nostalgia aside how good were red/blue/yellow

[400Billion]

This has been said in different ways before, but one strength Generation I has over later generations is its emphasis on the mundane rather than the epic. Maybe the reason I prefer mundanity to epicness in Pokémon is due, in the end, to nostalgia; I'm not sure. But I'd like to see more of the mundane and less of the epic in future games.

Remember the Power Plant? A run-down power plant was about the strangest location in the game. Growing up in the suburban Midwest, I'm sure I could walk around just miles from the outskirts of town and find a run-down power plant, or something like it. A place you and your friends explore on a Saturday afternoon after hearing rumors about it, that requires following a small stream to reach. You'd expect to find Slenderman or Pennywise the Clown as much as you'd expect Zapdos. Broken windows, rusting metal, grass growing in between the tiles of the floor. Sure, the Game Boy didn't show that level of detail, but you could fill in the gaps. You got the idea that this was something you could find in your own world, not just a fantasy world.

Mt. Moon wasn't implied to be the Mt. Everest of the Pokémon world. It was like a place you'd visit on a Cub Scout trip. Team Rocket wasn't trying to reset the universe or awaken a Lovecraftian monstrosity. It was stealing stuff. With the Game Boy's capabilities, they couldn't make Indigo Plateau look like the Chartres Cathedral or an ancient ruin. To me, it seemed like a community center with some boulders, tombstones, and statues placed in the basketball courts. They didn't even bother to freeze the pool water in Lorelei's room. How tacky! Viridian City must've not wanted to waste their tax money. But that gave it a charm. Or at least it gives it a charm in retrospect...

Okay, so that is probably mostly nostalgia. And Unova had the Dreamyard, which pretty much does all the things I was praising Kanto's Power Plant for doing. But Unova also had Chargestone Cave, a cave filled with magnetically levitating boulders that glowed blue. It kind of breaks that sense of familiarity, y'know? Well, so might teleportation panels, and panels that cause you to uncontrollably spin across a room. And a human psychic Gym Leader. Or Pokémon in general. But you get the idea.

 

[Crimson862]

Red and Blue were good games overall, but very flawed. I hated most of R/Bs sprites (obese Blastoise lulz), but they were very deep and had a lot of content for Game Boy games. Yellow was awesome, improved the sprites and gave you all the starters, its the only gen 1 game I still have left.

 

[Atari]

RBY were pretty awesome and fun. It definitely entertained me more than any other of my games for GB, and the level of customizability was amazing. Imo the games progressively got better and better with new releases tho.

 

[Plus side down side]

Mechanically, not all that good. There were a lot of oversights that I can't tell if they were intentional, or unintentional. Such as, Psychic's OPness. The game was also filled to the brim with glitches, which are fun to exploit but we kind of got lucky that they weren't all that harmful. I don't care for the first gen battle mechanics at all and I'm glad they changed them.

Atmospherically, I actually really like gen 1. I like that the games weren't about trying to save the world and becoming a legend. It was simply about a kid going off on adventure and ran into some trouble along the way. Perhaps it is nostalgic in a sense, but it reminds me of being a kid. When I was little, I used to wander the neighborhood and get in small bits of trouble. I would catch bugs, get beat up by my sister, and try to overcome that fear of the neighbor's scary dog. The whole game feels like that. It's just an innocent little adventure on a bigger scale. Though I do love the current games epicness and story telling prowess, part of me wouldn't mind if they returned to the basics.

Also, I like gen 1 Pokemon designs overall, though they are only my second favorite.

 

[HoennExpert]

Red, blue, and yellow we're Nintendo's greatest success ever. I remember my blue version fondly as one of the coolest parts of my childhood. One of the cool things was you discovered most things yourself. There was little internet to spoil everything. I remember I never used Mewtwo once until a year after I caught him because I had no idea how strong a legendary was. Just hanging out, battling with your friends. Those were the days.

 

[Kanix]

My favorite so far is probably Platinum, but the first games on the GBA really had the best music.

 

[jstinftw!]

At the time, they were ground breaking. Pokemon RBY Provided a really unique platform of gaming that, at the time, you couldn't find in any other game. The games were what they needed to be and at the time, they were all we knew they could be. So in memory, those games were absolutely amazing. Super good.

But if we take out nostalgia, and look at all the cold hard truth, they were pretty bad. They were very one dimensional, and they had very little to do besides catch and train all 151 and battle your friends. Which, imo, is a lot of fun, but I think it's very important to understand that, sadly, there are a large number of Pokemon fans that prefer to NOT play with other people. (Which I really don't get but....) The games were bad in comparison to everything that's come out then.

 

[airickuh]

Yellow was everything! SO OP

 

[bidoofdude]

No post-game. Just Mewtwo and then go catch 'em all. Nothing changes post-game, no text or anything.

Tbh, that is what it was during the whole game, it's just that things get in your way from getting all the data for your Pokedex. I didn't grow up on these, but I understand the core concept, fill the Pokedex, which is done by "Catching 'em all". The way I see it, the challenges along the way only make you stronger to catch those last few 'mon.

