Current Events > I will always be in awe with how jank Gen 1 Pokemon movesets were >_>

(+) Yeah! (+)

I love Gen 1 Pokemon and replay it at least once a year with different teams, but my goodness a lot of these movesets are so trash lol. It's fun to experiment with different Pokemon to try and make their......."niche" work, but Gen 1 truly does feel like Jank vs. Jank: The Game lol

Here's a few of many MANY examples. Post anything I might've missed cuz I love learning more moveset jank >_>

Pokemon specific:

-The Rhyhorn line only learns normal moves via level up

-Sandshrew line doesn't learn any ground moves via level up. It only learns shitty normal moves, Slash, and Poison Sting lol. Same with Gen 2!

-Voltorb line doesn't learn any electric moves via level up, only normal moves. Same with Gen 2!

-Aerodactyl can't learn any Rock moves nor Earthquake. Its best physical moves are Hyper Beam and Fly lol

-Jynx doesn't learn any Psychic moves naturally

-Nidorino and Nidorina only learn shitty normal moves, Poison Sting (a 15 power move), and Double Kick (DK is learned at level 50(!!) in R/B too lol)

-Golbat doesn't learn a single poison move and its only Flying move is Wing Attack which is 35 power lol

-Scyther literally only learns normal moves (via level up and TM) except Wing Attack (but only in Yellow), which is 35 power lol

-Pinsir literally only learns normal moves lol. The only exception is Submission via TM

-Lickitung doesn't learn Lick, Hypno doesn't learn Dream Eater lol

-Moltres was supposed to learn Fire Blast at lvl 51 (like how Articuno and Zapdos learn Blizzard and Thunder at lvl 51), but due to a programmer's error, it's move ID number got messed up and it learns Leer at lvl 51 instead (apparently Leer and Fire Blast's ID numbers are right next to each other). Meaning that its only fire move without TM is Fire Spin. This never got fixed in Yellow either

General jank lol:

-Thunderbolt is never learned naturally by anyone except Pikachu in Yellow version (who only has 50 special and can't evolve lawl)

-There's only 2 ground moves in the game that aren't exclusive to a pokemon (Dig and Earthquake), and both of them have 100 power

-Dragon Rage is the only Dragon type move in the game and it always deals 40 damage

-Lick is the only normal attacking ghost move in the game and it deals 30 physical damage. Also Psychic is immune to Ghost moves due to a programming error

-Gust, Razor Wind, and Karate Chop are normal moves for some fucking reason

-There's only 2 Rock moves in the game. Rock Throw and Rock Slide. And Rock throw has 50 power and 65% accuracy lawl

Yeah, gen 1 is legit trash

NeonPhoenix posted...

-Aerodactyl can't learn any Rock moves nor Earthquake. Its best physical moves are Hyper Beam and Fly lol

To be fair, Hyper Beam is pretty busted in gen 1. If it kills the opponent, there's no cooldown turn.

NeonPhoenix posted...

-The Rhyhorn line only learns normal moves via level up

One of two pieces of evidence behind the theory that Rhydon was originally intended to be a normal type. The other, of course, being that its TM learnset is full of great special moves (that it can't use very well), which is pretty much the gen 1 normal type trademark.

Panthera posted...

One of two pieces of evidence behind the theory that Rhydon was originally intended to be a normal type. The other, of course, being that its TM learnset is full of great special moves (that it can't use very well), which is pretty much the gen 1 normal type trademark.

To be fair, Rhydon was developed before types were even a thing.

pokedude900 posted...

To be fair, Hyper Beam is pretty busted in gen 1. If it kills the opponent, there's no cooldown turn.

Yeah, but tons of pokemon learn Hyper Beam tho. Aerodactyl could've filled a cool niche in Gen 1 with both Rock Slide and flying moves, but nope. It's just a pokemon with great stats and literally nothing to use it on.

Jynx is all about that Ice Punch and Blizzard anyway.

My biggest problem with Gen 1 (and later Gen 2 and 3) is Ghost and Poison being Physical and Dark and Dragon being Special.

Would have made far more sense for those to be swapped around.

NeonPhoenix posted...

