Pokémon's Most Mishandled Type - How GameFreak Fumbled Ghosts HARD 

Did you find all three shinies? Whose your favorite Ghost Pokémon? If you enjoyed this video, subscribe because I'll be making more like it in the future. Thanks for watching!

The best ghost move in Gen 1 was actually Night Shade because it could hit Normal types and Psychic types due to how buggy set damage moves were.

So fun fact about just how MANY poison types there were in generation 1: It took until not only generation 7, but USUM specifically with the release of Poipole and Naganadel, for post gen 1 generations to TIE with the amount of poison types introduced in generation 1 alone. 33 poison types were introduced in gen 1, and 33 was the amount released from gen 2-7, making it unimaginably more absurd they would slap that type on Gengar and undercut his one niche

I don't mind the ghost type being rare, but I do find it annoying that despite only three Pokemon being ghost type at the time, they got a really big focus. At that point, just make enough ghost types to feasibly make a full team of 6 with. Anyway, my favorite Ghost Pokemon is Cursola. A bleached coral with a beautiful yet spooky and awesome design. It's so sad, but it's so cool.

Dark type is also pretty weird. It has the exact same super effective coverage as Ghost. But they were made a Special type when introduced in Gen 2. What’s funny is that literally every Dark move introduced (like Bite, Crunch, Faint Attack) became Physical in Gen 4.

Ghost types are (black?)mages in rpgs where they want to be in the background and throw curses and statuses while tanks are keeping the heat off of them. Also my favorite is of course bannette

Man, Gengar has the coolest Gen 2 sprite ever. That black and purple coloration with piercing red eyes should had been his official appearance!

This, Nidoqueen and Nidorina not breeding, Kangaskhan, and other such things from the early Gens, I will NEVER understand why Gamefreak doesn't fix these...

I've always theorized that originally ghost and psychic were the same type at some point in development. The notable lack of any real planning or testing with gen 1 ghosts being a prime example. There's one ghost line, two moves, and none of it works right. Add on that a lot of tricky moves are psychic: reflect, light screen, hypnosis. Not only that, but later on psychic gets ally switch and synchronoise, with synchronoise in particular seeming like it should be ghost type instead as hitting psychics with a psychic move is decidedly not stonks, BUT gamefreak wrote themselves into a corner as the move sounds psychic.

Ghost/Dark Gengar would've made a lot of sense considering how hard it was to get trade evolutions at the time. You had to find a wild Gastly by playing at night, raise it to level 25, then find someone with a Link cable to trade it back and forth with. The immunities would be much more deserved than with Sableye, which you can just catch in the wild before the 2nd badge in Hoenn

Game freak actually managed to pull off the trickster ghost type with Sableye, but they needed to give it a special ability (prankster) and wait several years to give it enough support moves to do its job (encore, disable, recover, taunt). There is no way they really intend ghosts to be support based tricksters when sableye (and maybe dusclops) is still the only ghost that can do this as far as i can remember. Imagine if all ghosts automatically had prankster and good support moves - that would make things interesting.

Gengar: I wish my ghost moves were special Sneasel: I wish my dark moves were physical

Still find it incredible that Ghost Type actually had a great niche just because Normal was such a powerful type, despite Ghosts sucking at doing the things they were (supposedly) designed to do. Anyways, favorite Ghost will always go to Chandelure, who also happens to be my favorite pokemon ever!

All hail Misdreavus the cutest ghost pokemon! Ghost in my mind shouldve been a defensive version of psychic. It shouldve resisted psychic from the start, and once you factor in the 2 immunities, they could add defensive ghost pokemon that focused more on the tricky style they intended (like dusclops in gen 3) earlier.

I feel like they kind of have hit the intended feel for some ghosts in recent generations, a lot of them have tricky abilities or signature moves that let them kinda change the way the game works in subtle ways. Good examples are Mimikyu, that's going to use disguise to take a free turn on you no matter what you do, or Aegislash being a tank when you hit it, but a glass cannon when it hits you. Even Shedinja, i think was a really good example of what ghosts should have always been aiming for, yes, it's gimmicky, but that feels appropriate for ghosts. Even when you look to most fiction, if you actually HAVE something that works on a ghost, it isn't too hard to deal with, the problem is that very few things actually work on a ghost. So thematically, Shedinja was perfect. Other abilities like shadow tag, and mummy I think really kind of hit the mark for the tricky shenanigans that should define the type. I think zoroark should have been a ghost, or part ghost, because illusion is very fitting for that tricky ghost identity, too.

