Unorganised thoughts on Gen 1 Pokemon

 So, I've been doing stuff with RetroAchievements. You can see me on there as KatrinaTheLamia and see that I am pretty lame. I joined in 2024... but I didn't actually start doing any achievements until this year (which is 2025)

I've been going through Pokemon Red--and trying to grab various achievements... and uh, I was playing differently. This had me thinking about the various benefits of Gen 1, that mostly only work by being limited to Gen 1

Different Play Styles I'm Doing

 

So, one of the first issues I noticed was I was getting easily over level for various achievements that require a level cap going on

To answer this, I started pulling in pokemon beyond what I'd usually use at that point in the game I would not use as a form of EXP-Sponge to keep other mons from going over-leveled

See, usually I only grab the starter, and maybe one Pokemon in one of the nearby routes. In the Gen 3 Hoenn games it is Ralts, then maybe one on the next island to be visited. Effectively having myself have a similar amount of mons in my team, as the various enemy trainers. Generally not having a full team until the middle of the game 

Which in the two other Pokemon games I've already done a run through--this was fine

I got to the SS Anne, and noticed that I was not going to be able to take on all the trainers on the boat without having my Mons being overlevel. This is with me doing this before going through Diglet Tunnel to get Flash, and before going East from the town the SS Anne is in. So I added Farfetch'd to me team to take in experience

I had already brought out for my team: my starter (now a Wortortle), my Gyrados (who mostly was switch trained in Mt. Moon--to act as an EXP Sponge), my Clefairy (raising to learn Metronome for another achievement), my Nidoking (it is Gen 1... you have Nidoking) and my Beedrill (which was there for Memes)

Usually at this point I'd just be running my starter and Nidoking. Maybe Beedrill because I think it is funny to do that

I had on my team a whole bunch of crud on my team, so that it would stay under the level cap for the third badge

Shortly after this I added Cho Aniki the Diglet and Marchelle the Abra onto my Team. With me having some of my Mons stored in the PC to be swapped in and out in order to keep my team below the level

Though Clefairy and later Clefable did show me something I forgot

The Gen 1 Containment (SCP entry?)

 

So, I eventually got Sploder the Clefairy up to being high enough of a level to learn Metronome. To earn the retroachievement from having Metronome explode its user

This is when I remembered how I'd play the game way back during the day of Gen 1--in the 1900s. Before Gen 2 was even a thing. When most people playing the game were trash at it. No seriously, the Meta-Game today is WAY WAY WAY stronger than it was back then. If you went back in time with today's knowledge you would completely destroy people back then. We know internal stuff--but people playing it also know how to use the characters better. In every category of gameplay including Speed-Run, Single-Run, Nuzlocke, Competative and various challenge runs

Back in the 1900s, I often would run a Metronome Clefable--because it did a bunch of dumb nonsense. It was a very disruptive choice that was very good at messing up other players (when it did not mess up yourself)

The thing is, I skipped Gen 2... because Gen 1 had a LOT of BS going on with it, that I was concerned would also be present in Gen 2

I was convinced to return for Gen 3, mostly after seeing the Cartoon had a season for Gen 3 on the air. I was mostly under the understanding that Gen 2 had been a farewell to Pokemon. So I tried Gen 3... and judging hated it. This would have been in 2005 or 2006, roughly

It wasn't until I found out about Orbital Grouse's Lets Play of Pokemon Emerald--a screenshot Lets Play from just before video Lets Plays became a thing. I'll get back to some stuff with that

One of the things I found was the meme gameplay stuff I did would not work in Gen 3. There was also some gameplay elements that were no longer part of the game in Gen 3. But little things in PvP battles that were me just being cheeky about game play that wasn't an option in Gen 3

I thought I had misremembered what using Metronome was like in Gen 1... until this play through

I tried to figure out how exactly Metronome was nerfed in later generations. All I could think was that some moves were no longer options with Metronome--but those were generally moves you did not want to happen with Metronome. I thought about how most moves were actually buffed in Gen 3 and onward

Took me a bit, but then I realised what it was: the Gen 1 mons had crap for movesets

