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SPOILERS! Mysteries and Conspiracies of Pokemon

One thing I've always noticed is Gen 6/Kalos utterly lacking any sub-legendary Pokemon. Most generations always introduce a mostly native minor legendary trio or quartet, such as the birds, the beasts, Regis, the lake guardians, Swords of Justice, Forces of Nature, Tapus, Urshifu, Ogerpon, the Treasures of Ruin, and the Loyal Three. Galar also didn't introduce any initially but added some of its own via the DLC with Urshifu, Galarian birds, Regieleki and Regidrago, and the two steeds.

Gen 6 really kinda stands out for introducing a solid 0 sub-legendaries to the roster. Its entire legendary roster is its mascot trio Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde who are restricted/major legendaries, and three mythicals in Diancie, Hoopa, and Volcanion. I wonder why they just avoided introducing sub-legendaries to the roster altogether here.

I do wonder what they'll do with Legends: Z-A in this regard. Since there are no sub-legendaries, will any new ones be added? Maybe they'll bring in other ones like the Latis with their Megas? I do wonder what they could do here to add as legendaries to hunt for/collect as part of a story quest or something among those lines.
 
ScraftyIsTheBest said:
One thing I've always noticed is Gen 6/Kalos utterly lacking any sub-legendary Pokemon. Most generations always introduce a mostly native minor legendary trio or quartet, such as the birds, the beasts, Regis, the lake guardians, Swords of Justice, Forces of Nature, Tapus, Urshifu, Ogerpon, the Treasures of Ruin, and the Loyal Three. Galar also didn't introduce any initially but added some of its own via the DLC with Urshifu, Galarian birds, Regieleki and Regidrago, and the two steeds.

Gen 6 really kinda stands out for introducing a solid 0 sub-legendaries to the roster. Its entire legendary roster is its mascot trio Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde who are restricted/major legendaries, and three mythicals in Diancie, Hoopa, and Volcanion. I wonder why they just avoided introducing sub-legendaries to the roster altogether here.

I do wonder what they'll do with Legends: Z-A in this regard. Since there are no sub-legendaries, will any new ones be added? Maybe they'll bring in other ones like the Latis with their Megas? I do wonder what they could do here to add as legendaries to hunt for/collect as part of a story quest or something among those lines.
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well worst case they can just import another region's legends. Sinnoh had one million sub legends and still felt the need to import 3 others and then add a new one for Hisui.

Or, hell, just reuse the birds again considering they were in XY to begin with.

I am still on the A-B-C legendary train, personally. B & C could be sublegends
 
ScraftyIsTheBest said:
Gen 6 really kinda stands out for introducing a solid 0 sub-legendaries to the roster. Its entire legendary roster is its mascot trio Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde who are restricted/major legendaries, and three mythicals in Diancie, Hoopa, and Volcanion. I wonder why they just avoided introducing sub-legendaries to the roster altogether here.
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My stab-in-the-dark speculation is that it’s for the same reason I think there were only 72 new Pokémon added — a lot of XY’s development would have been spent making the absolute shit ton of high-quality 3D models for the 649 existing Pokémon, so why add even more onto that workload with an abundance new species?

And then, once you know you’ve only got about 70 slots (even less if you rule out the nine guaranteed for the Starters) to work with, it’s just a matter of “Do we really want to commit nine of these to Legendaries and Mythicals, or can we sacrifice some of those?” Obviously the game needs box art Legendaries, and Mythicals are needed for the next few years of movie tie-ins. So away goes the traditional sub-Legendary trio.

Just to consider some additional factors, maybe they also felt comfortable with it since Gen 5 added two sub-Legendary trios, or maybe they were responding to the criticism that was sort of common at the time about how it felt like they were introducing too many Legendaries. We’ve no way to know, but those are my guesses.
 
I don't have the source handy so you'll have to "dude, trust me" on this but XY did have sub-legendaries: Mega Evolutions.

No, seriously. Apparently the developers internally considered Megas XY's equivalent to sub-legendaries. My buddy ol chum Hematite could tell you more on this but with this knowledge in mind suddenly SO many things about how they were handled start to make sense.
 