Gengar and Nidoking were my favorite Pokemon in Gen 1. I remember how Ghost types were presented as the counter to psychic mons, so i was glad to have Gengar for link-battles. And then my Gengar was always stomped, what a deception.

Gengar is likely poison type because gastly is the poison gas pokemon. Also, i imagine ghost was phsyical because psychic types generally have poor physical defense, but thats just my guess.

The thing about gen 1 is that its design took a lot of cues from traditional RPGs of the era. Ghost types were designed to be Pokemon's equivalent to "formless" enemies which were immune to basic attacks and only vulnerable to spells. Their primary role wasn't to counter psychics, it was to counter Normal types, as the Normal type was Pokemon's equivalent to the RPG basic attack. Yes, they were one of the few types intended to do super effective damage to psychic types, but they weren't meant to be a perfect counter. As for why ghost was physical, I think it's because they realized that the only Ghost move was Lick and it wouldn't make sense for Lick to be Special. After Gen 1, they carried over the physical damage to subsequent gens out of adherence to the established design, or laziness.

With Gastly clearly being a poison type based on its design, I'm guessing they probably thought it would just be weird for it to lose a type when evolving. That said, I do think there was some intent to give Gengar a "poisonous" image. The spikes may have been intended to reflect that poisons and toxins often come from thorns, stingers, or fangs, and poison is almost always represented with purple in Japanese media. With special being a single stat in gen 1, I think they made ghost a physical damage type to take advantage of the lower defense most psychic types had and with lick being the only "standard" ghost attack I'd say physical made more sense at the time.

Ghost type is one of the few types in the series where I feel every design is at the very least good, so narrowing down a favorite for me is a tall order, but Runerigus holds a special place in my heart. I used it on an ancient-themed trick room team alongside mons like Perrserker and Cradily when I was first getting into competitive on the Doubles UU ladder out of all things, and its great defensive staying power, wide move pool, and fun shenanigans with Wandering Spirit made for a lot of memorable plays that cemented my love for this series.

The fucked up throughline I can see for ghost being physical goes back to being the other counter for psychic aside from bug. If anything has lick (something that's pretty common), sick! You have coverage to deal with psychics. And the only damaging move has extremely low base power. On the mascot ghost line being godly special sweepers. L+no shadow ball yet+you're poison.

Ghost types are my favorite because of all the meaning and depthness that comes with their lore and their designs, you could always tell that there's a big story behind a ghost Pokemon's existence by just looking at them. Also yeah, I never fully understood why the heck the Gengar line was poison type.

The Gengar line should have been changed to Ghost/Dark in Gen 2, similar to how the Magneton line got changed to Electric/Steel.

In general, I think gamefreak underestimated the value of STAB in RBY. At least four types have absolutely abysmal STAB options. Anyway, hot take, while Ghost might’ve been a hot mess in earlier generations it was much more interesting because of it. I feel that too many modern Ghosts just abuse their largely unresisted STAB. Removing Steel’s Ghost resistance might’ve been necessary to nerf that type but they should’ve given it to some other type to compensate. Personally I would choose Grass as it’s the closest we have to a “Life” type. My favorite Ghost Pokémon is Trevenant. It’s got such a badass design with its cyclops eye and horn-like branches and I love the name.

The only reason why Gengar is relevant in Gen 1 OU despite having flaws, it's because it can stop a Explosion/Body Slam just by switching in

I wasn't expecting a fighting game tangent in this video, but I'm not complaining. My favorite ghost type is either Haunter (for its design) or Mimikyu (for design and using it).

My fav used to be Gengar, but is now 100% Golurk. It's a mech, it's a Golem, it's awesome.

As a competitive ghost mono user, ghost types tend to do best with weird gimmicks and shock factor they have a ton of weird niche moves. Oh and my Fav is Gourgeist, they're the definition of unpredictable with the size mechanic.

