History YMMV / PokemonRedAndBlue

** Among the various types, Fighting fares infamously poorly. Given that Normal is considered overpowered and Fighting counters it, you'd expect it to have a legitimate niche as a Normal-slayer, but you'd be very wrong; not only is Fighting countered extremely hard by Psychic, but there's a paltry eight Fighting-type moves, and the only one with wide distribution and even acceptable power is Submission, which has 80 power, 80% accuracy, and recoil damage. Fighting-types also boast consistently poor Special (Poliwrath's 70 is the highest), making them even less able to slug it out, and are consistently slow (Primeape's 95 is the highest), meaning they get revenge killed very easily. For some idea of how poorly it does, the highest-ranked Fighting-type on Smogon is Poliwrath, which is banned in NU--and Poliwrath happens to be a Water-type with the strongest boosting move in the game.

** Rivaling Hitmonchan, if not outright exceeding it, is Beedrill, the defining example of all the issues with Bug-types. Aside from learning the rather useful boosting moves Agility and Swords Dance, Beedrill is the only Bug-type in the game with anything resembling reliable STAB, being the only Bug that learns Pin Missile and the only Pokémon period to learn Twineedle, which, at two hits with a combined 50 base power, is the strongest Bug move to deal consistent damage. And that is ''all'' of the positives. Beedrill has a terrible statline, with only Attack and Speed approaching the level of mediocrity, along with no coverage outside of Bug and Normal moves and a very weak Mega Drain. You might think its Twineedle makes it a good counter to Psychic-types, but Beedrill is part Poison-type, making it weak to Psychic, which, when combined with its terrible Special, means that quite a few Psychics risk one-shotting it outright. Though it's intended as a CrutchCharacter, and it can put in some work ingame in some areas (Gen I giving Poison a weakness to Bug means that Beedrill can crush Koga's gym and [[ThisLooksLikeAJobForAquaman absolutely obliterates Erika)]], Beedrill still stands out as inferior due to Butterfree holding up much better than it--Butterfree boasts utility moves and can use an albeit-weak Psychic, giving it far more of a niche.

** Lance's Dragonite in ''Yellow''. In ''Red'' and ''Blue'', it wasn't threatening at all--its only damaging moves were Hyper Beam and Dragon Rage, which could be easily weathered with a Ghost- or Rock-type. The poor enemy AI can once again be exploited, as well--Dragonite can be tricked into spamming Agility or Barrier instead of damaging moves, since these stat-boosters should be "super-effective" against Pokémon weak to the Psychic type. This was famously demonstrated in ''WebVideo/TwitchPlaysPokemonRed'', where it lost to a woefully underlevelled Venomoth who managed to poison Dragonite and simply waited until it fainted. In ''Yellow'', it was massively improved--Agility, Barrier, and Dragon Rage were replaced with Thunder, Fire Blast, and Blizzard. Got a Water-type that knows an Ice move, the Dragon type's only weakness? It knows Thunder. An actual Ice-type? It knows Fire Blast. A Rock- or Ground-type who knows a good Rock-type move, taking advantage of Dragonite's Flying type? It is physically tanky enough to shrug it off and knows Blizzard, while almost Rock Pokémon in Gen 1 has a second type weak to Ice. Thankfully, it's still slow, so as long as your Ice user is fast or can take a hit or two, Dragonite will still go down quickly if you're at a reasonable level.

* CasualCompetitiveConflict: In the remakes, actively, as the third generation is when Website/{{Smogon}} was founded. In the originals, retroactively, as analyses of later games had sparked a renewed interest in the older games (though there was never much interest because of the poor CompetitiveBalance.