ScraftyIsTheBest said:
One thing I've always noticed is Gen 6/Kalos utterly lacking any sub-legendary Pokemon. Most generations always introduce a mostly native minor legendary trio or quartet, such as the birds, the beasts, Regis, the lake guardians, Swords of Justice, Forces of Nature, Tapus, Urshifu, Ogerpon, the Treasures of Ruin, and the Loyal Three. Galar also didn't introduce any initially but added some of its own via the DLC with Urshifu, Galarian birds, Regieleki and Regidrago, and the two steeds.

Gen 6 really kinda stands out for introducing a solid 0 sub-legendaries to the roster. Its entire legendary roster is its mascot trio Xerneas, Yveltal, and Zygarde who are restricted/major legendaries, and three mythicals in Diancie, Hoopa, and Volcanion. I wonder why they just avoided introducing sub-legendaries to the roster altogether here.

I do wonder what they'll do with Legends: Z-A in this regard. Since there are no sub-legendaries, will any new ones be added? Maybe they'll bring in other ones like the Latis with their Megas? I do wonder what they could do here to add as legendaries to hunt for/collect as part of a story quest or something among those lines.
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I was wondering about this when L:ZA was announced. None of the existing legendary groups which haven't already been expanded in some way feel likely to be (the only ones are the lake trio, swords of justice, or the tapus - they don't seem particularly likely to get a new member or mega evolutions) so I'm hoping we'll get an all-new group of sub-legendaries. Kalos could use some additional lore in that department.

Personally I'm just hoping that all three of the Kalos mythicals get their own dedicated quests. I want Volcanion to actually feel justified.
 
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QuentinQuonce said:
I was wondering about this when L:ZA was announced. None of the existing legendary groups which haven't already been expanded in some way feel likely to be (the only ones are the lake trio, swords of justice, or the tapus seem particularly likely to get a new member or mega evolutions) so I'm hoping we'll get an all-new group of sub-legendaries. Kalos could use some additional lore in that department.

Personally I'm just hoping that all three of the Kalos mythicals get their own dedicated quests. I want Volcanion to actually feel justified.
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The 3 mythicals would make sense for filling the role traditionally filled by sub-legendaries TBH. Base 600 BST isn't that far from 580, and you could do a lot with each of them.
R_N said:
I'm also a bit surprised to hear so many people thought Tulip was the perfect spot for the 8th leader. If anything I'd have put her earlier in the order since the game's general trend is to have you zag up Paldea till you reach the top (it doesn't feel entirely coincidental that the final titan, the last 2 star bases and 2 of the last 3 gyms are all in the the northern area)
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Tulip makes sense as either gym 2-3 or 8, but nowhere in between. Early is obvious. Gym 8...the way things are currently, you climb to the north, hit all the various challenges up there, and then have to go back down south for the gym you missed and are overleveled for(or have to zig-zag there and back north because you used a guide). If Tulip was 8th, then it would be more natural that you beat every challenge, and then the game tells you to go find the one you missed which is tougher than everything you've done so far.

Also, WHY LATE-GAME ICE GYM LEADERS?! GF has to know they suck, why do they keep throwing ice cubes at us and expect us to have difficulty? At least psychic's counters are somewhat rare.
 
Yung Dramps said:
I don't have the source handy so you'll have to "dude, trust me" on this but XY did have sub-legendaries: Mega Evolutions.

No, seriously. Apparently the developers internally considered Megas XY's equivalent to sub-legendaries. My buddy ol chum Hematite could tell you more on this but with this knowledge in mind suddenly SO many things about how they were handled start to make sense.
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Oh! I know it was a while ago, but if it helps, I was just referring to this when I said that:
https://bulbanews.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Nintendo_Dream_interview_reveals_new_mechanic_changes

The power-up of Mega Evolved Pokémon is meant to elevate them to the class of legendary Pokémon, hence the restriction of only one Pokémon being allowed to hold a Mega Stone during battles.​

It was my interpretation of this that Kalos didn't have any traditional minor Legendaries because the Megas were already acting in that capacity, and that's also why most of them were postgame and so few of them were used by NPCs;
it just happened that, because X and Y lean so strongly on fanservice all around, they basically thought it would be more fun if their would-be "minor Legendaries" were all "evolutions" of old Pokémon this time around (chosen "based on three points: visual looks, popularity and game balance"). Then they made so many of them that they added a GS Cup-style limitation to keep from crowding out the regular Pokémon (I mean, they'd never made 31 Legendaries at once before--), and the "mechanic" itself wasn't really meant to be much more than the cleanest execution of that.