Great Video!

I was a Misdreavus simp for the longest time and they somehow managed to make Misdreavuser in Flutter Mane that I absolutely love, even though it’s busted in competitive and should stay in hell where it belongs.

I think early GF SAW poison as the evil type. Many things we would probably assume are dark (evil) type ended up with Poison. Gengar, Arbok, Koga. It’s honestly a bit weird that Koga had pokemon that would be really good at taking out Poison types. Not many elite level trainers had pokemon strong against their main type unless that was the type’s thing (ghost, dragon).

This was a great video man, keep it up!

Gengar is a poison type due to Gastly being a floating ball of gas. Also since the poison type was supposed to represent the “evil type” back in gen 1 before dark was introduced

I found 2 of the 3 shinies upon first watch. My favorite Ghost Pokemon is Trevenant. Because a spooky tree who just punches people REALLY hard is somehow very funny to me. Honorable mention goes out to Aegishlash, because it makes you feel like a tactical genious despite it just beeing overtuned.

Incredibly well made video!! Honestly thought you’d have more subs. Loved it:)

I very much enjoyed this video! Thank you

GF: *makes 2 non legendary physical ghosts* Smogon: banned

I mean, to me it seems the most likely explanation that ghost was physical because in Gen 1, as mentioned, the only ghost move was lick. Lick, is a physical move even later, so the typing would be physical too. If shadow ball existed, I’d imagine it would be special (but this is just me guessing) Then it just stayed the same. Almost the opposite issue to dark in Gen 2. As every dark move introduced in Gen 2 would be physical later, but it was special in game which hurt Pokémon like Sneasel even more.

Loved this. I think Gamefreak may have made ghost a physical attacking type initially due to Lick, not that this is justifies the decision lol. Keep up the good work!

I like your videos because you talk slowly, use pictures, and explain throughly. Which is great for someone like me who is a very casual Pokémon fan,

Three day wait for a premiere? Bloody hell

I kinda assumed that Gengar was originally going to be ghost type, but they added poison because it was too powerful. Even with poison typing (which not only makes it weak to psychic, but ground too) and no STAB attacks, it’s still one of the best in Gen 1 due to a fast sleep attack, a fast explosion, normal immunity and high special. Why on Earth the anime played up the idea that “it’s the only thing that can beat psychics” I have no idea. 😅

0:16 Magikarp 5:12 Girafarig 10:14 Banette

Sabeleye and Golurk are my absolute favorite ghosts. Sabeleye didn't start out that way but it started to grow on me and then BAM mega evolution hit it and I was hooked

I never realized it took till gen 6 for there to be a decent physical attacking ghost type/move. That's so rough, good vid Goh Low

It’s so strange bc on paper it should be tied with Fairy as the best type, with its great resistances and immunities but it’s such a shame that ghost Pokémon as a whole are still suffering from the blunders of the past

Ghost couldn't be special because Game Freak reserved Special to Types that were... special. Starters, Eeveelutions, Psychics, Dragons. These types are Special because their respective Pokémon have special characteristics.

