. It makes going through these games more enjoyable and the world feel more alive

Every Gen? You mad man....I can't wait.

Nidoran ♂ & ♀ both learn double kick which is super effective, that is how I passed the first gym.

Pokemon Blue was my first and favourite Pokemon game, unforgettable. It's interesting to hear your thesis about a "social game". My experience and I believe most others' was 99 percent solitary. There was some link cable trading at recess, but by and large all my fond memories of this game involve me hunched over a glowing Gameboy Colour screen, grinding Bug Catchers to dust, getting lost on the SS Anne and praying for my Wartortle to evolve. I replayed it some years ago and got maybe 3/4 of the way through. Still a blast. As someone who isn't particularly interested in or knowledgeable about Pokemon in his adulthood, the magic was still there.

Your Pokémon retrospective videos are some of my favourite videos on RU-vid! I always watch them when I want to relax :)

I love his voice. Reminds me of how a narrator in Pokémon would give.

Gen 1, obviously the best gen with NO flaws whatsoever

Nice, something to binge! Thank you for helping me suppress reality!

Those were crazy days i salute all of us 90s kids who kept engaged with pokemon *goosebumps from nostalgia*

15:10 i love the KingK version of the PokeRap

I still remember playing this with my neighbor. He had blue and picked squirtle. I had red and chose charmander. Still remember those link cable battles....

I remember playing pokemon blue when I was younger on the gameboy color and I really loved it too. Gen 1 was really amazing too. And the first season of pokemon was great too. Great video.

Pokemon Yellow also made it so that the Nidorans learn Double Kick at a much earlier level, bringing the total amount of pokemon in the starting area that are viable against Brock to three.

The old pokemon commercials hit me in the feels lol

“Pokemon you’ve never seen before” Missing no.: allow me to introduce myself

The Manaphy egg thing reminded me that me and my friend were thoroughly convinced that Keldeo was hidden at the end of the Abyssal Ruins in BW and spent hours finding how to get deeper into the ruins only to find a bunch of treasure instead. Good times when we were kids

Turned on my GBA and went back into my Pokémon blue today. Seeing my og team Wartortle, Pikachu, Mr Mime, and Sandshrew sent the memories trading with my sister flowing right back man. Great video.

"A tough, yet uncompromising, vision" In all of the videos I have watched on the channel, this is by far my favorite quote and the best one sentence summary for the ideology of the first two generations of Pokemon.

sadly i never experienced that social aspect with red and blue... i was one of the only one playing it at my school

Mew being hidden under the truck was a classic, and I remember hearing that the keys to move the truck were in the casino on top of one of the slot machines... You just had to figure out how to take them 🤔

Fun fact: it was actually Shigaru Miyamoto who suggested splitting the games into 2 version to get people to trade together.

I still remember the days when I would get walked to school by my mom with my face glued to the gameboy every morning. Then spending the entire day at school thinking about and talking about pokemon. Weekends had this routine where I would watch the anime in the morning and play Red while outside with friends. The pokemania craze was so magical and always puts a smile on my face to recall.

Man, I always get jealous when I hear about how kids would actually socialize with Pokémon, cause where I lived when I was little, nobody would do such a thing. I don't even know if anyone I knew at the time owned a Pokémon game. The closest to Pokemania here were trading with those trading cards that nobody knew how to play with, and the more recent Pokémon GO craze.

I really like your perception of the games. It's very unbiased and objective. Just because you love a game and feel nostalgic about it doesn't mean you can't accept it's flaws. It's strange that modern people who always preach tolerance can't accept that something can be flawed and yet still be great.

I know I'm late, but these videos are so great! I love retrospective type video essays, and these are superb!

This is amazing! The nostalgia as I watch this

I remember a class mate bragging about how you clone Pokemons in Red/Blue back in the days. He kept it a tight secret, but was willing to take your cartridge overnight and the next day in school your whole team was 6 Mewtos with which you wiped the floor of every other fellow trainer on the playground.

I remember being 11 and playing Pokemon Red for the first time on my brand new Gameboy color... nostalgia at its finest.

I finally sleep thanks to ur voice kingK, it relaxes me hearing u talk ab my childhood games in such a nice a relaxing way. Thank you!

Brock's pokemon have such weak specials that even an ember from a Charmander will put a big dent into them. He'll waste a turn healing them from a burn if you get lucky enough to inflict one. Charmander will mop up in Viridian forest too, while Bulbasaur will struggle. Picking a fire type starter isn't as much of a handicap as you may think in gen1 if you ask me Edit: 151 likes. Nice.

“Pikachu Heroin Injection” is a technically accurate marketing term.

I have watched all of these retrospectives, and actually saved this one for last. They are all great, and the finishing line in this video was just 'Mwaahhh' Perfecto. Like it was meant for this one to be seen last, and that line to be the last thing heard! Salud! I have subscribed. 😊

Pokèmon Generation 1 The greatest games to ever have their code be held together with blood, sweat, duct tape, and sheer frigging power of will.

