Sunday, May 4, 2014

Anyone here familiar with gen 1 competitive Pokémon?

Because I have a question for anyone who does. Why aren't gen 2 tradebacks allowed? I mean, no cheats are involved, which I always assumed was the only criteria for determining what was allowed and what wasn't. Or is it just that people are scared shitless of an elemental punching Alakazam?

15 comments:

  1. I think it's because they go for a rule of "Only what was legal at the time of the games." However, another metagame of Gen 1 with Gen 2 tradebacks could be interesting.

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    1. Even if Alakazam would join Mew and Mewtwo in Ubers...

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    2. Not really, tiers are frozen when a generation ends. Heck, if suspect testing existed back in gen 2, there's no way Snorlax would've lasted more than a month. Heck. Mew was considered the single best Pokémon at the time just because it was the only thing that could beat Snorlax reliably... with Swords Dance + Sumbission. FUCKING SUBMISSION!!!

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    3. Snorlax was in EVERY FUCKING COMPETITIVE TEAM. It was annoying. Type matchup couldn't be used against it because Fighting type sucked back then.

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  2. All I know about competitive Gen 1 is from your "The Original 16 Powerhouses of Pokemon" article on the TSG forums.

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    1. Christ, that was a while ago. Takes me right back.

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  3. I can't say for sure. From what I can tell, gen 1 seems to be what people who were competitive battlers back then personally prefer, rather than having some ideological consistency. Raichu with Surf is allowed in the metagame for some reason, which required trading back from Pokémon Stadium. (note that the competitive mechanics seem to be straight from Yellow Version, and not the updated Stadium rules)

    I remember one of those old battlers talking about why the standard mechanics were from the Game Boy games rather than Stadium. The idea was that that set of mechanics was more popular since more people were familiar with those rules. Once gen 2 games were released, maybe they didn't want to spend their time retroactively updating the gen 1 metagame. Maybe they didn't want to disturb the old, sacred metagame that already had a dedicated fanbase. Maybe some combinations like Persian with Hypnosis were too much for that (already broken) metagame to handle. I can't say for sure.

    By the way, is it safe to assume that the Slowflake on the Smogon forums (joined March 27, 2011 and zero posts) is not you?

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    1. Now that you mention it, I do recall making it for the sole purpose of preventing anyone else from calling dibs on it.

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    2. Ah. What Wikipedia would call a Doppleganger account

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    3. Stadium 1 is a 1st gen game, that's why Surf Raichu is allowed in the metagame. Not the same case at all.

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  4. Huh? What are you talking about? When I was man enough to buy silver and crystal and the other teenagers thought it was too "kiddy" to buy a pokemon game past yellow (yes, yellow wasn't "kiddy") I traded back to my pokemon blue a couple times because I had to to battle them! My Restnesia slowbrow I caught in slowpoke well beat a mewtwo! It was epic. Why should my mewtwo KO-ing slowbrow be banned? ='(

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  5. Snorlax, use Hyper Beam!

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  6. Hoenn remakes confirmed... oh no...

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ywGSON9tNq0

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    1. Oh Hell Yeah Nintendo used Explosion on The Pokemon Community It was Super Effective Damn nintendo

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