** Rivaling Hitmonchan, if not outright exceeding it, is Beedrill, the defining example of all the issues with Bug-types. Aside from learning the rather useful boosting moves Agility and Swords Dance, Beedrill is the only Bug-type in the game with anything resembling reliable STAB, being the only Bug that learns Pin Missile and the only Pokémon period to learn Twineedle, which, at two hits with a combined 50 base power, is the strongest Bug move to deal consistent damage. And that is ''all'' of the positives. Beedrill has a terrible statline, with only Attack and Speed approaching the level of mediocrity, along with no coverage outside of Bug and Normal moves and a very weak Mega Drain. You might think its Twineedle makes it a good counter to Psychic-types, but Beedrill is part Poison-type, making it weak to Psychic, which, when combined with its terrible Special, means that quite a few Psychics risk one-shotting it outright. Though it's intended as a CrutchCharacter, and it can put in some work ingame in some areas, Beedrill still stands out as inferior due to Butterfree holding up much better than it--Butterfree boasts utility moves and can use an albeit-weak Psychic, giving it far more of a niche.

** Do ''not'' say with a straight face that Lickitung evolves into [[Franchise/SuperMarioBros Luigi]] when fed a RareCandy while holding the UsefulNotes/GameBoy upside-down. This comes from an old article on Nintendo of America's website that was written as an April Fools' joke, so "Lickitung can evolve into Luigi" was never meant to be taken seriously. Similarly, there is no way to evolve Dragonite into [[VideoGame/SuperMarioWorld Yoshi]]; that comes from an article in the unaffiliated ''Expert Gamer'' that was likewise written as an April Fools' joke.

** Ever take a good look at [[http://cdn.wikimg.net/strategywiki/images/thumb/b/b9/Pokemon_FRLG_Silph_Comapany-1f.png/400px-Pokemon_FRLG_Silph_Comapany-1f.png the fountains at Silph Company first floor?]] Don't they look like breasts, complete with nipples?

** ''[=FireRed=]'' and ''[=LeafGreen=]'' are ''adamant'' that you only use the original 150 Pokémon until the National Pokédex; trying to evolve Golbat or Chansey, who both evolve by happiness, inexplicably causes the evolution to stop with the message "...?", breeding is impossible until the end of the game (Pre-evolutions don't exist! Pick one Hitmon__ Pokémon and love it!), there's no day/night cycle (''Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald'' didn't have one either, but they tied day/night evolution to AM/PM times instead--in these games, those Pokémon simply ''will not'' evolve even post-National Dex), you can't trade in ''any'' Pokémon not in the Kanto Pokédex, and you have to slog through a whole post-game sidequest before you can trade with ''Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald''. Mercifully, these arbitrary restrictions were dropped in later games.

* GoodBadBugs:

** Every even-numbered badge gives you a minor (12.5%) boost to a certain stat in single-player battles. However, this stat boost will be erroneously re-applied ''every single time your Pokémon's stats change in battle, stacking multiplicatively.'' This makes stat-boosting moves like Harden far more valuable than they would be otherwise, since using it six times basically boosts all of your Pokémon's stats by more than double on top of the stat boost the move itself gives.

* SoBadItsGood: Many fans are attracted to Gen 1 specifically because of how hilariously broken the mechanics are, and find it amusing to [[GoodBadBugs exploit those mechanics]] in order to [[GameBreaker breeze through the game]].

* CheeseStrategy:
** The "Wrap-spam" strategy. In later generations, Wrap deals damage per turn while allowing both the player and opponent to continue acting, but in Generation I, Wrap hits 2-5 times for little damage, but locks the enemy Pokémon from attacking or retreating, so it became a common tactic to stun-lock the opponent, especially if the opposing Mon was afflicted with paralysis to prevent it from ever attacking first.
** The Gen I AI was [[AIBreaker easily broken]] in a number of ways. One of the most famous was using part-Poison-type Pokémon against those with non-damaging Psychic-type (strong against Poison-type) moves, such as Barrier or Agility. As Gen I AI Pokémon did not use up PP when attacking, they would spam these non-damaging moves non-stop, allowing your Pokémon, no matter how weak, to eventually whittle it down. This strategy works even against high-level opponents including the Elite Four. This strategy became wide-spread following its (unintentional) use in ''WebVideo/TwitchPlaysPokemonRed''.

* SoBadItsGood: Many fans are attracted to Gen 1 specifically because of how hilariously broken the mechanics are, and find it amusing to [[GameBreaker exploit those mechanics in order to breeze through the game]].