-Pinsir literally only learns normal moves lol. The only exception is Submission via TM

the fun bonus part of this is that, combined with struggle not hitting ghosts in gen1, is that pinsir cannot damage gengar. Or, well, it would be unable to damage gengar, except that Bide, a normal type move, can hit ghosts for some reason lol

Gen 1 definitely is some jank level up wise and Pokemon only learn moves when they are expected to be obtainable for the most part. So if you breed a Snorlax or Ponyta in gen 2 and trade back they won't learn moves until like 30+. Good thing Gen 1 had really good TMs and a easy way to duplicate them.

gen 1 is so bad. i started with yellow and then got red and loved them at the time not knowing any better. but i went through crystal and crystal legacy and the original crystal was still so bad. legacy the movesets are still pretty bad but fixed a little without changing the game too much.

General jank lol:

-Thunderbolt is never learned naturally by anyone except Pikachu in Yellow version (who only has 50 special and can't evolve lawl)

actually you can evolve the pikachu....if you trade it away and then trade it back lol. i did that and then it just acted like a regular pikachu and wouldn't follow me around or anything so i just boxed it since pikachu was so much weaker and i was dumb and just soloed the game with pidgeot cause my younger cousin told me that's how he beat brock so i just had it super over leveled. but yea i ended up evolving the pikachu into raichu but still didn't bother using it since i had the legendary trio and snorlax for the E4. that was back when charizard would just have ember, fire spin, flamethrower and fire blast cause who cared about move diversity?

Jshipp24 posted...

Gen 1 definitely is some jank level up wise and Pokemon only learn moves when they are expected to be obtainable for the most part. So if you breed a Snorlax or Ponyta in gen 2 and trade back they won't learn moves until like 30+.

Gen 5 did the same thing, except with Pokemon's evolution levels.

So you had things like Rufflet and Vullaby not evolving until Level 54, because they're first encountered late in the game.

I think theres still things to figure out in gen I games

i I cant quite get pikachu out of my mind for some reason

Feels like CE has a topic ripping on Gen 1 jank every week.

Gen 1 just has that much jank, yo

Solar_Crimson posted...

My biggest problem with Gen 1 (and later Gen 2 and 3) is Ghost and Poison being Physical and Dark and Dragon being Special.

Would have made far more sense for those to be swapped around.

though I get this, unlike the other three types (where it took until Gen 3 to introduce physically-oriented Ghost-types, and pretty much every Dark- and Dragon-type except like Houndoom was physically oriented), they actually did usually make Poison-types physically-oriented before the split, so despite the things like its best move in Gens 1-3 being special I can get that a little bit

Shadow Ball was a physical move for two generations that had a chance of lowering special defense. Part of me thinks even someone at Game Freak thought Ghost being physical was a mistake and it was only not changed out of tradition.

The original gen 1 and 2 games aren't worth playing anymore unless you specifically want to abuse the glitches and jank. Either play a ROM hack like Yellow Legacy and Crystal Legacy or just play the remakes.

Solar_Crimson posted...

My biggest problem with Gen 1 (and later Gen 2 and 3) is Ghost and Poison being Physical and Dark and Dragon being Special.

Would have made far more sense for those to be swapped around.

The Legacy games I mentioned actually do switch Dark to Physical and Ghost to Special. The vast majority of Pokemon of those types or who get those moves benefit from the change, except for a few who are slightly worse like Houndoom. But those Pokemon got buffs in other places to make up for it.

I really dont get what they were thinking when they designed Psychic types in Gen 1. You make them weak to Bug and Ghost, but all you give for attacks is a 15 BP Leech Life, 30 BP Lick, 25 BP Twin Needle (which only Beedrill, who is half poison and generally one of the weakest Pokemon in the game, learns), and 25 BP Pin Missile (which only Jolteon, with its whopping 65 ATK stat, and Beedrill get).

Like did they really expect you to use half poison Pokemon with weak SE moves to counter Psychic types when designing them?

Calwings posted...

The original gen 1 and 2 games aren't worth playing anymore unless you specifically want to abuse the glitches and jank. Either play a ROM hack like Yellow Legacy and Crystal Legacy or just play the remakes.

The Legacy games I mentioned actually do switch Dark to Physical and Ghost to Special. The vast majority of Pokemon of those types or who get those moves benefit from the change, except for a few who are slightly worse like Houndoom. But those Pokemon got buffs in other places to make up for it.

Yellow Legacy is a pretty good hack. Switching Dark and Ghost to the other attacking type as well as making Cut a Bug-type move is really good

Srk700 posted...

