Current Events > Remember when Hitmonchan got all those element punches, but only had 35 Special?

(+) Yeah! (+)

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That's why you get the better evolution and give Hitmonlee those punches.

Hitmonchan looks so bad with low textures. He really is a dumb design that has potential to look better.

Mega Punch
Fire Punch
Ice Punch
Thunder Punch

Some kid was really proud of that, I bet.

Meanwhile Gen 2 Alakazam can utilize the elemental punches far better than Hitmonchan could. Oh, and Charizard with it's tiny arms was better at using it too.

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


You didn't think Hitmonlee looked cool?

Solar_Crimson posted...

Mega Punch
Fire Punch
Ice Punch
Thunder Punch

Some kid was really proud of that, I bet.

It was me. I was the kid.

Fable posted...

It was me. I was the kid.

Same >_> I was so confused why Hitmonchan was so trash as a kid. I didn't understand how special worked

The Elemental Punches are Physical.

Solar_Crimson posted...

Mega Punch
Fire Punch
Ice Punch
Thunder Punch

Some kid was really proud of that, I bet.

>_>

ai123 posted...

The Elemental Punches are Physical.

Not in Gen 1-3

ai123 posted...

The Elemental Punches are Physical.

Not pre 4th gen

Irony posted...

Not pre 4th gen

guess what kid didnt know that growing up lol

Irony posted...

Not pre 4th gen

Heh. My mistake.

I don't think I ever paid attention back then.

codey posted...

guess what kid didnt know that growing up lol

Literally everyone: "It has Punch in the name! Why isn't it off the Attack stat!?"

The physical/special split in gen 4 was one of the most revolutionary changes to the battle system ever seen between generations. A lot of previously useless pokemon suddenly became viable, especially after gen 2 split Special Attack and Special Defense and nerfed some of them (looking at you, Gyarados).

pokedude900 posted...

The physical/special split in gen 4 was one of the most revolutionary changes to the battle system ever seen between generations. A lot of previously useless pokemon suddenly became viable, especially after gen 2 split Special Attack and Special Defense and nerfed some of them (looking at you, Gyarados).

Remember Kingler? 130 Attack stat, can only use Normal moves for physical lol

ai123 posted...

The Elemental Punches are Physical.

Not in Gen 1 they weren't

Pokemon has always had such needlessly obtuse and unintuitive mechanics

I love my Hitmon-san, and I am consistently disappointed that gamefreak doesn't give him every punch. He's the fucking punching pokemon, and it would give him a better niche.

Sand Attack Punch

pokedude900 posted...

The physical/special split in gen 4 was one of the most revolutionary changes to the battle system ever seen between generations. A lot of previously useless pokemon suddenly became viable, especially after gen 2 split Special Attack and Special Defense and nerfed some of them (looking at you, Gyarados).

Sneasel finally became useful. ...In the same generation that it got a far better evolution, but hey, points.

Of course, Dark should have never been a Special type to begin with. Just as Ghost should have never been Physical.

VampireCoyote posted...

Pokemon has always had such needlessly obtuse and unintuitive mechanics

it is weird that Pokmon is essentially a distilled and hyper simplified RPG so little kids can enjoy while simultaneously having features that little kids will never understand or dont even make sense to adults.

Solar_Crimson posted...

Sneasel finally became useful. ...In the same generation that it got a far better evolution, but hey, points.

Of course, Dark should have never been a Special type to begin with. Just as Ghost should have never been Physical.

ghost being physical makes even less sense when you think about how ghosts are incapable of physically attacking something because they dont have a physical body. In the same game where I ghost cant be punched by a normal Pokmon, a ghost can physically beat you up.

Solar_Crimson posted...

Of course, Dark should have never been a Special type to begin with. Just as Ghost should have never been Physical.

I think the logic behind Ghost being physical was that the only damaging move in gen 1 was Lick, lol.

I thought they were physical attacks

I will never forget how my little brother beat me in pokemon because I wasn't up to date with the changes.

I was only playing it up to Gen 2, and many years later my brother challenged me because he got black and white for cheap.

So, I simply went with old school gen2 meta into gen 5.

Little Brother: plays Alakazam
Me: plays Chansey.

Alalazam uses Psycho Cut.

Me after my Chansey gets trashed:
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/e/e8f93fcc.jpg

Lesson learned.

megamanfreakXD posted...

I thought they were physical attacks

Not until Gen 4.

In Gens 1 thru 3, whether a type was physical or special depended solely on its type.

Normal, Bug, Flying, Poison, Rock, Ground, Fighting, Ghost, Steel were all Physical types.
Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, Ice, Psychic, Dragon, and Dark were all Special types.

Were it up to me, in addition to the Ghost/Dark thing, I would have also swapped around Poison and Dragon.

Yes! I also remember Charizard only

PraxagoraKassan posted...

Yes! I also remember Charizard only

Charizard
-Flamethrower
-Fire Spin
-Fire Blast
-Ember

Another kid's proud work on display here.

Solar_Crimson posted...

Charizard
-Flamethrower
-Fire Spin
-Fire Blast
-Ember

Another kid's proud work on display here.

Nah, I think most kids swapped out Ember for Slash. Everyone quickly figured out how broken Slash was with auto-crits

pokedude900 posted...

I think the logic behind Ghost being physical was that the only damaging move in gen 1 was Lick, lol.

Which of course raises the issue with both it and Dragon's only attack being a move that only inflicted 40 damage at all times, rendering its super-effectiveness on the type chart (against itself only) pointless.