For what it's worth, even if it can't be said that Megas were conceived as an explicit stand-in for minor Legendaries, the fact that a) they were compared to them from a competitive point of view and b) this comparison was given as the primary reason they chose to limit them to one per team all but confirms they were still competing with them for "space," as it were.
Maybe they didn't make "real" minor Legendaries because Megas were the minor Legendaries in their eyes all along,
or maybe they didn't make "real" minor Legendaries because - knowing that they were already pushing it with 28 Megas and that they even felt the need to introduce this one-per-team limit to limit their impact - it would be self-defeating to make even more Legendary-tier Pokémon that didn't follow that limitation.
Either way, the reason there were no other minor Legendaries seemingly does just boil down to "they thought that would be too many because of Megas."

Obviously they're kinda occupying an in-between state where they're not really Legendaries, but I found it useful to compare them to stuff like Ultra Beasts and Paradoxes if anything.
- They're all groups of technically-not-quite-Legendaries, but they still fill mechanical roles that are openly based on and adjacent to Legendaries, especially competitively, and they have in-game lore and campaign roles that tie them to the game mascots and all that;​
- they're more numerous and diverse than most actual Legendary groups;​
- each one relies on a distinct unifying mechanic (Mega Stones, Beast Boost, Proto/Quark/Booster Energy) and a distinct stat scheme (+100 BST, 570 BST made of prime numbers, 570/590/670 BST made of evens for Future/odds for Ancient) to set itself apart as a group, since there are too many to do the usual trio and quartet tropes of "one shared type" or "stats that just rearrange the same numbers;"​
- a few of them are encountered during each campaign, but the floodgates are opened so you can obtain them all for yourself in the postgame;​
- and so on...​
That kind of thing is what I mean!
Megas and Paradoxes are both, even more specifically, about as close as you can get to "Legendary-tier variants" of preexisting Pokémon, just that one is considered a form change and the other is its own species,
and a lot of the specifics of how Paradoxes were handled feel to me like a direct attempt at responding to the most common criticisms of Megas in VGC and giving a second try at almost the same idea. (They genuinely nailed it, for what it's worth! which makes me wonder if they might take anything away from that and rework the mechanical limits of Megas at all, now that they're revisiting them anyway.)

But yeah, when I brought up that interview with Dramps, I was basically trying to make the case that Megas were something much more functionally similar to Ultra Beasts and (especially) Paradoxes than to any of the so-called "generational gimmicks" / Z-Moves, Dynamax and Terastal; I was arguing that they at least should be treated like just another set of minor Legendaries.
Like, I'm sure they wouldn't belong in every game (which is also how I feel about true Legendaries... please stop putting every Legendary in every game it's getting ridiculous), but it just makes more sense to me to put them in rotation with the others, just like we got Ultra Beasts mixed in with the Legendary spam last Gen despite them totally definitely surely not being Legendaries, and just like I'm sure we can expect to see the Paradoxes brought back in a non-Paldea region for random postgame/competitive use once in a while, with or without getting any new ones.

I'm not 100% sure if Game Freak necessarily sees them that way, but I stand by it being the best way to look at them, if nothing else!
I definitely consider them Gen VI's minor Legendaries in everything but name, and I really wish more people would see them that way;
I think choosing to regard them more like Paradoxes and treating them as their own Pokémon that are just consciously built on a relationship to old ones (and less like a mechanic that could be made universal / should be held to the same standards as Z-Moves, Dynamax or Terastal or like simple "buffs" or "fixes" for their base forms) would help a lot of people to move past some specific criticisms of Mega Evolution that I don't agree with and get a better sense of what they were actually trying to do.