I really dont get what they were thinking when they designed Psychic types in Gen 1. You make them weak to Bug and Ghost, but all you give for attacks is a 15 BP Leech Life, 30 BP Lick, 25 BP Twin Needle (which only Beedrill, who is half poison and generally one of the weakest Pokemon in general, learns), and 25 BP Pin Missile (which only Jolteon, with its whopping 65 ATK stat, and Beedrill get).

Like did they really expect you to use half poison Pokemon with weak SE moves to counter Psychic types when designing them?

I do miss the Psychic domination of Gen 1 in a way lol. Psychic is still my favorite type cuz of it

It may help to know that Pokemon wasn't originally going to have PvP at all. The only connectivity was going to be trading, and battles were a last-minute addition. So game balance may not have been a high priority since you can brute-force PvE with enough grinding.

pokedude900 posted...

It may help to know that Pokemon wasn't originally going to have PvP at all. The only connectivity was going to be trading, and battles were a last-minute addition. So game balance may not have been a high priority since you can brute-force PvE with enough grinding.

Oh? Where did you hear this?

Srk700 posted...

I really dont get what they were thinking when they designed Psychic types in Gen 1. You make them weak to Bug and Ghost, but all you give for attacks is a 15 BP Leech Life, 30 BP Lick, 25 BP Twin Needle (which only Beedrill, who is half poison and generally one of the weakest Pokemon in general, learns), and 25 BP Pin Missile (which only Jolteon, with its whopping 65 ATK stat, and Beedrill get).

Like did they really expect you to use half poison Pokemon with weak SE moves to counter Psychic types when designing them?

And to top it off they screwed it up by messing it up and making ghost ineffective against psychic so psychic effectively had zero weaknesses since Bug moves suck

Gen 1 was really so glitchy and yet it was still the talk of the school in spite of that, which is quite impressive. The worst thing is you had no idea what a move did until you learned it so you wouldn't even know if it was a good idea for your pokemon to learn a move. Then you'd learn it and find out that move sucked or did nothing

Calwings posted...

The original gen 1 and 2 games aren't worth playing anymore unless you specifically want to abuse the glitches and jank.

none of the gens are worth playing outside of romhacks because the difficulty is designed for babbies

Goderator posted...

none of the gens are worth playing outside of romhacks because the difficulty is designed for babbies

What about Pokemon Colosseum?

Reminds me how some enemy trainers cheat to not abide with the horrible moveset/level up restrictions. It is infuriating the developers didn't give the player the same options. Thinking mainly of Lance in Gen 1-2.

Lance in Gen 2 has an Aerodactyl with Rock Slide which it can't legally learn in Gen 1-2 as well as Dragonites with impossibly low levels. His Dragonite in Gen 1 also has Barrier which it can't learn.

Also stuff like the Rival in Gen 1 having a Gyarados with Hydro Pump before it would learn it via level up which is just irritating.

-Unowninator- posted...

What about Pokemon Colosseum?

I still have a visceral reaction to someone using a Dragonair.

-Unowninator- posted...

What about Pokemon Colosseum?

One of my favorite Pokemon games. Just wish you could turn the animations off and that it wasn't so tedious to purify Shadow Pokemon.

-Unowninator- posted...

Oh? Where did you hear this?

I think it was on DYKG or a similar channel. IIRC it was citing an interview. Sorry I don't have an actual source on-hand at the moment.

-Unowninator- posted...

What about Pokemon Colosseum?

you just reminded me of my playthrough of both a few months ago. it was fun since I had to actually try

Is this a good Gen 1 team?

Venusaur
Nidoking
Slowbro
Dodrio
Jolteon
Snorlax

CastletonSnob1 posted...

Is this a good Gen 1 team?

Venusaur
Nidoking
Slowbro
Dodrio
Jolteon
Snorlax

It will do just fine. May want to consider not using a full team though so that exp goes to about 4-5 Pokemon and all the HM moves can go on 1-2 HM users. Can also consider using some of the Legendary Birds, specifically Zapdos and Articuno, as they can be gotten surprisingly early. Got both with just five badges in my last run. Zapdos with Drill Peck in particular can be gotten about the same time as Doduo/Dodrio and is obviously better. Give it Thunderbolt and you don't need Jolteon.

Also can look up some of the Mew glitches if you want one in your party for a fun run.

Of course, Gen 1 is mostly easy, so play how you want.

CastletonSnob1 posted...

Is this a good Gen 1 team?

Venusaur
Nidoking
Slowbro
Dodrio
Jolteon
Snorlax

Nidoking? Snorlax? A Psychic type?