Imagine if Shadow Ball and Dragon Rush existed in Gen 1. They likely would have had their classifications swapped right then and there.

NeonOPPAl posted...

Nah, I think most kids swapped out Ember for Slash. Everyone quickly figured out how broken Slash was with auto-crits

True enough, I suppose.

Don't forget that Amnesia was the most broken move in gen 1, especially on Mewtwo, yet we all replaced it by something else because it did no damage.

Bonus points if it was hyperbeam.

Ironically, Alakazam fucking owned in Gen 2 since you could get all 3 Punch TMs and teach him them and they were all special type

Touch posted...

Ironically, Alakazam fucking owned in Gen 2 since you could get all 3 Punch TMs and teach him them and they were all special type

*show up to the party*
*immediately get punched to death by a mustachioed nerd with spoons*

And even with the physical punches and iron fist ability it still just kinda sucks

MC_BatCommander posted...

And even with the physical punches and iron fist ability it still just kinda sucks

That's power creep for you.

Solar_Crimson posted...

Mega Punch
Fire Punch
Ice Punch
Thunder Punch

Some kid was really proud of that, I bet.

I was too, and always wondered why it did no damage. RIP.

Karovorak posted...

Bonus points if it was hyperbeam.

Hyper Beam was OP in Gen 1. You could do a lot worse than that, especially if you're talking about Mewtwo with its base 110 Attack (like, even the topical Hitmonchan only had 105 Attack).

I never paid attention to stats back then, so to me, Hitmonchan was better because he looked cooler lol

NeonOPPAl posted...

Literally everyone: "It has Punch in the name! Why isn't it off the Attack stat!?"

if you even understood the concept of stats or knew where to find them ,you are a far more advanced pokemon player than I was back then

kirbymuncher posted...

if you even understood the concept of stats or knew where to find them ,you are a far more advanced pokemon player than I was back then

Pokemon Stadium 2 had all the nerd information available in some classroom thing.

Reading that was enough to make 11 year old me the pvp king of school.

No idea how we were supposed to learn that in gen 1. Probably bit by bit by some NPC dialogs.

Karovorak posted...

Pokemon Stadium 2 had all the nerd information available in some classroom thing.

Reading that was enough to make 11 year old me the pvp king of school.

No idea how we were supposed to learn that in gen 1. Probably bit by bit by some NPC dialogs.

Yeah Stadium 2 had some pretty good movesets on a lot of pokemon too. Stadium 1 to a lesser degree. They obviously knew Amnesia Mewtwo was broken enough to be suitable as a final boss all by itself but there's still a lot of jank I'm not sure they were aware of. I don't think there's any explanation of EVs and IVs (or stat exp and DVs, whatever) anywhere in gen 1 / gen 2. And even if there were an explanation that it exists, there's certainly no explanation on how you should optimize for it.

It always kinda surprised me that even back then they were clearly somewhat aware of how the metagame should develop for competitive battling. But there was absolutely nothing in RBY or GSC that encouraged you to think about it even a little bit. Like they spent all this dev time designing minmax properties of pokemon knowing less than 0.1% of players would make anything of it or even know it's there. Even the Battle Tower in Crystal is easily brute-force-able. So it's only until the Battle Tower in RS and to a greater extent the Battle Frontier in Emerald that they really threw a bone to the super nerds to use the system they built.

Kuuko posted...

I don't think there's any explanation of EVs and IVs (or stat exp and DVs, whatever) anywhere in gen 1 / gen 2. And even if there were an explanation that it exists, there's certainly no explanation on how you should optimize for it.

They vaguely allude to it. NPCs will say things like "two pokemon of the same level can have different stats" and "a trained pokemon is stronger than a newly caught one of the same level".

pokedude900 posted...

They vaguely allude to it. NPCs will say things like "two pokemon of the same level can have different stats" and "a trained pokemon is stronger than a newly caught one of the same level".

Ironically this caused even more confusion in my experience. I remember trying to explain to my friends that there's no benefit in deliberately trying to catch a lower level pokemon. But they heard of the the "stronger if you level it up on your own thing" and took it the wrong way. I remember trying to explain EVs when EVs were still a weird internet only nerd thing to know about and they were like "ok so that proves it's true and I should level them up on my own". And I'm like "NO - if you're going to do 100 battles with a level 5 caterpie or 100 battles with a level 4 caterpie they'll have the same EVs, one will just be a higher level at the end. You're still wasting your time!"

There was a similar misconception I'd heard friends say that Rare Candies are worse than leveling normally. And again, it's like, yes kind of. If you're going to not battle at all ever then the Rare Candy pokemon is worse than one that leveled up with battles. But if you battle the same number of times but one had Rare Candies along the way then it's the same exact thing except one will be a higher level in the end.

pokedude900 posted...

They vaguely allude to it. NPCs will say things like "two pokemon of the same level can have different stats" and "a trained pokemon is stronger than a newly caught one of the same level".

This wasn't only talked about by NPCs, it was in the red/blue manual too.

But the exact details were not there of course.

Solar_Crimson posted...

Charizard
-Flamethrower
-Fire Spin
-Fire Blast
-Ember

Another kid's proud work on display here.

This was me with Flareon. For whatever reason any time I used an Eevee evolution as a kid I insisted on giving them 4 moves of their own type. So Flareon got that.

Jolteon got Thundershock, Thunder Wave, Thunderbolt and Thunder
Vaporeon got Water Gun, Bubble Beam, Surf and Hydro Pump

I got Jolteon as a kid cuz it looked the coolest