en 1's roster has aged absurdly well, and I feel like people have lost sight of that. It originally started with people bringing up the generation's weaker designs as a rebuttal to the boomers who sip monster energy while moping about Pokemon designs not being what they were in the Good Ol Days:tm:, but it feels like this gag has been run so deep into the ground for the past 3 years or so that Pokefans now genuinely think every Gen 1 design is on the level of shit like Seaking and Dewgong. But when you think about it for more than 3 seconds, this assertion immediately falls apart.
Not going to talk about design because that's subjective, but I would like to point out that a big advantage is that Gen 1 gets a lot more attention than the other generations, notably having two sets of remakes and having a huge chunk of regional variants, Mega Evolution, and Gigantamax, meaning they have more advantages for buffs thanks to bias from developers.
Dragonite, Mewtwo, Mew, Gengar, Alakazam, Lapras, Gyarados, Snorlax, all 3 starters, the original Eeveelutions, Ninetales, the Nidos, and so, SO much more. All of these Pokemon are not just great design-wise but an impressive chunk have remained competitively relevant in some form, whether in Smogon or Game Freak formats.
How exactly are we deciding whether a Pokemon is competitively successful or not? Is it based off usage? In that case, only Dragonite, Nidoking, Slowbro, Zapdos, and Clefable have remained in OU currently. Alakazam and Gengar are BL though since Spectrier outclasses the latter before the ban. Lapras is only high in VGC thanks to GMax. The original eveelutions have been completely power crept in both Smogon formats and Cartridge formats, while Nidoqueen is cast aside for Nidoking for OU. Snorlax lost its niche in VGC thanks to the nerf to the super berries.
As for Mr. Mime, I don't mind it, and I think its idle animation in the 3D games captures its personality of a Mime quite well. However, I definitely prefer Slowbro, Jynx, Starmie, and Alakazam when it comes Gen 1 Psychic types.
On a whole though, I find it hard to say which generation has the best designs overall, I believe every generation has good designs and bad designs, and which design is good or bad, depends as a person.
On the topic of Gen 1 Designs , I agree with
Suspicious Derivative that Gen 1 gets a lot of passes when it comes to criticism that the other Gens in the series gets. I want to split up this in to two sections:
Pokemon Designs: I've been meaning to write about this for a while, and this was the perfect opportunity to do it, so here we go: I love Magmortar, that's definitely an unpopular opinion based on the fandom I've spoken to on Smogon Discord. When I was a kid, DP were my first games, and I really loved Magmortar. I always thought it was so cool with that cannon arm that can spit fireballs that exceed 3,600 degrees farenheit. Yet wherever I go, I see people complain how Magmortar "ruined " Magmar by older fans and that just really makes me angry. I really like the majority of the Gen 4 Cross evolutions, with Leafeon, Togekiss, Mismagius, and Gallade being some of my favorites, so it really annoys me when older fans claim they ruined the line, while in the actuality they made the lines in terms of gameplay.
Listen to this YouTube criticize Rhyperior for its design while claiming Mesprit's prowress in competitive battling while neglecting Rhyperior's prowress in the competitive scene. This kind of criticism for the Cross Gens is probably the main reason why it was dropped until Gen 8, in which its compromised to the Galarian form, which is also a Kanto Majority, while in contrast the Sinnoh ones were well distributed between 1, 2, and 3.
Gameplay: I personally think Kanto has terrible type distrubution. There are too many Poison types ( In fact Gen 1 had the most Poison types in any generation and more Water types in Gen 1 as a whole ), all the Normal types were either Pure Normal ( Prior to Fairy ) or Normal/Flying, Zapdos was the only Dual typed Electric, Moltres and Charizard were the only Fire types who weren't pure, all the Rock types were Quad weak to Grass except Aerodactyl, there is generally too many flying types, 3/5 Ice types were Water/Ice, and in general, a lot of combinations are reused too much like Grass/Poison, Normal/Flying, and Water/Ice. Ghost and Dragon are too rare and only have one line each. Whenever I bring up this Type Balancing issues in Kanto and their remakes, I either get two responses: " It was the first Gen so it doesn't count " and " Dark and Steel didn't exist in the originals " so its fine. For the former, I would have let it slide if they have bothered to fix these remakes since Kanto had two unlike the other Gens, but for FRLG, they didn't allow any of the cross gens to be obtainable, which would have allowed more Dragon, Dark, and Steel respectively in the Dex, but no, they had the most strict trading restrictions ever, preventing you from obtaining the Cross-Gens until you have become Champion and obtained the National Dex. Because of these design choices, Steel and Dragon only have one each, and there are 0 Dark types in FRLG until you have reached the Sevii Islands. Even in Let's Go, they still only had two lines available for Dark, Alolan Raticate and Alolan Muk/Persian depending on the version, and Let's Go Eevee only has Alolan Diglett and Magnetmite lines as the available Steel types. Pokemon Go was on Gen 4 when Let's Go launched, so most of the Cross Gens were available ( Sylveon was the only one missing ) so they had no reason not to include them. That being said, it feels like the Alolan forms were designed to fill in gaps left by only including the original 151, since the majority are Dark, Ghost, Steel, and Ice, all of which were rare types in Gen 1.
But here's the thing: No matter how many times I bring up these points, I always find someone who has to create an excuse, usually the former two mentioned above. On the contrary, DP had a lot of the same issues, like a lack of Fire types, which is one of its biggest complaints and the fanbase is very vocal about that, alongside the remaining Pokemon of Gen 4 being missing from the Pokedex. Fortunately, Platinum exists and fixed most of the problems including the Fire types and Cross gens as well as improving the roles of characters like Team Galactic and Cynthia. None of the enhanced versions of Kanto have done anything to improve the storyline from my understanding, heck, I even heard that Yellow is a worse third version than Red and Blue! In a similar note, HGSS get criticized for not allowing all of the Cross-Gens in the game, but at the very at least, you could trade with people to obtain cross-gens should you really want to use them.
But it seems that the developers agree with the consensus that Gen 1 is "perfect" to the point they remade it twice, all of which try to stay the true to the originals twice, which probably adds to the frustration Gen 1 gets a pass for everything.
Anyway, that's why I think Gen 1 gets an unfair pass for lot of issues that other games get criticized for.
On the topic of fanbases, from my experience on Smogon and Bulbagarden forums, it seems that most Pokemon fans are some of the most chill and nicest people I interacted with. Its one if the many reasons I stay on these Forums, and I disagree saying that certain generation fans are more rabid than others. Yes, sure we have our own opinions, but most people are very civil about it and can respect one another's reasons. Its not perfect though, as we've seen with Dexit and the Current TCG fiasco going on, but from my experience, Pokemon fans are some of the nicest people I'm met and I'm so happy to be part of Smogon and contribute to the community. Some things I noticed with Bulbagarden people is that the most popular games consistently are: Platinum, HGSS, BW, B2W2, and the most current gen, SwSh in this case, which seems to be on par with Smogon. I personally believe that the Pokemon community is some of the most forgiving fanbases out there, in contrast to the Smash community which has some of the most obnoxious people who send death threats to Sakurai for not including Waluigi despite going out of the way to get characters like Steve, Joker, Banjo and Kazooie and Sephiroth despite it being easier to use Nintendo characters for Smash. And let's not forget when Byleth was revealed for Smash Ultimate, how the entire Smash GameFaqs community had an enormous meltdown, with some message boards encouraging toxicity and harassment towards Fire Emblem fans. Its that kind of behavior is why I avoid the Smash community In general.
