I am not rating the game here but how it is programmed on a literal nail.
This is a game that was condemned to success, even if it is an utterly huge failure overall, by the sheer design that makes it extremelly marketable. This is very similar to what happened to Harry Potter or Star Wars, mid to low quality works that get elevated by the sheer amount of merch you can generate by it, being spammed to hell and back by companies to sell cereal boxes or whatever the fuck they want. Maybe it wasn't the original deal when it was created, but it's the best potential it has.

Anyways, similarly to mario 64, I will never get enough of this bugfest, I love how deep the mechanics of the bugs go and how you can even input arbitrary code on it, it's absolutely insane. Otherwise this game would have a score of 1 or maybe even a score of 0.5, which would mean that I consider this game a poison for society, but alas if it wasn't pokemon it would've been something else anyways.

Pokémon Red Version is a foundational JRPG that launched a global phenomenon. Catch and train adorable monsters, battling trainers and gym leaders across a vibrant pixelated world. With its simple yet addictive turn-based combat, collection mechanics, and emphasis on exploration, Pokémon Red offers a timeless adventure that's perfect for newcomers and veterans alike. While the graphics might seem dated by today's standards, the core gameplay loop and monster collecting remain endlessly charming.

Even if I know this game by heart and I played it a billion times, completed the pokedex and love all the pokemon that I used in my adventure, it's still shit
The flaws of the level progression and the design of some pokemon (not the sprites, the gameplay design: some pokemon are just better that others, why would you even use dewgong or magneton when you can use lapras or jolteon) makes the game boring at some points, and don't forget the glitchy mess of a game this is.
Even if I love it, it's just bad.

I recently (2024) played this for the first time having only played later games in the franchise, wondering how well it would hold up. My takeaways mostly boiled down to it being a question of framing.

If you view this game from the perspective of newer Pokemon games, this one is almost stiflingly limited. Clunky design limitations abound in pretty much every direction, the overall game balance is dubious at best, and pretty much every bit of quality-of-life from the later games is missing. In that sense, the game is very rough.

On the other hand, if you view this game from the perspective of it being an experimental RPG for Game Boy developed for a 1996 release, it is both wildly ambitious and incredibly effective. 151 unique monster designs with unique designs, movesets and stats? A complicated web of elemental type strengths and weaknesses? And it's got ways in which you can help your friend out by trading, or do strategic PvP battling against them? In that sense, the game is incredibly forward-thinking and impressive.

In the end I enjoyed my playthrough, and I think the game mostly holds up. But it is, nevertheless, a bit hard to go back this far if you're used to what followed.

This score reflects the whole first generation.

There are few franchises that have changed the world. Pokémon is one of them. It may be easy to look at the nuts and bolts of the first generation today, with hindsight and in a vacuum. Videogames, however, are less of a linear technical field than an interactive artform. Pokémon is part of the cultural zeitgeist of the last four generations because of the impact the first generation caused.

The feeling of wanderlust and adventure is something that a human constantly seeks in life. Pokémon awakened and fed this in the hearts of millions of people worldwide.

The premise of the series, in it's time, was groundbreaking: be the protagonist of the perfect adventure, with fantastical friendly monsters in a world that is recognizable and parallel to our own.

The execution may not have been technically perfect, but it was artistically perfect. The design of the characters, the monsters and the world was created expertly to cater to young children but alto to spark the inner child in every single one who got into contact with the world of Pokémon.

The gameplay loop, while a little bit dated, could hook any who tried it in a heartbeat, and the concept of growing together with you monster partners was innovative and addicting. The arstyle was cartoonish enough that any holes left by the low fidelity of GameBoy graphics could be promptly filled by the player imagination. However, the sprite art was phenomenal and is still cherished my a large part of the playerbase, who eschew the 3D transition post 7th gen.

Yes, there are some bugs. Who gives a shit? At the time, pre-internet, bugs were even part of the mystique of games, as if they were a supernatural secret only known to a select few. The experience was almost never impacted by them and it is not only unfair, but extremely shortsighted to dim the legacy of these games because of niche glitches.

And what a legacy. Not even talking about the personal mark the first generation left in the ones who had the privilege to experience them, the systems Pokémon created are part of the foundations of modern jRPGs and the template of any monster collecting game - from Pokémon ripoffs to cardgame roguelikes, to games with elemental tables to even modern collecting gacha games.

The soundtrack is immaculate and the sound design is impeccable. There are few games with tunes as recognizable and timeless as Pokémon. There are few thing that scream "start of the adventure" as the Route 1 theme.

There is no nostalgia tint - the game could have issues, but they are so minuscule in face of the importance of the final product and the monumentality of the fun it brought, they are easily ignorable.

What a nostalgia trip - I played this when it first came out all those years ago and it still has a charm to me.

The graphics are obviously very dated and some of the Pokémon designs look like nightmare fuel.

The music is still memorable and going through it using Pokémon I haven’t really used before kept it a little fresh. It’s surprising how much I still remembered.

i can see what captivated so many people but gah damn this shit feels so slow

ill give it a pass bc its the home gen of pidgeot (my fav pokemon) but man this felt like a grind sometimes

still fire tho

The start of my favorite gaming franchise of ALL TIME. The first generation of Pokémon was a complete phenomenom, as it introduced to the world the creativity that was present in Game Freak and Nintendo. The original 151 Pokémon, the rivals Red and Blue, Team Rocket, Gym Leaders, Elite Four, and many others first appeared in this one.

However, many people say that this is the all-time best generation that Pokémon presented thus far, and I beg to differ. Although this gen is REVOLUTIONARY, it has many problems. The opposing Pokémon's AI is malfunctioning, tons of glitches and programming errors are presented in this gen, the story is not nearly as interesting as the other gens are, the possibility of a Pokémon skipping levels and not being able to learn a move is very concerning, and etc.

Aside from the problems, it's still a good game, as it started everything we know today, of course. However, all of the next gens in my opinion improved significantly on what Pokémon can be (remakes included), so the first gen in my opinion, although very important and good, fall behind on the level of content quality of later games.