Uh, I could probably say more about this or explain myself better, but I am getting a bit off-topic and a bit tired right now, so I will stop myself for now--



edit: okay, maybe I'm just out of it right now, but I used way too many italics in this post and it was driving me crazy on rereading it--
uh, hopefully this is a little more readable!
 
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I don't think this is a mystery, but I've had a question recently: Gen 2, despite its advances, was designed a lot like gen 1 was. It was a jrpg sequel, before the showcase of new mons was as much of a marketing thing as the games themselves etc.

so it makes me wonder why they decided to make this obvious sequel to gen 1 be in a fictional japanese place, when kanto was just a region that existed.
 
Bakugames said:
I don't think this is a mystery, but I've had a question recently: Gen 2, despite its advances, was designed a lot like gen 1 was. It was a jrpg sequel, before the showcase of new mons was as much of a marketing thing as the games themselves etc.

so it makes me wonder why they decided to make this obvious sequel to gen 1 be in a fictional japanese place, when kanto was just a region that existed.
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Kanto was meant to be part of Japan for a while it just wasn't that strongly made a connection.

Gen 2 being set in "the rest" of Japan originally was probably because it was a jrpg sequel. The best way to show it was a bigger world, was by going across the entire continent and reframing the first game as merely one part of that continent. When they rebooted the game and downsized the concept I imagine Johto kept that strong "classical" Japanese iconography (compared to Kanto's contemporary) to both drastically differentiate itself from Kanto (now one half of the game) while retaining that original idea.
 
Kanto was always based on the actual Kanto Plain in Japan, since that's the most extensive lowland in the Japan islands and also where most of contemporary urban Japan is, including its capital city Tokyo. Game Freak deliberately chose their home base as the region to base the original Pokemon games on since it was naturally familiar to them, particularly Tajiri, Sugimori, and Masuda who are Game Freak's OGs.

Johto itself is based on Kansai which is west of Kanto, and has the more traditional Japan aesthetic as opposed to IRL Kanto's contemporary vibe. In particular Ecruteak City is based on Kyoto while Goldenrod is based on Osaka. Using the region directly west of Kanto worked to enforce that sequel vibe and enforcing that the world of Pokemon was expanding was the most optimal choice for them, since Johto in-game is directly west of Kanto and on the same landmass, so using that to "expand" that land Pokemon originally took place in with more routes and more Pokemon helped to push that sequel vibe.
 
We've got a pair of types that are mutually immune (Normal and Ghost) but I read recently that in Gen I Poison and Bug were super-effective against each other, making for the only type pairing where this was ever the case: obviously this was changed in subsequent games.

Poison and Bug are a weird pair for that - if anything you'd expect them to mutually resist each other, but never mind - but I'm actually surprised they were the only ones to ever have that distinction. A surprising amount of types resist themselves while several others are super-effective against themselves, and there are even a couple of types which resist each other (Bug and Fighting have a mutual resistance, can't think of any others offhand) but it's funny that there aren't any pairs of types where they're mutually super-effective. I'm not going to theorise which ones that could be, I just find it interesting that there's never been a pair of that sort outside of Gen I, where the lack of Poison and Bug moves made such a distinction largely theoretical anyway.
 
QuentinQuonce said:
We've got a pair of types that are mutually immune (Normal and Ghost) but I read recently that in Gen I Poison and Bug were super-effective against each other, making for the only type pairing where this was ever the case: obviously this was changed in subsequent games.

Poison and Bug are a weird pair for that - if anything you'd expect them to mutually resist each other, but never mind - but I'm actually surprised they were the only ones to ever have that distinction. A surprising amount of types resist themselves while several others are super-effective against themselves, and there are even a couple of types which resist each other (Bug and Fighting have a mutual resistance, can't think of any others offhand) but it's funny that there aren't any pairs of types where they're mutually super-effective. I'm not going to theorise which ones that could be, I just find it interesting that there's never been a pair of that sort outside of Gen I, where the lack of Poison and Bug moves made such a distinction largely theoretical anyway.
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bug being strong against poison was probobly a glitch
 
QuentinQuonce said:
We've got a pair of types that are mutually immune (Normal and Ghost) but I read recently that in Gen I Poison and Bug were super-effective against each other, making for the only type pairing where this was ever the case: obviously this was changed in subsequent games.