Just my 2c.

 

[pacman000]

Yes, they have some problems, but you can't really call the 1st Gen games unplayable. That's like calling Super Mario Bros unplayable because you can't backtrack. Most of the problems are easy to get around, or don't effect the gameplay that much. As such, they're still good games. Perhaps not A+ material, but a solid B, at the least.

 

[vedil]

First, a few words. I haven't played the games "back in the day" seeing as Red and Green came out on the day I was born (Yes, the exact day and year - easy way for me to remember how old the first games actually are, haha) so obviously, I couldn't play them back then. I played them later though, still as a little kid. I of course loved them, but once playing them a few years later, here are my thoughts - from a technical point of view.

The games are mediocre. The concept was very innovative considering other 90's games, generally speaking the gameplay was very good and the idea wasn't used yet. The music was great as well. When it comes to the graphics, I believe that GameFreak could have done better. Some of the sprites looked deformed or like there wasn't much effort put into them. Look at the Yellow version - it's on the same system, yet sprites look way better than in R/G/B. The other issue is the game not really being balanced - Psychic types, I am looking at you. And lastly, there is something that pains me the most - glitches. There is just so many of them! Programmers did silly things like adding stuff at the last moment after the removal of debugging features. Sometimes I think they didn't even test the games, seriously. At least the most common ones weren't that game-breaking, thanks god. (Though, I do have to admit, glitches are one of my favourite things about those games, probably... they're just so fun to exploit.)

Overall, I like the games very much and they have their charm to them (or just the fact that I really love old games for some reason) and are enjoyable, but as said, they're rather mediocre from a technical point of view. At least I think so and of course everyone is free to not agree with this.

 

[rocky505]

RB were awful! Barely anything Post game, awful glitches(And some good ones), mistakes in moves like Focus Energy lowering your chance of a crit. IIRC Yellow fixed most of those problems.

 

[The Red Thunder]

How good were Pokémon Red and Blue?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSU19qzzV7g

I couldn't sum it up any better than this. We only have such good Gen 6 games because Red and Blue laid such a strong foundation.

And, when the only handheld RPG's that I had access to were Final Fantasy Legend 1 and 2, Pokémon offered a LOT more that I craved from console RPG's.

 

[AranElessedil]

It was said and I'll say it again...

Red/Blue are the original games of the franchise, and at the time they had to cut back on pokemons since the cartriges didn't had enough space in them. It was revolutionary in the 90s. That said, it wasn't my favorite ones story wise, but still pretty good overall.

Mechanically, not all that good. There were a lot of oversights that I can't tell if they were intentional, or unintentional. Such as, Psychic's OPness.

Well at the time Psychic's only weaknest was Bug and Ghost, but all of them were mainly Poison type too, so yeah Psychic types were strong, and still are against the same types (Bug/Poison, Ghost/Poison), it's only a matter of who strikes first.

 

[Zorupix]

Gen I laid out the foundation, and it has a large number of good and memorable Pokemon. At the time, it was new and exciting, the music is memorable, and the progression was good.

However, it also suffered from a number of flaws.
~Psychic was absolutely broken. Its only weaknesses were against Pokemon it could easily take down. And if you had Mewtwo with Amnesia, Psychic and Recover, you could sweep everything in the game. There was no Special Split. Sp. Attack and Sp. Defense were all one stat.
~There wasn't very much strategy, only an advanced form of Rock/Paper/Scissors. You got the strongest, fastest Pokemon and matched types.
~Glitches. This game was loaded with them, including ones that could corrupt your save file.

Overall, to judge R/B/Y by today's standards, I would give it a 6/10. It was and still is enjoyable, but there are a number of things wrong with it. It does not hold up well when compared to its remakes, Fire Red/Leaf Green.

 

[bushie]

gen 1 was great. with technological advances graphics sprites etc have certainly improved immensely so the games are much better. iv/evs strategy have also taken effect. the one thing about gen1 was the toughness. i mean pikachu as your starter when brock was the first gym leader.

 

[Divine Retribution]

3/10. It was good at the time but now it's got nothing but nostalgia left going for it, so if you take that away you've got a crummy bug-filled game with 1990s graphics and a sound system that sounds more like a cheese grater.

Oh yeah, and Hyper Beam EVERYTHING.

 

[INeedScizor!61!]

I won't get into Red/Blue, but I thoroughly enjoyed Yellow. Would I be able to play it now without the advent of Running Shoes or being able to fast forward it on Stadium/Super Game Boy? Yeah, actually. However, I have to add...

"Wild EKANS used WRAP!

The attack continues!

The attack continues!

..."

 

[Dylz]

I liked the casino and pokémon league the most. The Pokémon league was actually challenging. And the Casino was addicting, I really miss a casino now.

 

[SoulSilver Eric]

Look, for its time/era, I give it a 4.7/5. Great, solid, Portable, game with some social elements to it. It did have some glitches or exploits like the rare candy glitch but overall, for its time (I can't stress this enough) it was a great game.