Heya, finally got around to watching this, and it was just as excellent as I expected! You articulated what it was like to be a Gen I kid, when that was all Pokémon had ever been, and saw that even though it wasn't your childhood, the same aspects that made ME love it growing up were would eventually make YOU love it. That timeless appeal is core to the series. If I have to nitpick anything about your imagining of the time period, though, it'd probably be this, and it's something I've seen other early-20s RU-vidrs get wrong, too: It's sometimes underestimated just how widespread internet use was by the late 90's. It wasn't ubiquitous yet, but it was well on its way. At least a quarter of the kids in my fifth grade class (the year Red & Blue were released) had dial-up, and that was the same year my elementary school opened a computer lab. Even before that, we'd had computers in every classroom going back to first grade. I mean, you can see it the Pikablu image: There's a URL. The truck outside the SS Anne, the so-called "Poké Gods..." those were the sorts of mysteries kids at school were obsessed with, and they were propagated via the internet. The game's actual secrets and mysteries were much easier to decipher by just going online, or by having a friend with a modem or a strategy guide. And growing up, that was one of the reasons I was fascinated with the NES generations' experience. Before Nintendo Power, they really DIDN'T have anything like that, meaning Zelda really could be deciphered via a local community of your friends. But that wasn't so much the case by the time I was a kid. But y'know, I'm sure it was different depending on where you grew up, and my perspective here is DEFINITELY gonna be colored by the fact that my mom worked with computers since before I was born. I think we got Prodigy in, like, 1993! But yeah, this was an excellent video! Going gen-by-gen on this series is no easy feat, but charting the evolution of the series is gonna be fascinating, and I'm looking forward to the rest of 'em!

When someone told me they found pickachu in the beginning forest I lost my shit lol as a kid and I told him not to tell anyone else lol

I will never forget the day I went to toys r us with my mom got a atomic purple gbc and pokemon red version the smell of the box the feel of the plastic case that came with the game the first time I turned it on are all memories that I will cherish for the rest of my life I am so happy I grow up playing these games I have my own kid now and it's amazing to teach her the history of Pokemon

God this game brings back so much nostalgia. I remember getting a gameboy and pokemon red on Christmas morning and it was one of the best days of my life. I immediately shoved the game cartridge in and started playing. I would play at home, school, at a friends, in the car, it was such a fascinating game for me! I ended up getting all the pokemon except 2, which was blastoise, and mew

I miss when legendaries where Legendaries instead of plot devices.

When people talk about balance in these first games, I feel I wanna say that some pokemon like Dragonite were designed more to be bosses in the one player game, rather than for your own team. I feel there's a reason why Team Rocket grunts are very weak stat wise, and Psychics aren't meant to be balanced... they're meant to be the strongest (and are said to be the strongest a lot in the anime). Obviously that has changed now but I feel having some pokemon just be the best was intentional.

I must say, youre Pokemon Retrospektive Videos are really great to watch.

Thank you for spending however long it took you to produce this so that I can finally refer people here instead of trying to describe what it was like to go to school in the 90s. The part starting at 8:03 really hits on the mythos especially hard. Those types of questions were literally THE topic of conversation at school, full stop.

To beat Brock after choosing Charmander I just caught a Pidgey and spammed Sand Attack and then used Gust for about 10 years.