Poison and Bug are a weird pair for that - if anything you'd expect them to mutually resist each other, but never mind - but I'm actually surprised they were the only ones to ever have that distinction. A surprising amount of types resist themselves while several others are super-effective against themselves, and there are even a couple of types which resist each other (Bug and Fighting have a mutual resistance, can't think of any others offhand) but it's funny that there aren't any pairs of types where they're mutually super-effective. I'm not going to theorise which ones that could be, I just find it interesting that there's never been a pair of that sort outside of Gen I, where the lack of Poison and Bug moves made such a distinction largely theoretical anyway.
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OTOH I am gonna theorise which ones could be, because it's an interesting enough exercise :P

One that quickly stands out to me, and only because Psychic-Type is already super-effective on Poison-Type, is the Psychic- and Poison-Type. That one has never made all that much sense, and Poison-Type being super-effective on Psychic-Type would make quite a bit more sense -- when you get poisoned, both your mind and body begin shutting down, and it becomes a lot harder to think. Often you'll feel fatigued, disoriented, or whatever else. I think that would make Poison/Psychic a great candidate, and would have also brought some balance to Gen I (don't get too excited though, the strongest move is Sludge, and despite Poison-Type being the most common type of Pokémon in Gen I, only Muk and Weezing learn Sludge).

Perhaps a radical suggestion would be between Fighting- and Dragon-Type. Fighting-Type is effectively the "hero" type, which is why folklore protagonist Pokémon like Infernape become Fighting-Type. Oftentimes, the heroes in these stories defeat the dragons they encounter upon. And this is a feat, because those dragons have felled many potential, worthy heroes in the past. It just seems like a good pair of typings that legit beat each other all the time in their foundational materials.

Science isn't my gig, really, but making Electric-Type also weak to Water-Type just makes sense to me. Like, sure, water hitting an actual lightning bolt irl won't do anything. But if you leave your laptop out in the rain for 3 seconds it will break for the rest of time. Presumably most Electric-Type Pokémon have what is effectively internal circuitry. And a torrent of water should mess with that, making super-effective damage very reasonable. And we all know that Electric-Type being super-effective on Water-Type is also very reasonable, it's one of the type matchups that makes the most sense lol.

Finally, one that I've heard suggested before for this topic is Fire- and Ice-Type. They're the de facto hot and cold types respectively, and both heat and cold fail to do well in an environment that's too far the opposite. In scientific terms, if you put an ice cube in a kiln it'll melt, but if you throw an iceberg at a candle it'll extinguish. Therefore, they're super-effective against each other.

---------------------

On a more game theory based way of talking about things, though, I do understand why these type matchups may not exist. In practice it's kind of just a nerf to both types, as it would usually be more prominent for them to be hit by a coverage move of their opposing super-effective type than to have it fired off from a Pokémon of that same type -- it wouldn't be able to switch in safely, if you use the right STAB attack. It also makes for matchups where speed often becomes the primary game decider, which would be a unique interaction. It may be an interesting element to have in the game, but I'm not sure how desirable that is for just one or two type matchups.
 
On the topic of Poison's weakness to Psychic, I kinda have to wonder if it was a gameplay/counterpart thing more than anything, rather than anything that was designed to make sense flavor-wise.

Psychic was intentionally designed from the get-go to be a counterpart type to Fighting, and back in the old days they were basically antitheses as Psychic was special and Fighting was physical, and even now they are special/physical antitheses with their current set of moves still heavily skewed towards special and physical respectively. Psychic has Calm Mind (boosts both Special stats) and Fighting has Bulk Up (boosts both physical stats) and flavor wise they are also opposites and are meant to be the quintessential special/elemental and physical type. Psychic flavor wise is the mind type and uses supernatural mind powers, while Fighting is the super physical strength type predicated on excellent physical strength. The dichotomy is best highlighted in Machamp and Alakazam, where Machamp is known for its superhuman physical strength while Alakazam has supercomputer level brain power and can perform extremely strong psychic spells with its powerful mind.