It's interesting you bring up the fighting game comparison here, but don't talk about Gengar in Pokken! I play competitively, so I can comment on that a bit: In Pokken, Gengar is essentially a resource management/Install character, though also with an emphasis on "tricky" moves and characteristics somewhat in line with what you propose/bring up: A lot of his moves have a lot of i-frames which allow him to phase through other attacks, plus a lot of cancels and variations on the same moves to keep the other player guessing what version he'll actually use past the intial startup (though to be clear, cancels are things all characters have and Garchomp, Libre, and Decidueye are more dedicated mixup characters). His most notable trait though is his very slow meter-gain rate which at a high level encourages you to go for setups and combos which build a lot of meter, and that his burst state, which is Mega Gengar, acts as an install transformation which basically changes his entire moveset and is easily the best character in the game, with multiple fullscreen options (which you can combo out of!) absurdly damaging grabs, and an unblockable super. Your comparsion to setplay and space control characters is actually a better description of Sceptile or Darkrai then Gengar, though: Sceptile is a mid range trap character, but is also capable of playing rushdown or pure zoning if he needs to, and fills the ninja character archtype: Het can set leech seed and seed bomb delayed traps and hazards, can throw out leaf shuriken which float as active hitboxes in midair, has a substitute log counter, an iajutsu mid range slash with armor in Leaf Blade, giga drain as a long range command grab, and leaf storm as an anti air izuna drop command grab. His basic gameplay is basically using leech seed, seed bomb, and the shuriken as tools to lock down the enemy at mid range or long range, then nail them as they approach with lead blade, grab them with giga drain if they stay in one spot for too long, or can use leaf storm (or more often, anti air combo starters since leaf storm has drawbacks even on hit) if they approach while jumping. Darkrai on the other hand is more of a dedicated space control/trap character without Sceptile's versatility, though also has install aspects: A lot of people incorrectly see Pokken as a 3d arena fighter, when in reality it's mostly designed around it's 2d phase and has all the competitive systems traditional fighters have like unique movelists, a height system (tho it works wierdly), cancels, just frames, and concepts like footsies, meaties, neutral, etc, but Darkrai is relatively unique in that his kit is designed around the 3d phase as much as the 2d one (wheras for most characters, the 3d phase is basically just a glorified second layer of neutral): Darkrai's normals in the 3d phase all set traps, with different traps setting both floating active hitboxes/hazards, and can also be triggered to then do different things like launch projectiles, explode, form different hitboxes, etc, many also of which leave the enemy in an extended stun state. Using those, he can actually do full extended combos even in the 3d phase. However, what he really wants to do is use Dark Void, which if it lands, shifts you into the 2d phase while giving Darkrai a install Bad Dreams Rising state which heavily buffs his toolkit: Without it, he CAN set traps in the 2d phase, but in BDR, all his moves, including normal hits, also set traps at the same time and traps are able to be activated instantly rather then only triggered after being set, and he gains a few new moves and better frame data. So Darkrai is all about staying in field/the 3d phase as much as possible, racking up damage with traps there when others characters can't, and then landing Dark Void to enter the 2d phase with BDR. He also gains resource stacks every time he sets a trap which he can cash out to boost his Dark Pulse special or for buffs. Darkrai is MAYBE the most technical character in the game, alongside Aegislash (a stance character which gets buffs the more he switches stances) and Shadow Mewtwo (a glass cannon with stupid meter gain rates and can alter the properties of his moves AFTER he uses them to reactivate hitboxes or changing projectiles mid flight, but uses his health as a cost to use specials)... I guess Gardevoir also has a lot of space control tools but this comment is getting long enoguh! I'd suggest checking the game out if you haven't already since you clearly like fighting games and Pokemon, but I checked your other fighting game videos and you seem to like fighting games with a big emphasis on longer technical combos, and Pokken is much more neutral heavy, even more then something like SF, so i'm not sure you'd be into it. Still, if you have questions, I'd be down to answer! Some characters with really nutty and flashy combos are Sceptile, Decidueye, Weavile, Garchomp, and Scizor. I play Weavile, myself, though I use him more as a neutral heavy hit and run character: a lot of his longer combos require wallsplats (but they look so sick and are pretty demanding in terms of timing and spacing, so you may enjoy that) or super technical corner carries.

GameFreak have always been the prime example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Their code is always a mess, and there's constant inconsistencies with design vs gameplay. They've gotten slightly better with recent games, as they've put more intention into the competitive aspect of the games.

Ghost type is strange that it had almost no interaction with the other types early on offensively. As a type and lack of stab options. Which made them bad picks for being a ghost type. Instead used for thei other traits. Which made them bery mid for a long time. To now they are one of the top 4 types from this very decision to under develop the type. Ghost has very few weaknesses which are neglible ones to have. Great immunities and restinces. Its basically fairy type before fairy type existed and we didnt know it.

What Ghost type could have been. Sad!

This is why I gave Gengar 'wonder guard' in my mod and made ghosts immune to rock, steel and fighting attacks. Respect Gengar, yo.