Okay... let's go. Thank you very, very much for the contextualization of the time period Pokemon Red and Blue released in. Perhaps more than any other game release short of, Super Mario Bros 3, World of Warcraft, or Halo 3, the culture around Pokemon was its most defining trait. I do feel that it WAS advertised to adults in Japan - they do love their RPG's there and it singlehandedly revived interest in the Game Boy during its downward spiral there - but you absolutely nailed the grip and effect it had on kids, and sharing that information. It's those kinds of things I love about games, that social aspect where you share your experiences to either beat or better learn from the game. With that said, I miss the kind of games Pokemon Red and Blue were; single player experiences that became social experiments. Inter-trainer battling was absolutely not the focus of the original generation, and in fact was a consideration made late into development; the trading aspect was always what Sugimori wanted to promote. Stuff like stat overflow, the psychic type's dominance, etc. wasn't really that well-considered because, well, that doesn't really matter to the narrative of the single player experience. Of course Psychic is strong, the New Game Plus Superboss you can only keep by trading, Mewtwo, is that type! Of course Dragons are busted and have very few options against them, Dragonite's supposed to be your final boss who gets wrecked if you sought out Articuno. I know that Pokemon games starting as early as Stadium focused more strongly on getting your endgame team, and made clear superstars out of mons like Alakazam and Tauros and chumps out of Flareon and Kingler's poor stat distributions, but I don't feel that was the intent of Red and Blue. You can bring your Ponyta with you, sure! It's just another, unique option that can fight against an imperfect AI! I also do disagree with the assessment of Brock. Bulbasaur does not learn a damaging grass-type move until Level 13, and it's difficult to raise Bulbasaur against the bug types compared to Charmander, who just munches 'em up. Onix, meanwhile, is a massive, beefy boy with a terrible HP stat and a mediocre Attack stat that screams 'first boss', especially with the player learning not to press their advantage with Bide. In that way, I feel like Squirtle's the odd man out; Onix isn't really that hard, he just takes a while to take down unless you have Bubble and will kill you if you go in too hard while it's biding its time. The whittling down process of both Ember and Leech Seed are pretty comparable. And then Squirtle just shows up and wins. I also really like the difficulty curve of Kanto. I don't think it's hard in a traditional way - giving enemy teams good movesets with good coverage that you don't see coming until they've hit you with it once - but in order to compensate for the amount of possible teams, it puts a lot of checks your way. Can you avoid mashing the attack button? You can beat Brock. Do you have a Pokemon that knows Fly? The routes around Fuchsia City won't be nearly as punishing with the agonizing walk to get to the Pokemon Center that'll help poison seep right in. Do you have a faster Pokemon? Erika won't be as big of a problem. Do you have Pokemon that can take a lot of hits? You won't have to rush out of Silph Co all the time to heal. Pokemon Centers are always there for younger and newer players, making it super forgiving, but the fastest route and strongest battles of attrition are won because you've added members to your team that can overcome individual obstacles, culminating with your well-balanced rival fighting you. But I think what I love most about Gen 1 is its growth. Your selection is so limited in Gen 1, often just sticking to Normal, Flying, Bug, and Poison types for a majority of the routes pre-Celadon. When something like Geodude or Drowzee or Clefairy pops up, it's a huge deal because it's so much different from what you've encountered before. It's memorable because your pool was limited, and you're going from a kid catching rats in his backyard to catching weird rapey tapirs and evil acid-spitting plants and whatever the Hell Mr. Mime is. You go into Rock Tunnel and hey, there's the first boss, just hanging out, maybe you can catch him! And after Snorlax is moved out of the way, so much of the world opens up and you have so much flexibility it's insane, because you worked with your team to get to that point. And again, this is illustrated with your rival, in a really literal way. My favorite part of Gen 1 is seeing the rival sprite change every few battles, going from a cocky kid to a rather competent teen. It's the only game where you see actual age, where the journey is implied to take a significant deal of time, where having to work around the Game Boy battery means that you probably had to turn it off and sleep and go back to school or work, so you really did grow with your character and with your Pokemon. I think that little bit is just particularly special. Also side note, don't like Yellow nearly as much. I think Mankey is super overcentralizing along with the free starters, makes it so that most teams are gonna be Pika/Primeape/Charizard/Blastoise/Venusaur/FREE SPACE (probably Snorlax). Kinda ruins the slow progression by giving you what the TV show taught you were the coolest and strongest Pokemon all in a row. I know that's not everyone's experience, but I feel it's what was encouraged, and other changes (removing Weedle from Viridian Forest especially so you don't teach the kids about the slow creeping death of poison) really do rub my the wrong way. I don't wanna decry your opinion at all; it is more than valid, more than accurate, and Gen 1 is a mess of a game held up by glue sticks and dreams. But I love them to this day, even outside of the context of the world that I played them in (though that's a big part of it and hard to separate), because they taught me how to love traditional RPG's. I don't feel that later Pokemon games really do that, very focused on the battles after the game is done and then tossing the champion a 'gotcha' team while giving the player such a huge spread of Pokemon early on that progression doesn't really exist in the same way it did before. I don't get the joy of finding a Tentacool, deciding I like it, and then working really hard in order to get it up to snuff with the rest of my team and being pleasantly surprised when he becomes a hard-working member all his own anymore. I don't realize that aw man, this Growlithe is not only new and cool, but he fits the hole in my team perfectly to help take on Erika. And that's fine, collection and flexibility are wonderful things, but it's not the elements I learned to love from these games. The series grew out of what I liked about it, and that's okay, because I'm a degenerate genwunner who can always come back to these and yell at the children for saying that Golem is bad when he's literally one of the cornerstones of RBY OU interchangeably with Rhydon because he knows Explosion and is bulky enough to almost always get it off. I'll always have these games, and thank you for giving them a chance. I look forward to seeing what elements of Pokemon you end up most valuing as you go through the generations.

Literally the only thing wrong w this is saying you don’t see a lot of golem, great video as per usual. You represent my thoughts on the franchise near perfectly, and it’s great to see someone take a look back on these games through both a gameplay lens as well as one that looks at them as the phenomenon they were at the time!

Thanks KingK! Your videos are just the tonic!

42:58 The sprites were made before the artwork, and the earliest sprites were made by Sugimori a mere 5 years prior, with a radically different art style.