Those of you that have played Pokémon for years are familiar with the Pokémon stats: HP, Attack, Defense, Special Attack, Special Defense, and Speed. Well, in Generation 1 games, Sp. Def. and Sp. Atk. were one stat called “Special.” This difference means that in Gen. 1 games, a Pokémon’s Sp. Def. is also its Sp. Atk.– this would mean that some Pokémon could abuse this and be ridiculously overpowered (more on that later). Another difference in Gen. 1 games was that Critical Hit was based off of Speed instead of its own stat in later games. Faster Pokémon in Gen. 1 would then have a great chance of getting off Critical Hits than slower ones.

There were also a significant difference in some status effects. Ice attacks that froze an opponent were hard to get out of since the only way to become unfrozen was either via and Ice Heal or being hit by a fire move. Good for the Ice-Type attacker, but bad for you if you were the recipient of such attacks. There was no option to thaw over time. RIP. Another difference was that the sleep status effect lasted longer in Gen 1 games. This proved to be especially frustrating if you did not have any Awakening potions on hand. One positive difference from the later generation games is that poison effects only cause half the damage they do in current gen games. Paralysis was also different. Like all other gens, paralysis drops the Pokémon’s speed by 1/4 and has a 25% chance to render the Pokémon fully paralyzed. What’s different is that you can avoid the drop in speed by using the Agility skill when paralyzed. Some other things of note: Blizzard has a 90% accuracy as opposed to a 70% accuracy in later games, Thunder only has a 10% chance to paralyze instead of 30% later on, and for multi-hit moves, the first move determines subsequent moves so if the first hit is a critical hit, the second one will be as well.

Finally, let’s talk about issues with balance. Generation 1 games had many due to the fact that there were only 151 Pokemon and, well, this was the first iteration of a game that the developers had no idea would stick around. I always think of the early Pokémon games as “playtest versions” as there were many broken mechanics that were later fixed (presumably based on player/community feedback and a larger budget to examine bugs/glitches). I think the biggest balance issue in Gen 1 was that Psychic-type Pokémon were hugely overpowered. First, only other Psychic Pokémon could resist their moves and second, the one move type that was strong against them, Bug type, was hard to come by in game. In fact, there were only three pretty weak Bug moves (Leech Life, Pin Missile, and Twineedle) and the Pokémon that could learn them were also part Poison type which was weak against Psychic type. Additionally, Ghost type moves were completely useless against Psychic Pokémon– some think this was a programming glitch and not the intention of the developers.

I did not include all of the different battle mechanics for Generation 1; just the significant ones that gamers are most likely to encounter. I’d like to thank FalseSwipeGaming, Bulbapedia, and Smogon University as I pulled a lot of this info from their amazing work.