That Gengar looks hilarious, I'am exited for the video. Btw. congrats on the Nuggets winning! It was even enthusiastically reported on mainstream german news outlets. Funny how people in Europe where noone cares about basketball can be more exited about the nuggets than certain american sports journalists :p

GF definitely has its favorites and it’s red headed step child

You dont know how painful it is to be a Ghost type fan. Ghost is my favorite typing, yet to this day, they are mishandled. Just to add a few more points: 1- It was difficult to use a ghost type prior to Gen 8 due to pursuit. Most ghost types had no good way to deal with Dark types aside from burning it with Wisp to cripple it, or to rely on Focus Blast, which has a 75% accuracy. 2- In order for Ghosts to deal with Dark types efficiently, they needed to be paired with the Fairy or Fighting type. Marshadow, Flutter Mane, & Annihalape are all deemed to strong and are banned from OU. Ghost/Dark types are neutral to Dark, but cant even threaten them since Dark resists both STABs. A Ghost/Bug type would actually be good vs Dark types, but you would still be weak to Dark attacks and be weak to Pursuit. Unfortunately, we only have Shedinja…. 3- To this day, we still dont have a good universal physical Ghost move. The majority of physical Ghost mons (Dragapult, Aegislash, Dusknoir, Ceruledge, Mimikyu, etc…) Either rely on their Special Ghost moves, or rely on a very weak physical Ghost moves.

I love the way Duskull looks, but I've only had mild success playing with them. My favorites for ascetic AND game play is between the Litwick family and the Honedge family.

Gen 2 was weird, because ghost attacks were physical, while dark attacks were special. Despite prominent dark type attacks being things like bite and crunch. Early gen pokemon was so weird, it's a wonder the series made it this far.

In a rom hack duo I’m working on, I have reworked the type listings, and I am choosing to see how Ghost fused with Psychic ends up, known as the Spirit-type. There’s some interesting side effects like Alakazam OHKOing itself or Gengar hitting Machamp for STAB 2x, but from what I’ve tested so far, it works really well. I won’t go too deep into it though.

Man I love getting RU-vid videos from The alternative universe in my feed.. wild I feel bad for you that you have such dog Pokémon hopefully in your next life they will be better ❤

The reason Gengar is poison type is because its the evolved form of Ghastly... which is a poison gas cloud.

I think that’s the entire point actually, you’re right. Ghosts need more moves that will do things if the opponent does a certain action. Like how all Dark moves cause the opponent some trickery.

Gengar is also literally the shadow pokemon, so you would think dark rather than poison. It also evolves to being a lot heavier tham Gastly and Haunter, so you could see the type change from beimg poisonous gas. My favourite ghost pokemon is Mimikyu.

My favorite Ghost type (and pokemon overall) is Hoopa. Love that little prankster

I don't mind gengar being poison due to from playing the games as a child till now I've rationalized that the gas that gastly embodied would evolve with him and gengar the final form his body was spectral and still maintained the toxins. His pokedex talked on sapping things and while sapping proactively isn't typical of toxins (external body) the spectral side added to his niche

Personally, Rotom is probably my own favorite Ghost-type, and I say that as someone who didn't even want to then shove it into an appliance, to get rid of its Ghost-type, in exchange for Ice, Grass, Flying, or Fire. I just like it's look, it's aesthetic, and while it was useful crammed inside a pokedex, I like to imagine using it for various other exploration advantages, if you could befriend the little, electric gremlin.

My guess as to why ghost was made physical was because dark and ghost were similar, hitting both ghost and psychic for super effective damage, so ghost was made physical, and dark special. Also, dragon being special before gen 4 also leads to believe that they didn't want to make dragons broken, like it happened in gen 4

0:26 *flashback to when I used to play Pokemon Type Wild in early 2010s and made videos of it*

Also, Bone Club being Ghost and making the Cubone line part Ghost woulda helped just a little

Poison was the “dark” type in gen 1 thematically. Thats why he was part poison

I never understood why Shadow Ball reduced special defense as a physical attack.

Dude I’m playing P5 while listening to this. Excellent choice for bg music

My theory is Gengar never got the dark type because it would have been absolutely busted. It already pretty much sweeps Johto without it. It’s similar to why Gyarados is/was water/flying instead of water/dragon. It would’ve been gamebreaking with all the resistances it got from the dragon type.