Yeah, you're set lol

Gen 1 was so trash lol thankfully we didn't know any better back then so it was okay

The worst part for me was hitmonchan learning all these elemental punches but it's trash because it doesn't use his attack stat for them, I always liked the idea of having him as a guy to open with and have all this type coverage but nope lol

My most recent run of Gen 1 (Red) had a team of Charizard, Dragonite, Vaporeon, Rhydon, Gengar, and Fearow.

Still surprised at Fearow, really. I was expecting to drop it once I found something better, but it stayed there for the long haul.

Seaking doesnt learn a water move until level 39

Golduck doesnt learn a water move until level 59 LOL

NeonPhoenix posted...

Seaking doesnt learn a water move until level 39

Golduck doesnt learn a water move until level 59 LOL

Water Pokemon have Surf, which is both powerful and readily available via an HM you get halfway through the game.

From the beginning you could tell this was a lazy cash-in franchise. Game Freak never cared about balance to begin with, and none of the gameplay mechanics were very well thought out.

Solar_Crimson posted...

Water Pokemon have Surf, which is both powerful and readily available via an HM you get halfway through the game.

Yes, but imagine having a water Pokemon that doesnt learn a water move naturally until after the 5th gym lol

iGenesis posted...

From the beginning you could tell this was a lazy cash-in franchise.

Not even close. The original game was a genuine passion project on part of Satoshi Tajiri to recreate his childhood love of exploring forests and collecting bugs. The game didn't even take off initially in Japan until several months later.

Softboiled is a TM that 2 Pokemon learn and 1 is completely unavailable via normal play

Garioshi posted...

Softboiled is a TM that 2 Pokemon learn and 1 is completely unavailable via normal play

Lol that's true. I forgot about that.

Remember how Whirlwind is a TM but only works on wild pokemon?

The thing that always bothered me is how unbalanced the HMs are. Most of the moves suck so bad you basically need a trash Pokemon you take along to use the abilities, but then Fly is a top tier move and Surf is pretty damn good too.

Dont forgot how Flash is only used in 1 dungeon and it isnt even required cuz you can see the outline of the walls. I knew a bunch of kids that taught Flash to their Starter Pikachu. Those poor souls

The first game is almost completely designed and balanced around in-game challenges. Normal is the basic attack type that you generally plan around - Rock resists it and Ghost is immune - Fighting and Rock moves are trash because of their offensive and defensive strengths against Normal. Psychic is kind of "magic" and deliberately overturned. Poison is actually pretty good against all the weak Grass types you face and is strong against you because of the over world debuff. In fact, all the status effects are broken in PvP because their designed around PvE.

ssjevot posted...

The thing that always bothered me is how unbalanced the HMs are. Most of the moves suck so bad you basically need a trash Pokemon you take along to use the abilities, but then Fly is a top tier move and Surf is pretty damn good too.

Technically surf was the best water type move in the game. It doesn't miss the way hydro pump does.

I remember just purely power levelling my charmander and having a Charizard by Lt Surge with only HM slaves to fill out my team lol. Then I'd aim for Dugtrio because high speed and STAB Earthquake

Also Chansey and Tauros being nightmares to catch in the safari zone.

Was also super interesting to me how the mew teleport glitch was found years after the game's popularity went and cool to see the infamous truck that he wasn't under was an actual thing

Touch posted...

I remember just purely power levelling my charmander and having a Charizard by Lt Surge with only HM slaves to fill out my team lol. Then I'd aim for Dugtrio because high speed and STAB Earthquake

It's nuts you can catch a level 31 Dugtrio at that point in the game.

Onix was 100% designed stat-wise around his encounter as the first "boss" and it has haunted him ever since. Fucking 45 attack lmao

ssjevot posted...

The thing that always bothered me is how unbalanced the HMs are. Most of the moves suck so bad you basically need a trash Pokemon you take along to use the abilities, but then Fly is a top tier move and Surf is pretty damn good too.

IMO, Strength is decent enough to put on a team member in gen 1. You only got 1 Body Slam TM (without duplication glitches) in the game, Hyper Beam was very expensive and annoying to buy from the Game Corner, and all of the other Normal-type attacks were either inaccurate, recoil-inducing, screwed by gen 1 jank, or only learned by a limited amount of Pokemon. Strength could fill in moveset gaps for some Pokemon if you've already used your Body Slam TM on something else. But once gen 2 came around and the Return TM was added (which you can obtain unlimited copies of) then Strength became mostly worthless.