I was messing around on Red the other day. It's been a while and I got to say that the type distribution in Red/Blue is very strange. I understand that this was the first game and I bet most of the people working on the game weren't really sure what they were doing, but still I can't help wondering what was going through their heads.
There's quite a number of poison pokes. From a gameplay perspective it's very odd that grass and bug are weak to poison, but most of the grass and bug pokemon are also poison types. That's like making most of the fire pokemon duel water types. Did they think that poison was going to be popular? They made the poison gym leader a ninja and they even had an elite four member using them, that and ghosts. And why are the only three ghosts also poison? Did one of the programmers have a poison fetish?
While picking out the 151 type combinations you'd think that they would have had at least one mono for each type. Why are there no mono flying types? The birds are always normal/flying. Is there a reason for that? Was it because of the programming? Why did they keep doing it in future gens?
I'm suprised that ice got screwed over. It's one of the most basic and common elements seen in RPG's but they only put in 5. I can understand dragon and ghost being strange and unique, but ice? Couldn't they have replaced one or two of the water families with ice, there is too much water.
I'm also wondering why some of the types didn't get any good moves. Overall they did a pretty good job but skimped out on bug, ghost and dragon. These games started as bug catching games you'd think they would have treated the type better. And damn, dragon got nothing! Someone had to have noticed that.
How come some pokemon don't learn any same type moves naturally? Like rhyhorn and rhydon only learn normal moves. Pinsir doesn't learn any bug moves, and scyther doesn't learn any bug or flying moves. I mean really they should at least learn one move of their type.
With the TMs there arn't any that teach bug, ghost, fighting or dragon moves (I'm not counting fixed damage) and only one for fire and rock. That's pretty uneven. Why no flamethrower TM? They had thunderbolt and ice beam.
Ok I'm done ranting. I'm really curious as to why things turned out this way. When I see people talking about how unbalanced Red and Blue were they usually just talk about psychic's being over powered, and blame the programming mistakes. Even if the psychic>ghost thing was fixed ghosts and bugs still have such weak moves so it wouldn't help much.
I've never seen any interview with game freak or Satoshi Tajiri asking any of these questions. I'm suprised, seeing as how popular the game series is, that no one is curious about what they were thinking when they made Red and Green and why they made some of these decisions. Or why it took them till Gen 4 to really fix things.
Is there any information on any of this? Has anyone who worked on the games ever said anything? I've looked around but I never found anything.
There's quite a number of poison pokes. From a gameplay perspective it's very odd that grass and bug are weak to poison, but most of the grass and bug pokemon are also poison types. That's like making most of the fire pokemon duel water types. Did they think that poison was going to be popular? They made the poison gym leader a ninja and they even had an elite four member using them, that and ghosts. And why are the only three ghosts also poison? Did one of the programmers have a poison fetish?
While picking out the 151 type combinations you'd think that they would have had at least one mono for each type. Why are there no mono flying types? The birds are always normal/flying. Is there a reason for that? Was it because of the programming? Why did they keep doing it in future gens?
I'm suprised that ice got screwed over. It's one of the most basic and common elements seen in RPG's but they only put in 5. I can understand dragon and ghost being strange and unique, but ice? Couldn't they have replaced one or two of the water families with ice, there is too much water.
I'm also wondering why some of the types didn't get any good moves. Overall they did a pretty good job but skimped out on bug, ghost and dragon. These games started as bug catching games you'd think they would have treated the type better. And damn, dragon got nothing! Someone had to have noticed that.
How come some pokemon don't learn any same type moves naturally? Like rhyhorn and rhydon only learn normal moves. Pinsir doesn't learn any bug moves, and scyther doesn't learn any bug or flying moves. I mean really they should at least learn one move of their type.
With the TMs there arn't any that teach bug, ghost, fighting or dragon moves (I'm not counting fixed damage) and only one for fire and rock. That's pretty uneven. Why no flamethrower TM? They had thunderbolt and ice beam.
Ok I'm done ranting. I'm really curious as to why things turned out this way. When I see people talking about how unbalanced Red and Blue were they usually just talk about psychic's being over powered, and blame the programming mistakes. Even if the psychic>ghost thing was fixed ghosts and bugs still have such weak moves so it wouldn't help much.
I've never seen any interview with game freak or Satoshi Tajiri asking any of these questions. I'm suprised, seeing as how popular the game series is, that no one is curious about what they were thinking when they made Red and Green and why they made some of these decisions. Or why it took them till Gen 4 to really fix things.
Is there any information on any of this? Has anyone who worked on the games ever said anything? I've looked around but I never found anything.