Today was an exciting day for Nintendo and The Pokemon Company, as the Sun and Moon rose on a new Pokemon generation. This is on the heels of the oldest Pokemon generation preparing to grace 3DS screens tomorrow. As Pokemon continues its celebration of the series' 20th anniversary, this may raise the question of what exactly has changed across the past couple of decades. The core game may be the same, but there have been some major changes across the series. And it's more than simply new features. Shacknews breaks down some of the biggest changes between the first generation of Pokemon and the latest generation of pocket monsters.
Psychics Rule!
Psychic-type Pokemon, to an extent, are still king in Pokemon games. Their special stats are often through the roof and they prove to be a bad matchup for many of the game's other types of creatures. However, the Psychic-type wasn't just powerful in the Red, Blue, Yellow generation. It was downright broken.
When the first chart of Pokemon strengths and weaknesses released, there weren't many Pokemon types that could withstand a Psychic assault. They were versatile enough to deal critical damage to just about anything. It would only dole out 'Not Very Effective' damage to other Psychic-types. As for weaknesses, they didn't really have any. Only Bug-type moves would deal 2X damage to Psychics and the Bug-type moves included in the game were incredibly weak. The RNG-dependent Pin Missile was really the only Bug-type move of consequence and even that was only found on weaker Bug-types like Beedrill. Worse yet, Beedrill's dual-Poison type ensured that Psychics would still have a massive advantage.
Also, don't believe what you see in the anime. Contrary to whatever Ash will tell you, Ghost-type moves do not have a 2X effect on Psychics here. That would not kick in until the Gold/Silver days and beyond. Not that it mattered anyway, because the only offensive Ghost-type move in the game was Night Shade, which only dealt damage proportional to a user's experience level.
Psychic-types feel much more balanced in today's Pokemon games, thanks to the introduction of the hard counter Dark-types and the overhaul of the Ghost-types. Alakazam and its ilk are still powerful, but now there's a degree of strategy involved to whether they're worth trotting onto the battlefield. It also helps that a certain stat was changed for the bettter...
Poison Drools
While Psychic-types were in another class of their own, that left Poison-types to trail along the bottom of the pack. There were few pure Poison-types, but those there like Muk and Weezing had some decent Defense stats. What made them unviable was the sheer lack of actual Poison-type moves. The only Poison-type move of consequence in RBY was Sludge, but at a base power of 65, it would pale in comparison with the more powerful Pokemon moves that would be introduced towards the end of the game. This is a balance issue that wouldn't be addressed until later, with Gold and Silver introducing the 90-value Sludge Bomb TM and subsequent games introducing other powerful moves, like Cross Poison, Gunk Shot, and even some clever effect moves, like Toxic Spikes.
The other trouble with Poison was that there were so many dual-types that it single-handedly made them unviable against the Psychic menace. Gengar is a strong Pokemon on its own, but its secondary Poison-type was essentially its Achilles heel. The same can be said in RBY for Venusaur, Nidoking, and Golbat. Even without the Psychic bully out there, Poison-types couldn't stand for very long against the quick-as-a-hiccup ground types, like Dugtrio.
Only recently have Poison-types proven to be of use. Pokemon X & Y introduced the new Fairy type to curtail the rise of Dragon and Dark types, but Poison-types have proven to be an unlikely, yet effective, counter to these new kids on the block. But in RBY, Poison-types are virtually useless.
Isn't That Special?
Once upon a time, there was no Special Attack or Special Defense in Pokemon. In RBY, Special was one catch-all stat that spelled out both a Pokemon's special attack and defense stats. As one might imagine, that only exacerbate the situation with Psychic-types. Something like Mewtwo or Alakazam could not only deal out excessively powerful attacks, but the flat special stat meant they were also tanks against other special moves.
Once again, Gold and Silver would come to the rescue here. The second generation of games would split Special into the Special Attack and Special Defense stats that everyone is familiar with today. It wouldn't be until Ruby and Sapphire that individual values (IV) and effort values (EV) would also be split between Special Attack and Special Defense, but that would be going far too deep into the Pokemon rabbit hole. For now, let's just say that Special Attack and Special Defense are now two distinctive stats and multiplayer balance has been better for it to this day.
Let's Get Physical
Another balance problem that would often pop up for the first generations of Pokemon games was a Pokemon's stats feeling inconsistent with its moves and its type. To put it in simpler terms, what good is a Fire-type with high physical Attack stats if it has low Special Attack stats and all Fire-type moves are classified as Special Attacks? That doesn't make much sense, does it?
It actually wouldn't be until Pokemon Diamond and Pearl that the series would address this issue. Starting here, all moves would be given a physical or special classification, regardless of type. That meant it was now possible to equip that hypothetical Fire-type with Fire-type moves that only dealt physical damage, in order to take full advantage of its high Attack stat. There was still a slight issue with certain Pokemon types not having high-value physical/special moves, but that's something that would be refined over the course of subsequent games.
But in RBY, this is something to be wary of. There's a reason nobody trots out Hitmonchan. Fire, Ice, and Thunder Punch sound really cool, until the realization sets in that those are all classified as Special moves and Hitmonchan's Special stat is in the toilet. It's still not a great Pokemon today, mind you, but with generations of change, it and others like it are at least competent.
Nature Rises
Then there's the biggest change to Pokemon games, by far. Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire introduced a new idea to Pokemon called Natures, which would essentially give every single Pokemon a distinctive trait, even if they look exactly the same. This would affect stat growth and now introduced strategy when thinking about which Pokemon to catch.
Now those that wanted an extremely powerful Pokemon like Steelix or a defensive tank like Forretress knew which natures to search for to help boost those stats. Or if there's a Pokemon with a high stat in one area and a passable stat in another, a player could find one with a nature that helps give that passable stat a boost. Or if players just want everything as is, there are natures for that, too. This helped spice up Pokemon multiplayer significantly, because it meant that even with two of the same Pokemon in play, their stats and distinct moves would make it feel like a unique matchup.
Nature has its downsides, though. If you're looking to catch a powerful Aron to raise to an Aggron, catching one with a Timid nature (Speed up, Attack down) doesn't do much good. In some cases, it drags out the capturing process, meaning players spend more time in the tall grass looking for the right Pokemon than just catching the first one that comes along and calling it a day. That also means that players are forced to live with whatever nature is on a one-time capture legendary Pokemon. If the nature is counter-intuitive to the Pokemon's strength and weaknesses, well, that's just unfortunate. That's the cost to pay with this new feature, but it's one that at the end of the day, has made raising Pokemon and battling Pokemon a much deeper experience than it was in the RBY days.
That's scratching the surface of what's different about the RBY generation and today's X, Y, Omega Ruby, and Alpha Sapphire. Players will be able to spot the differences for themselves all over again when Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow hit the Nintendo 3DS Virtual Console tomorrow.
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