Gamefreak doesn't know how to treat a lot of its types. The best examples are Bug, ice and poison, with poison getting somewhat better with the introduction of fairy types. In a lot of cases, gamefreak would prefer to leave them without changes instead of improving them

THANK YOU! I constantly struggle with the pitfalls of Ghost types even in gen 9. It feels like Ghost types often go into one extreme or the other: The fast, high Sp. Atk or Phys Atk Ghost (i.e. Gengar, Dragapult) or largely bulky types with limited movepools and high Sp. Def. The base Stats are mediocre at best and the selections are just not as good as other mons like Steel, Fire, Water, Dragon. I just wish there was a viable Rock/ Ghost type.

Ægislash is probably my favourite ghost type. Used him in my first playthrough of Y and competitively when he was broken as well.

I was sure Phantom force was a signature move of brambleghast, never knew dragapult even had it

Favorite ghost is definitely Drifblim. Really customizable with 3 neat abilities and constantly slept on even in the lower tiers. With its huge HP stat, unburden, and acrobatics, it can be adapted to all sorts of goofy counter strats. In gen7ru I eventually realized almost every spinner could hit it either super effectively or not at all (well tsareena could power whip it, but generally wouldn't), so I EV'd it to live every spinner's attack, slapped on a weakness policy, and put it on a webs teams. Really goofy and won me some funny games. The only thing that's really excited me in gen 9 so far was running mirror herb sets on it, which are less directly useful but about as funny. Also more frequently manages to be a wincon when it does go off (I think this is more that it got strength sap in gen 8/9 than anything though).

My favourite ghost has to be Lunala! I'm a sucker for moon related motifs in media. Ghost types are weird, man. You can sometimes tell that some types struggle escaping their own "niche" after the gen IV transition, like special attacking fighting types or physical psychics, but the ghosts are there especially. Only a few ghosts are physical attackers, snd if they don't have signature moves they suck hard, like Dusknoir, Golurk or Banette. Hell, Golurk has iron fist and has to settle for shadow punch. Physical electric types are in the same boat, but ghosts are more ironic since it used to be a physical type before lol, it's weird

You know, it’s a miracle that Ghost is currently one of the best types in the meta because they used to be passed off as a “weaker Dark type”, which is sad considering Ghost existed before it. Great job with the video. I’m not to sure which is my favorite Ghost type but I like Decidueye a lot, so I say Aloha’s Grass starter.

There's a lot Pokemon doesn't get about itself, but it was made totally obvious after they botched the franchise's lore in S&V.

Meanwhile all I'm thinking about is "Oh yeah, Persona 5. What a dark game that was."

I always felt that gengar shoulda been a straight ghost type in gen 1 then maybe shoulda been changed to ghost/dark in gen 2. I remember being a kid and the anime would say that ghosts were strong against psychic types yet they would get one-shotted every time cuz of their stupid poison typing.

>There's nothing about Gengar that implies he's a poison type It's because Gastly is a purple and black gas ball. He's a miasma, which were believed to cause diseases before the advent of germ theory. It's still dumb and should be removed considering it doesn't fit Haunter or Gengar, but that is certainly the logic of it.

Appearance-wise, my favorite is haunter. It really embraces the ghost type fully. Kofagrigus is really my favorite to use in game. A bulky boy with tricky moves and status moves? I'm sold.

Whoever was in charge with type balancing must have hated Pokemon.

I fundamentally disagree with the title of this video, Because bug exists. Bug is easily the worst type in the franchise, And somehow has only gotten worse over the years. Meanwhile Ghost has excelled as the games went on, and even poison is now a viable type.

Great analysis. Personally, i wish they would have made a regional form of a ghost pokemon (maybe even gengar, instead of its mega) that is ghost/normal type. The two types would cancel out each others weaknesses (normal is immune to ghost, ghost is immune to fighting), and getting STAB on normal moves, while at the same time being immune to them, is cool as hell^^.

13:59 I think the other problem with the "trickster" archetype in Pokémon is that battles don't last long enough for that to be viable. A realistic battle between two Pokémon will only last at most 3 turns. That is not enough time given that you only have on average 2 turns to set up some kind of trap and the opponent can respond as fast as you set up the trap. Pokémon would need changes to its entire battle system to make Ghost fulfill their "intended" purpose.