The only reason a memeset that involved just doing way too much Metronome would work like it did in Gen 1 was most mons only had like ten moves they learned by level up, twenty from machines--and most of them really really sucked and were not worth it in competitive battle. So mons only had so much they could do in response. And the PvP scene generally was not as mature as it is today to shut down

I mean today, if somebody were to rock up with a memeset where Metronome is a noteworthy element of it--it would be taken down pretty quickly, because people have a much better understanding of how to unmake it

But this ended up having me thinking how a large amount of stuff exists in Gen 1 as a result of glitchy programming, bad oversight, being a new type of game and a bunch of stuff that were starting to get fixed in Gen 2

Like, the held items appeared to be a way to use bagged items in PvP battle. Which, seems like a reasonable way to do something that looks like it was meant to be done in Gen 1, but they couldn't get it to be done in a reasonable manner

I mean, your bag only has 20 slots in it, IIRC (or was it 25?). Enemy trainers use items in battle

There is a timeline where the PvP battle allowed the player to have five items selected in their bag, to be used for how many they had in their bag during a PvP battle. Which if PvP battles allowed players to spam a ridiculous amount of Full Restores, X-Items and others they'd look quite a bit different today. With balance choices of the Battle Bag being part of the stuff going forward

I mean, the other reason your bag had a limited inventory was a lot of jRPG and Dungeon Crawlers generally had limited inventories for characters. Sure, a lot had some pretty huge space for items that players character... but well backpacks have limited space--so your small child's bag should have a limited amount of space as well

Which would have been fine, if your storage PC had enough space for most of the items in the game. You have to use or sell a lot of the stuff you pick up. Or you won't be able to pick anything up at a certain point in the game

It is at this point in pondering that has me realising that the main draw of Gen 1 Pokemon was how broken and janky it all is

With it ONLY being able to be enjoyable, due to it being limited to its own Generation. If every generation was this level of jank... the game would have never gone forward. The fact that later games have a bit more polish to them

There is other stuff with Gen 1... but well, I touched on something earlier that needs to be explored

A Brief Interlude About the Backlash to jRPGs

 

So, I wasn't able to get into Gen 3 and Gen 4 game play that well during the time they were current. I thought Colosseum and XD were fairly lame as well. When Gen 5 finally came out I was excited for it--but mostly because I was expecting to enjoy it ironically. Rip it apart, make fun of it--and enjoy it that way. Stuff happened in my life that I wasn't able to really get into Gen 5. I did return for Gen 6... but...

This was all on the backdrop of the backlash towards jRPGs lack of plots being a thing

Oh right... to explain the whole backlash to jRPG lack of plots--you need to understand that for a good chunk of the 1990s and early 00s people were insisting that jRPGs were super deep and had great stories. They uh... well they had deeper narratives than other games. They were usually extremely formulaic McGuffin Hunts. Or at least the ones that left Japan were

 You got exceptions to this. Earthbound, Chrono Trigger and the Mega Ten games had fairly decent plot. Some of the SaGa games had some decent plot to them. However, you will notice I just listed two game franchises that were mostly Japan only up until the mid-00s

Most jRPGs that got outside of Japan were fetch quests for their main quest line. Did I just call Final Fantasy 4 a series of fetch quests? Yes. Because it pretty much is that for the most part. You do have one interesting bit with a gimmick to become a Paladin... but the writing is cheesy and not overly that deep

Now, this isn't inherently bad... it is only inherently bad when you had a noisy group of people who believe dumb crap about Japan talking them up. Well, that and you had people familiar with how ttRPGs worked, and really did not think jRPGs were that comparable

And jRPGs are about as comparable to ttRPGs as Dungeon-Crawlers and Rogue-likes. This isn't inherently bad... if you don't have people playing up jRPGs as more than what they actually were. Having people just kind of sour on them not meeting what a bunch of people who believe that child porn is shown to children on Saturday Mornings in Japan, and that twelve year old girls yearn for some body from North America who cannot even communicate to girls in English (let alone in another language they cannot even speak correctly)

