Nostalgia is a powerful, powerful force. Whether you’re dreaming wistfully about a favorite movie, TV show, video game or a hairstyle you thought was acceptable back in the day, it’s sometimes better to keep those rose-tinted glasses firmly in place. Like those Friends flashback episodes, you don’t really want to look back at how you dressed back in 1983.
For nostalgic Pokémon fans in particular, diving back in 1998’s Pokémon Red and Blue can be an illuminating experience. Perhaps we were too young to notice, but several things about the game were all kinds of questionable. Here are some little things about Pokémon Red and Blue (and Green) that you only really notice in hindsight.
There’s So Little Item Space In The Backpack
In more recent Pokémon games, the inventory is essentially unlimited. The bag is neatly divided into categories, and there’s even a handy indicator that shows you when there’s a new item in a particular pocket. It’s super convenient.
If you’ve been spoiled by this user-friendly inventory system, hopping back into Pokémon Red and Blue will definitely be frustrating. You’ll be constantly discarding items, swapping things around or using healing items on party members that have only lost 1HP, simply so you can pick up that Key Item you need to progress. It’s like playing as Chris “I Can Only Hold Six Things At A Time” Redfield in the original Resident Evil.
Some Of The Sprites Were Just Strange
Naturally, the first-generation games represent the first exposure that many of us had to the world-conquering Pokémon franchise. These were the games that featured the beloved ‘original 150’ (Mew notwithstanding), all of which have become truly iconic.
What we didn’t notice the first time around, however, was just how questionable some of those sprites were. The humble Game Boy did its best to bring these Pokémon to life over twenty years ago, these sprites really were a huge mixed bag. Just look at Exeggutor here; didn’t we understand how horrifying that is?
Bug Moves… Just Didn’t Exist
It’s a running joke in the Pokémon community that some typings just don’t get the same love and attention from Game Freak as others. Ice and Rock, for instance, are both weak to everything ever. While they’re also super effective against a range of types, this makes them a major pain to use, especially if they’re more defensively-oriented.
Then there are those types that are just weak. Before the likes of Volcarona were introduced, Bug-types tended to be very weak. Taking another look at the original games, it’s clear that Bug was at its very worst here. There wasn’t really a single move of the type worth using. Twin Needle? What good was that going to do?
Ghosts Really Picked The Short Straw Too
Two decades later, there are certain Pokémon types (such as Water) that are far more common than others. Back in the day, though, this situation was much worse. In Generation I, Ghost-types only had one representative: the Gastly line.
That’s right. Gastly, Haunter and Gengar were the only Ghost Pokémon. To make matters even worse, though, Ghost also had slim to zero moves to its name and didn’t really work as intended. As fans know, today Ghost-type attacks are super effective against Psychic types. Originally, Psychic Pokémon were instead immune to Ghost attacks for whatever reason. It’s odd to look back and see just how strange the Pokémon world used to be. We didn’t know any better back then.
Lance’s Dragons Weren’t Really Dragons
For franchise fans, there are a lot of injustices in this world that never grow boring to gripe about. One of them is this: How can an adorable little Pokémon like Appletun/Flapple be Dragon-type, but huge scaly beasts like Charizard aren’t?
Yes, it’s more of a balancing thing and Mega Charizard X is Fire/Dragon, but still. Red and Blue’s Dragon-type expert, the iconic Lance, could have actually had several Dragons on his team rather than wannabes. In hindsight, you realize how poorly his team fits his specialty, simply because he had no Dragon options beyond Dratini, Dragonair and Dragonite.
Some Pokémon Learn Some Truly Bizarre Moves
Have you ever wondered why Snorlax can learn Surf? Have you ever laughed to yourself at the mental image of a Pokémon trainer happily sitting atop its bulging belly as it ferries you along the water? Of course, you have. There’s a simple reason why actually: because Normal-type Pokémon could seemingly learn any darn moves they wanted in the early days of Pokémon. Riding along on a Snorlax’s belly, as seen above, was totally fine in Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee but we’ve got to draw the line somewhere.
The most powerful and useful attacks, such as Thunderbolt, Flamethrower, Earthquake and Ice Beam, tend to be the exclusive domain of Pokémon of those types (although lots of Water-types can learn Ice Beam). Normal Pokémon like Snorlax and Tauros were free to grab some of these moves regardless, though, and still are. We didn’t question this back in the day, did we?
How Much Of A Pain HMs Can Be
More recent installments of the main series have taken steps to make things a little more user-friendly. Not only have matters like inventory management been dramatically improved, but other major bugbears seem to have been ironed out too.
If you grew up with the earlier Pokémon games, you’ll remember what a pain it was to carry around Pokémon that had a specific HM (a move like Strength which was needed to progress through certain areas) at the right time. Many players opted to saddle certain Pokémon with several of these moves at once, in order to mitigate the party-switching. It was another element we just accepted at the time, but now HMs seem to be gone, it’s a real pain to go back to them.
Legendary Pokémon Are Largely Irrelevant To The Story
In more recent games, Legendary Pokémon have been hugely significant to the plot and/or their home region. The Tapus of Alola, Zacian, and Zamazenta of Pokémon Sword and Shield… they’ve been closely tied into the events of the game.
Red and Blue’s Legendary Pokémon, Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres and Mewtwo (again, Mew notwithstanding) just happen to be there. They’re casually mentioned and can be caught in tricky optional areas, but they don’t really have much bearing on the plot. The plot itself isn’t particularly significant in the original game either, as players simply get sucked into Team Rocket’s nefarious plans.
The Mechanics Have Taken Huge Strides Forward Since Red And Blue
At the time, it would have been difficult to predict just what a phenomenon Pokémon would become. Two decades later, who could have imagined that Nintendo and Game Freak would have one of the biggest entertainment franchises ever on their hands?
What that in mind, it’s no wonder that the first releases feel incredibly primitive today. Certain elements we take for granted today just didn’t work in Red and Blue. Most infamously, Wrap and Bind prevented the target from switching out or taking their turns as normal, which absolutely wouldn’t fly in competitive play today.
Just How Well It Defined What Was To Come In The Pokémon Series
So, yes. You can’t hop back into the first entry in a long-running series without finding things more than a little basic compared to what came later. There’s no doubt that the first Pokémon games were super flawed and experimental.
At the same time, though, there’s something else that’s also abundantly clear when replaying Red and Blue: they’ve got the blueprint for Pokémon success written all over them. Detractors often say that the series never changes, but part of that is because the first games did so much so well right from the off. The formula for Pokémon was remarkably well defined here, there’s no doubt about it.