Surprised this video didn't go over the disgusting amount of overlap between Ghost and Dark (which has only be exacerbated further with Steel happening to lose a resistance to both of them, and only them, in gen6). Honestly, the more I look back on it, the more I feel that Dark and Ghost should've been one in the same to begin with. But I guess they introduced Dark (or "Evil" in the Japanese version) because they didn't want to imply spectral properties on literally any darkness-themed Pokemon, and Ghost was already a thing thanks to the only evolution line to have it in gen1. Maybe they just didn't wanna retcon Gengar's type out of existence, so they were now stuck having a spectral-themed type being a seperate thing from the darkness-themed type that would go on to be used for more nocturnal or wicked, yet "living", Pokemon. But on the upside, I do like how Ghost seems to have become the go-to type for Pokemon based on inanimate objects, with possession being a common theme in that regard.

My level 67 Gengar the crown jewel of my pokedex back in 1998/99. It was kinda hard to find someone with a link cable back then. Found a kid that wanted to trade his haunter for my gravler. Raised it from the low 30s to level 67 before I quit playing. It's moves were: 1.Lick 2.Nightshade 3.Hypnosis 4.Dream Eater It was super strong against most pokemon.

I think the reason gengar didn't get dark type in gen 2 was a) types never retroactively replace types between gens apart from normal, which was kind of split into normal and fairy in gen 6, which I guess was an ok exception with normal being seen as kind of a blank type, so gengar, already being saddled with poison as a secondary type, was stuck with it by then (note that both onix and scyther themselves kept their flying and rock types in the transition and only gained the steel type by evolving - not an option for the second-evolution gengar) and b) the developers still seemed apprehensive about making anything OP, so they didn't want a pokémon as strong as gengar to have no weaknesses, so that type combo was saved for sableye, whose low stats offset this, and spiritomb, which was pretty hard to find. It's telling that the developers had to invent an entire new type as a ghost nerf before even daring to introduce a pure ghost type. And, as you said, it's not as if gengar's poison type made it ineffective overall, so the type change wasn't really needed. As for my favourite, it's gotta be sableye, one of my absolute favourites of gen 3, and generally just a fun li'l tricky goblin dude.

Gamefreak got scared of ghost type potential, so they sealed it away...

My biggest complaint is making Gengar a poison type. Even if the G1 games weren’t bugged so ghost hurt psychic like intended, it’s still weak to psychic. Not to mention it had no reason to be poison. Gastly? I can get it. Haunter? Maybe you could argue. But not Gengar. Even if we were gonna assume that made sense, it still should have gotten a type change in Gen 2. Ghost/Dark. Have it be a Tyranitar situation going from rock/ground to rock/dark. It wouldn’t have any weaknesses, but that didn’t stop them for doing that combo in the next generation and after.

I love psychics, hex maniacs, etc and so I typically try to make my teams with Ghosts, Psychics, and Darks. Gengar is my go to but I also love Decidueye (Cheating with starters though), Golurk, Chandelure, and Dusknoir.

And nowadays Ghost is one of the most complained about types in singles. Thanks for removing Pursuit, Game Freak.

good vid

Good video! They did indeed do Ghost dirty, but I might argue that they did Bug dirtier. - Also, I couldn't get over your pronouncing "Gengar" with the front n. 😆

I don't get why they removed Gengar's levitate. Like he's a ghost, he can fly around when he wants too.

Glengar being poison would, at least imo, make sense if it maintained the gaseous theme that gastly sets. It doesn't seem to last even with haunter, who only seems to be poison because of licks lore effect

I’ve always like Misdreavus, and Mismagius was a core part of my party when I played Pokémon Platinum. Definitely my favorites out of the ghosts, cuz I like the ‘mischievous cutie’ vibes. Next I’d say Shuppet and Banette, because I always love the haunted doll aspect, and Mega Banette is a genuinely good Mega-Evo that does more with the concept than just throws spikes on it. Third I’d say Rotom, even if’n I never used them in a game, just cuz I think they’re cool and the whole “possesses electronics” concept is fun - probably shouldn’t give them the keys to run every single aspect of your world’s communications and Pokémon storage grid though, lmao.