So the backlash to jRPGs was not fully due to the jRPGs themselves. It was due to the rise of "Lazy Media Criticism" (with there not being much better for that stuff in pop-culture for about a decade from that). As well as a group of noisy creeps playing them up for more than what is reasonable to expect of them. Creeps whose understanding of Japanese(the language) was... well "bad" is not strong enough of a word for how they'd butcher the five words they actually did know. While they would play up jRPGs with their mall ninja weapons and telling people that it is completely fine for a person in their thirties to fly to Japan with a thirteen year old and use their love hotels. As "Japan is an open culture"

Like, that backlash was never actually about Japan--and only against the games in much the same way stuff that was all "Disney Princess Has Teh Stalk Homer Sinner Dromes!", and a group of people very much over playing what you could reasonably expect out of them

The plots of jRPGs are on par with Twilight for writing quality. Which, again, is fine if you aren't going in expecting literary excellence that you can pretend you have read it for your local book club to cover you in praise

And a lot of it was against the sort of creeps who seemed to overplay the quality of it. The sorts that today will say you are not an Anime Fan if you did not worship "Is It Wrong to Incestuously Pee on my Bunny Girl's Feet in a Dungeon" as Cinema and Literary Excellence

The backlash went too far in the being needlessly bitter about the content of this stuff

I was kind of over the backlash when Gen 6 came out. I kind of enjoyed Pokemon X and Pokemon Y. It was straight forward--it was direct. It largely expected there to be a follow up game to tie together plot better. Which... never actually ended up happening. The extremely long tutorial in Pokemon Sun and Moon was something I did not notice, as I played Pokemon Ultra Sun and Pokemon Ultra Moon

They are pretty much standard jRPG stuff--and it is weird people somehow act like they are really that worse than the previous Generations

But it is largely the backlash to jRPGs going unanalysised by people that has thinking that X,Y, Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon are particularly bad entries. They are fine... they are okay... they are generally inoffensive

People just think every Pokemon Game is Gen 5 Pokemon, and get upset when no Pokemon Game is Gen 5 Pokemon. Not even Gen 5 Pokemon is really Gen 5 Pokemon. I mean, it literally is that--but there is an ideal at play... that has never really been present in the material

And yeah... it is this overplaying the capacity of a gameplay style's content... that will only serve to make people hate it for being what it never was going to be

Just like Rogue-likes are not proper RPGs. Dungeon Crawlers are not proper RPGs. Heck even games that can be called cRPGs like entries in the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series cannot really be called proper RPGs

 But that does not make the experience able to be enjoyed... if you go in expecting a Rogue-like, instead of a group meeting to play Pathfinder regularly

 The backlash affect me as well... and it wasn't really the games themselves. Which can have their charm, if you don't try to play them up for what they aren't

And yeah... getting back into Pokemon for Gen 3 and Gen 4 did not really have me going full on Genwunner... as well, I knew Genwunners are complete and total BS, and always have been BS

I mean, it was Gen 1's nonsense that had me kind of quitting the franchise, thinking it was going to be more of Gen 1's glitchy nonsense. Along with the start of the backlash to jRPGs starting to form

The Glitches of Gen 1 Are Kind of a STEM Toy

 

 So, one of the other ways Gen 1 continues to shine as its own thing compared to every Pokemon game after it being better than it in nearly every way... is the glitches being a selling point

 To the point where I consider the weird different glitches and think about the validity of Gen 1 as a STEM toy type thing. Where you approach it as a way to understand how programming and what not works, by starting off in a virtual world, and doing a bunch of nonsense to break around stuff inside that world. Via taking into account how computers work and operate

People keep talking about us living in a simulation--but the only people we see constantly running into walls at 45(deg) angles are people we keep locked up and heavily sedated on medications. I mean, if this was a simulation, why can nobody benefit from the effects of an a half-button press?