With that in mind Psychic hitting Poison super effectively may have been a gameplay thing to play into this dichotomy, where both it and Fighting hit one of the two most common types in the game super effectively to give both types offensive merit back in RBY. Normal and Poison were easily the most ubiquitous types from a single player in-game standpoint and in contrast, Fighting hits Normal super effectively and is the only type to do so to this day. That particular matchup also doesn't really have a clear logical explanation. Both are intentionally somewhat higher tier types that are less intuitive but have a relatively unique property of hitting one of the common enemy types hard.

There seem to be a few other aspects that enforce the duality of the two types being counterparts, namely what they were weak to in Gen 1. Psychic is weak to Bug, while Fighting is weak to Flying, both of which are common early types associated with com mons.

A bit of a thought dump but something that comes to mind in this particular front.
 
ScraftyIsTheBest said:
On the topic of Poison's weakness to Psychic, I kinda have to wonder if it was a gameplay/counterpart thing more than anything, rather than anything that was designed to make sense flavor-wise.

Psychic was intentionally designed from the get-go to be a counterpart type to Fighting, and back in the old days they were basically antitheses as Psychic was special and Fighting was physical, and even now they are special/physical antitheses with their current set of moves still heavily skewed towards special and physical respectively. Psychic has Calm Mind (boosts both Special stats) and Fighting has Bulk Up (boosts both physical stats) and flavor wise they are also opposites and are meant to be the quintessential special/elemental and physical type. Psychic flavor wise is the mind type and uses supernatural mind powers, while Fighting is the super physical strength type predicated on excellent physical strength. The dichotomy is best highlighted in Machamp and Alakazam, where Machamp is known for its superhuman physical strength while Alakazam has supercomputer level brain power and can perform extremely strong psychic spells with its powerful mind.

With that in mind Psychic hitting Poison super effectively may have been a gameplay thing to play into this dichotomy, where both it and Fighting hit one of the two most common types in the game super effectively to give both types offensive merit back in RBY. Normal and Poison were easily the most ubiquitous types from a single player in-game standpoint and in contrast, Fighting hits Normal super effectively and is the only type to do so to this day. That particular matchup also doesn't really have a clear logical explanation. Both are intentionally somewhat higher tier types that are less intuitive but have a relatively unique property of hitting one of the common enemy types hard.

There seem to be a few other aspects that enforce the duality of the two types being counterparts, namely what they were weak to in Gen 1. Psychic is weak to Bug, while Fighting is weak to Flying, both of which are common early types associated with com mons.

A bit of a thought dump but something that comes to mind in this particular front.
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mind over matter or something
 
BTW I'm kind of late but I'm going to drop an alternative explanation for Bug and Poison being SE against each other - I think the intention was to literally speed up the early early game. These are two of the most common early game types and them being super effective against each other was likely intended to make Viridian forest less of a slog and more of a quick trip. Don't brush this off - a lot of gen 1 was designed less around balance and more around being a single player RPG, which is why for example, all poison moves suck since they are designed as "enemy pokemon". Poison being SE against bug means if you grab an early weedle, you can poison sting more effectively though viridian forest. You might think this sounds silly and maybe I am overthinking it but you'd be surprised how much game designers, especially those designing for 10 year olds with 10 year old attention spans, worry about a child getting stuck in a weedle vs weedle showdown and spending 10 minutes spamming not very effective poison sting against each other, declaring the game is boring and never playing again. So make Poison SE vs bug and now weedle is neutral vs other weedle.

Obviously this doesn't explain bug being SE vs poison. But I think there was likely an intention to add more bug type moves (and probably more moves of other under represented types) early in development that got dropped at some point. Or maybe like other RPGs, very early in development pokemon used generic attacks and always did damage that matched their type and then got changed to type based moves at some point and they forgot to actually make all the moves.

