I think Pokemon Red and Blue are fascinating games, honestly, especially with how they aged (which is sorta poorly, spoiler alert). This was my first ever run of a gen 1 game, and it was… fine? just fine.
I’m gonna put the glaringly obvious talking point aside for a moment to say that, for being released on the goddamn Gameboy, gen 1 is impressive. These games pushed the Gameboy to its limits, making a relatively (to other Gameboy titles) massive game with a bunch of different items, moves, types, locations, and Pokemon. I wasn’t alive in the 90s, I never grew up with Kanto, but honestly I get why these games were so huge. i get why Pokemon had so many playground rumors surrounding it. I get why Pokemon Red and Blue received such high praise. These games deserve respect, they're important games even outside of being a cultural phenomena in the 90s and for birthing the Pokemon franchise. They were a major step for gaming as a whole.
With that said, what the hell were these games cooking?
Look, some of what I critique is an unfortunate byproduct of the size of RBY, that’s why I wanted to mention how hard gen 1 pushed its console. But JESUS CHRIST gen 1 is a mechanical mess. I tried to avoid glitches I could manually trigger in this run, but like holy shit Missingno’s existence is crazy. Immediately glitching into the Hall of Fame is crazy. Whatever the fuck the other gamebreaking glitches are doing, because there’s a lot, is crazy.
It’s the smaller details, like individual moves or mechanics, that are the most wacky to me though. To give a few examples, Focus Energy quarters your crit chance instead of raising it (and crits work based on speed??? does the game ever fucking explain that???), Great Balls are better than Ultra Balls, X-accuracy outright REMOVING the accuracy check, THE FUCKING 1/256 GLITCH TO MISS A 100% MOVE??? Even PURPOSEFUL design choices are so often weird as hell. Freeze is essentially a knockout, since you can only dethaw if you use or are hit by a fire move (or use an item), the aforementioned crit mechanics where it relies on speed for some reason, this stayed in gen 2 but Wrap being a fucking stun move was just fucked up, and there are SO MANY OTHER EXAMPLES. Sure, it gives gen 1 fights a lot of charm because of all the weird little quirks in gen 1’s mechanics, but let’s be honest with ourselves it’s not a good thing from a design perspective.
Nowadays, gen 1 is really hard to go back to. Not just because of the mechanics, but because of the lack of quality of life features. Limited storage was genuinely frustrating for me, for example, especially because useless key items would take up that storage space. Also frustrating was the lack of a move reminder or deleter, so HMs were PERMANENT. And, while gen 1 shouldn’t be faulted for this, features like natures, abilities, held items and the extra types added in later gens (especially the dark and steel types added in gen 2). And while Pokemon games are still INCREDIBLY BAD at explaining its mechanics nowadays, gen 1 is the worst offender of failing to describe how the game's mechanics work, it's genuinely hard to get a grasp of gen 1's mechanics if you don't know them already. My point is that modern Pokemon has improved MAJORLY since gen 1, and while improvement is objectively a good thing, it makes it really hard to replay gen 1, especially since I don’t have any nostalgia with the game.
My playthrough was… fine. The game was surprisingly short relative to other Pokemon games (my run was 10 hours), but not in a bad way. Red was a Pokemon game. A weird, very outdated Pokemon game. But Pokemon nonetheless. But if I played Red back in the 90s (in a hypothetical where I was alive in the 90s), I might have a different opinion. Gen 1’s greatest strength is how much it pushed the Gameboy, how bold and deep the region of Kanto was. But that’s also its greatest weakness, as a lot of bugs, weird design choices, and inability to add quality of life resulted from it. Playing Red for the first time in 2024 is much different from playing Red for the first time in 1998. Red and Blue are not timeless games.
Red and Blue are important games, but I don’t think they’ve aged well. I’m glad I played them, but they’re not games I see myself being eager to replay or go back to.
I’m gonna put the glaringly obvious talking point aside for a moment to say that, for being released on the goddamn Gameboy, gen 1 is impressive. These games pushed the Gameboy to its limits, making a relatively (to other Gameboy titles) massive game with a bunch of different items, moves, types, locations, and Pokemon. I wasn’t alive in the 90s, I never grew up with Kanto, but honestly I get why these games were so huge. i get why Pokemon had so many playground rumors surrounding it. I get why Pokemon Red and Blue received such high praise. These games deserve respect, they're important games even outside of being a cultural phenomena in the 90s and for birthing the Pokemon franchise. They were a major step for gaming as a whole.
With that said, what the hell were these games cooking?
Look, some of what I critique is an unfortunate byproduct of the size of RBY, that’s why I wanted to mention how hard gen 1 pushed its console. But JESUS CHRIST gen 1 is a mechanical mess. I tried to avoid glitches I could manually trigger in this run, but like holy shit Missingno’s existence is crazy. Immediately glitching into the Hall of Fame is crazy. Whatever the fuck the other gamebreaking glitches are doing, because there’s a lot, is crazy.
It’s the smaller details, like individual moves or mechanics, that are the most wacky to me though. To give a few examples, Focus Energy quarters your crit chance instead of raising it (and crits work based on speed??? does the game ever fucking explain that???), Great Balls are better than Ultra Balls, X-accuracy outright REMOVING the accuracy check, THE FUCKING 1/256 GLITCH TO MISS A 100% MOVE??? Even PURPOSEFUL design choices are so often weird as hell. Freeze is essentially a knockout, since you can only dethaw if you use or are hit by a fire move (or use an item), the aforementioned crit mechanics where it relies on speed for some reason, this stayed in gen 2 but Wrap being a fucking stun move was just fucked up, and there are SO MANY OTHER EXAMPLES. Sure, it gives gen 1 fights a lot of charm because of all the weird little quirks in gen 1’s mechanics, but let’s be honest with ourselves it’s not a good thing from a design perspective.
Nowadays, gen 1 is really hard to go back to. Not just because of the mechanics, but because of the lack of quality of life features. Limited storage was genuinely frustrating for me, for example, especially because useless key items would take up that storage space. Also frustrating was the lack of a move reminder or deleter, so HMs were PERMANENT. And, while gen 1 shouldn’t be faulted for this, features like natures, abilities, held items and the extra types added in later gens (especially the dark and steel types added in gen 2). And while Pokemon games are still INCREDIBLY BAD at explaining its mechanics nowadays, gen 1 is the worst offender of failing to describe how the game's mechanics work, it's genuinely hard to get a grasp of gen 1's mechanics if you don't know them already. My point is that modern Pokemon has improved MAJORLY since gen 1, and while improvement is objectively a good thing, it makes it really hard to replay gen 1, especially since I don’t have any nostalgia with the game.
My playthrough was… fine. The game was surprisingly short relative to other Pokemon games (my run was 10 hours), but not in a bad way. Red was a Pokemon game. A weird, very outdated Pokemon game. But Pokemon nonetheless. But if I played Red back in the 90s (in a hypothetical where I was alive in the 90s), I might have a different opinion. Gen 1’s greatest strength is how much it pushed the Gameboy, how bold and deep the region of Kanto was. But that’s also its greatest weakness, as a lot of bugs, weird design choices, and inability to add quality of life resulted from it. Playing Red for the first time in 2024 is much different from playing Red for the first time in 1998. Red and Blue are not timeless games.
Red and Blue are important games, but I don’t think they’ve aged well. I’m glad I played them, but they’re not games I see myself being eager to replay or go back to.