 The various ways this game just... kind of craps its pants kind of becomes its own toy. The fact that Critical Hits are a bad thing if you've boosted up enough, creates a situation where Focus Energy has a possible usage to avoid Crit Hits. Not actually useful with who gets what moves--but it sparks the imagination for what could be

One can play this game, and fantasise about a bit of educational software inspired by Pokemon Green bugs and glitches, arbitrary ACE, manipulating Missingno., doing stuff with Charizard'M, the glitch trainers, the glitch moves, and spawning Pokemon based upon the Special Stat

The issue is, programming such a game would mostly just end up programming a back door onto your own computer system

Like, this is not something you could contain like a "Red Code" arena 

Heck it is entirely plausible to have malware inserted into a system via a Pokemon Gen 1 save file that is aware of the emulator it is being run within

I'm not aware of anybody who has made a PoC of a Pokemon Gen 1 save file, that is able to escape the emulator it is being ran within, to interact with the host system running the emulator

But... Pokemon Gen 1, could plausible execute an ACE that ends up exploiting a coding oversight in the emulator to deposit a (small) payload outside of it

 There is no real benefit to doing something like this... other than bragging rights

So... making a STEM Toy inspired by how glitching Pokemon Gen 1 is... is not exactly a good idea to actually do

It is, however, a fun idea to dream about

A Pokemon game where you are a reality destroying eldritch abomination

The monsters you catch and tame do not behave how they are suppose--and seem to exist outside of shift with the world. In that the world even around them, seems to be a different world--their presence slowly changing everything around them. Shaped into something that you cannot understand how it wasn't always just looking like this. Why would you have walls when you could have an odd string of numbers and letters? Walls seem pointless compared to grass. Grass 0931f gleebly No roof bargo. Just every sea, normal as tree roof pathways aaaa line. Calming bush slope splash as the sound chip chirps is high pitch broken tones

Ah... but those fine autumn fire ledge days will never happen outside of our minds

It is the draw to it--even if you won't go in that overly deep. Just the shallow end for some of the fun stuff 89AFLineFuzzLineAngleAngleLineFuzzAAAAAQMBirdLineFuzz dreams are made from

Which is definitely part of what makes Gen 1 so much slant roof pillar tree fuzz c feather static bing!!!????11@#&&&!kkkkkkfishcrunch!

 I Also Looked At Some Smogon Teams For an Achievement

 

So one of the achievements involves defeating the Elite 4 with a level cap of 50. Which means going in with mons in the early 40s. As being that low, they _will_ level up a fair amount during these fights. So I decided to look up Smogon movesets to make that particular achievement a bit less unreasonable to grab when I eventually do

Maybe one day I'll join the various Discord servers that people who do matches with RBY rules do stuff

I mean, the format is quite a bit more limiting. It is a bit more like playing Chess, really. Chess where three required pieces are a bull, a MILF Egg, a racial stereotype and Patrick 

Oh right, I decided to actually work on training Jynx in the game... and dear fscking lord C'thulhu dead in his home in R'yleh! That is completely a Mammy depiction

Like... they change the back facing sprites in Gen 2 onward... and Jynx is not as viable of a mon after Gen 1. But the back sprites in Gen 1. I feel like it needs one of those warnings before old Warner Bros cartoons. Like holy crap... yeah... I get why some people were all "hey... uh... WTF"

I mean, way back when, most people likely did not use Jynx much in the Gen 1 games. She did not become a part of the Metagame until _AFTER_ the Jynx controversy stuff

But like... that backsprite... that is certainly a backsprite somebody made. I feel kind of bad using it

Few questions. First: WHY?!?!? Second: WWWWWWHHHHHHYYYYYYYY?!?!?!?!?!?! Third: DEAR GOD WHY?!?!?!? Fourth: And I must stress now, WWWWWWHHHHYYYYYY?!?!?!?  

Outside of the back sprite being really really icky, you could make the claim that people were being kind overly stupid about being kind of annoyed with it

And well... the back sprites for most Gen 1 mons are all kinds of terrible

But like... I get how in Japan nobody saw issue with this... but like... is the only reason people thought people were being silly because nobody used Jynx enough to see the back sprite?

It is certainly a choice

I only decided to do stuff with that mon, in order to get an achievement. But like...wow

-=-

So there... some musing on Pokemon  Gen 1