Just dropping my 2 cents as someone trying to make my own singe player rpg and has found that doing literally anything to try and speed up the early early game and make it engaging before you can give the player options is actually really difficult!
 
spookysocialist said:
BTW I'm kind of late but I'm going to drop an alternative explanation for Bug and Poison being SE against each other - I think the intention was to literally speed up the early early game. These are two of the most common early game types and them being super effective against each other was likely intended to make Viridian forest less of a slog and more of a quick trip. Don't brush this off - a lot of gen 1 was designed less around balance and more around being a single player RPG, which is why for example, all poison moves suck since they are designed as "enemy pokemon". Poison being SE against bug means if you grab an early weedle, you can poison sting more effectively though viridian forest. You might think this sounds silly and maybe I am overthinking it but you'd be surprised how much game designers, especially those designing for 10 year olds with 10 year old attention spans, worry about a child getting stuck in a weedle vs weedle showdown and spending 10 minutes spamming not very effective poison sting against each other, declaring the game is boring and never playing again. So make Poison SE vs bug and now weedle is neutral vs other weedle.
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That's actually a pretty interesting reasoning. I mean, in the early stages of every game you're mostly using Normal attacks but I could see the Weedle vs Weedle example coming up in development and someone catching it. Makes it all the more annoying there are hardly any good Bug attacks in Gen I, but I could buy that.

spookysocialist said:
Obviously this doesn't explain bug being SE vs poison. But I think there was likely an intention to add more bug type moves (and probably more moves of other under represented types) early in development that got dropped at some point. Or maybe like other RPGs, very early in development pokemon used generic attacks and always did damage that matched their type and then got changed to type based moves at some point and they forgot to actually make all the moves.
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Honestly the amount of Pokemon in Gen I who can only use "generic attacks" (i.e. Normal attacks), you might be onto something there.
 
We know from a bunch of development documents and timelines that yes Pokemon originally did just do a bunch of generic attacks, then they transitioned into a regular attacks + Fire/Ice/Electric and then into the type system we know (where Pokemon themselvse now had types and a suite of moves of various options).
you can track that progress across all kinds of different stuff. Pitch documents, internal ordering, how movesets developed, etc.
 
I'm shocked we never got a generic "STAB Beam" of some sort that just matches your primary type and has ~80 BP. We went like 3 gens where Hidden Power was the best STAB some types got and there's still occasional weird mons that are desperate for at least one of their two STABs(not to mention how half the type shifting mons end up with an equivalent of that ANYWAY), but it's a gap left unfilled and feels like a simple QOL fix that they would have done accidentally at some point.
 
spookysocialist said:
Obviously this doesn't explain bug being SE vs poison. But I think there was likely an intention to add more bug type moves (and probably more moves of other under represented types) early in development that got dropped at some point. Or maybe like other RPGs, very early in development pokemon used generic attacks and always did damage that matched their type and then got changed to type based moves at some point and they forgot to actually make all the moves.
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My guess is before Bug Type moves failed to materialize in some notable way, Bug Moves might have been a way to help the "crutch character" design of early Bugs like Butterfree and Beedrill. Against the as-mentioned Generic Poison "Evil" Pokemon, your Bug types could hit harder while you'e getting other guys caught up (and the dual-SE relation might even result in stuff like Bugs heavily hitting Zubat or Ekans or such, then being KO'd so the next mon takes all the EXP off the weakened opponent), akin to FE Pre-Promotes. They'd fall off when the Rockets got more varied rosters in theory and you had more trained mons with type coverage and better late game stats then (barring Scyther and Pinsir who also come late game as single stages).

One thing this makes me think of is how Erika as the 4th Gym Leader would about coincide with the "last hurrah" for Bugs, and if Poison was resistant to Bug as it is now, they wouldn't beat her Grass Types, one of the other few advantages the type had in Gen 1.
 
Scyther and Pinsir in gen 1 feel like they were hit pretty hard from a lack of focus on STAB moves. They were thematically tied to Slash and ViceGrip respectively, both Normal moves (Slash gets used elsewhere, I imagine ViceGrip wasn't changed for parity reasons). Since the only two Bug mons that are supposed to stick around when non-Normal attacks become commonplace (quite a while in gen 1) weren't supposed to be using Bug moves as their primary options anyway, I could see how Bug got a low priority when it came to filling out options.

Scyther now has Aerial Ace as a good thematic STAB, but non-Mega Pinsir still feels like it struggles a bit in this regard.
 
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