Pokémon was counterculture.
It's hard to believe that now, given what Pokémon has become, but the original Pokémon games were made by an indie team of nerds who wanted to make a different Dragon Quest in their own image. So much of that heritage and identity is baked into the first Generation's design. We take it for granted now, since subsequent generations tend to ape Gen 1's template and are almost unto their own as a genre, but if you know what to look for, you can see all the hallmarks of it. Little things like the near-future setting instead of high fantasy, legendary Pokémon as your jRPG superbosses, Voltorb/Electrode being cyberpunk Mimics, the Game Corner as an evolution of Dragon Quest's casinos, deliberate monster design consideration for how boss encounters are paced out (Onix is a scary early boss that becomes a standard encounter in mid-game and essentially a trash mob by the end), etc. I tend not to think of later Pokémon in this way, but that's the main image I have for Gen 1.
Pokémon Yellow, specifically, feels like the first core game for the series made as a mainstream phenomenon rather than a product of counterculture. You could make arguments for the Japanese Blue Version or the International Red/Blue Versions, but the way I see it - Japanese Blue was a surprised thanks from Game Freak for Red/Green's success, and Red/Blue were experiments to see if the success could be replicated outside of Japan. Yellow was made because the series was successful enough to warrant a TV show, and that TV show became a separate phenomenon. Yellow exists in an interesting place, then - it's a trendy response to the success and is thus the first mainline Pokémon game designed to be a Pokémon game rather than an RPG. At the same time, it couldn't change that much of its Gen 1 template, so it still retains those counterculture artifacts. Gen 2 as a whole would experience this as well, given the timing of its dev cycle, but it's perhaps at its most pronounced with Yellow, where the sleek new sprites and expansive Pikachu friendship mechanics exist side-by-side with the grungy counterculture design that made Gen 1 what it was.
I've always had sort of an odd relationship with Gen 1 Pokémon. I was into the anime from day 1 and collected the cards, but I didn't own any (non-PC) video games until the start of Gen 3. I got Crystal first, then Sapphire and Yellow in pretty rapid succession, so a lot of my experiences with the first three generations' core games were formed around the same time. Of those, Yellow held my attention the least, but more because it wasn't the new hotness than anything. A lot of my appreciation for the first generation's games have come after the fact, as people growing up with the titles have gotten old enough to articulate what made them so interesting and so different. I always liked Yellow, I just didn't get it until later on.
Later than this particular playthrough, even; I mostly have modern PokéTubers to thank for my current respect for Gen 1. But I will say this playthrough was a turning point for me. I revisited Yellow for the first time in years for an early Designing For video. I'd long before abandoned my Yellow playthrough and had contented myself with clearing Blue as my first-gen playthrough. But my friends needed B-roll footage, and I was happy to oblige. I had until that point been someone who loaded up on power moves and brute forced my way through every encounter (in Sapphire, I taught my Kyogre Sheer Cold and kept it as a regular part of its moveset), but I decided to give status moves a go this time. Largely because movesets are so limited, and you're starved for options otherwise. Sure enough, I found myself leaning into 'em. I remember being proud of myself for beating the Champion's Jolteon in a close fight because I tried using Thunder Wave rather than just trying to overpower it! Maybe a silly thing in retrospect, but it felt like a grew a bit then.
There's a stereotype for the kind of person who holds onto Gen 1 as the only valid generation. I get annoyed by that - even ignoring that my favorite Pokémon generation was yet to come, I detest such thought-terminating viewpoints - but it's also a pet peeve to see folks who act like any sort of Gen 1 favoritism is someone being/catering to "Gen Wunners". Like I said at the beginning, early Pokémon was counterculture in ways that the phenomenon has never been able to replicate. I can completely understand someone preferring to hold onto that.
It's hard to believe that now, given what Pokémon has become, but the original Pokémon games were made by an indie team of nerds who wanted to make a different Dragon Quest in their own image. So much of that heritage and identity is baked into the first Generation's design. We take it for granted now, since subsequent generations tend to ape Gen 1's template and are almost unto their own as a genre, but if you know what to look for, you can see all the hallmarks of it. Little things like the near-future setting instead of high fantasy, legendary Pokémon as your jRPG superbosses, Voltorb/Electrode being cyberpunk Mimics, the Game Corner as an evolution of Dragon Quest's casinos, deliberate monster design consideration for how boss encounters are paced out (Onix is a scary early boss that becomes a standard encounter in mid-game and essentially a trash mob by the end), etc. I tend not to think of later Pokémon in this way, but that's the main image I have for Gen 1.
Pokémon Yellow, specifically, feels like the first core game for the series made as a mainstream phenomenon rather than a product of counterculture. You could make arguments for the Japanese Blue Version or the International Red/Blue Versions, but the way I see it - Japanese Blue was a surprised thanks from Game Freak for Red/Green's success, and Red/Blue were experiments to see if the success could be replicated outside of Japan. Yellow was made because the series was successful enough to warrant a TV show, and that TV show became a separate phenomenon. Yellow exists in an interesting place, then - it's a trendy response to the success and is thus the first mainline Pokémon game designed to be a Pokémon game rather than an RPG. At the same time, it couldn't change that much of its Gen 1 template, so it still retains those counterculture artifacts. Gen 2 as a whole would experience this as well, given the timing of its dev cycle, but it's perhaps at its most pronounced with Yellow, where the sleek new sprites and expansive Pikachu friendship mechanics exist side-by-side with the grungy counterculture design that made Gen 1 what it was.
I've always had sort of an odd relationship with Gen 1 Pokémon. I was into the anime from day 1 and collected the cards, but I didn't own any (non-PC) video games until the start of Gen 3. I got Crystal first, then Sapphire and Yellow in pretty rapid succession, so a lot of my experiences with the first three generations' core games were formed around the same time. Of those, Yellow held my attention the least, but more because it wasn't the new hotness than anything. A lot of my appreciation for the first generation's games have come after the fact, as people growing up with the titles have gotten old enough to articulate what made them so interesting and so different. I always liked Yellow, I just didn't get it until later on.
Later than this particular playthrough, even; I mostly have modern PokéTubers to thank for my current respect for Gen 1. But I will say this playthrough was a turning point for me. I revisited Yellow for the first time in years for an early Designing For video. I'd long before abandoned my Yellow playthrough and had contented myself with clearing Blue as my first-gen playthrough. But my friends needed B-roll footage, and I was happy to oblige. I had until that point been someone who loaded up on power moves and brute forced my way through every encounter (in Sapphire, I taught my Kyogre Sheer Cold and kept it as a regular part of its moveset), but I decided to give status moves a go this time. Largely because movesets are so limited, and you're starved for options otherwise. Sure enough, I found myself leaning into 'em. I remember being proud of myself for beating the Champion's Jolteon in a close fight because I tried using Thunder Wave rather than just trying to overpower it! Maybe a silly thing in retrospect, but it felt like a grew a bit then.
There's a stereotype for the kind of person who holds onto Gen 1 as the only valid generation. I get annoyed by that - even ignoring that my favorite Pokémon generation was yet to come, I detest such thought-terminating viewpoints - but it's also a pet peeve to see folks who act like any sort of Gen 1 favoritism is someone being/catering to "Gen Wunners". Like I said at the beginning, early Pokémon was counterculture in ways that the phenomenon has never been able to replicate. I can completely understand someone preferring to hold onto that.