I am Generation 1’s strongest soldier.

- Small limited inventory makes you actually consider every item you pick up and I think that’s neat. Putting this one at the start to filter anyone who can’t stand the idea of someone defending gen 1 inventory management. But if you actually go through and check what items you need and what ones you don’t every so often you won’t often cap out on bag space and you’ll probably make a good bit of money from all the vitamins and TMs and other random stuff you don’t really need. It’s just another aspect of preparation, and it makes sense for prep to be important when setting out on an adventure.

- The region layout is fun, there’s just enough freedom to let you poke around in places where you don’t really belong. It’s probably a bit awkward to navigate for someone getting into it for the first time, but on the other hand the lack of explicit guidance or scripted events benefit the sense of freedom - both in the literal exploration of the region (though it is a little more railroaded than I remember early on), and thematically in allowing it to feel like your own journey (something I find important in a Pokemon game, where the core mechanic of catching and teambuilding leans heavily into individuality).

- The region thematically is probably the most compelling. It’s incredibly ‘raw’ - putting its warts fully on display and having 10 year old kids freely wander around in it all. Future games have your protagonist take on moustache-twirling supervillains whose plans are varying degrees of nonsense, whereas Team Rocket acts and operates very much how Yakuza organisations might do (limited knowledge of this admittedly), with parallels to real life such as the Game Corner acting as both a front for their operations as well as mirroring the legal loopholes real-life pachinko parlours use to evade gambling laws (social commentary, in *my* Pokemon game??). There’s so many cute, weird and uncomfortable little details there to pick up on that sell the workings of the region, no matter how weird, with a joyful yet disarming honesty. (One of the less serious, more entertaining things I picked up on was that the Fighting Dojo lost its gym status because they got the shit kicked out of them by the Psychic gym which, like, yeah of course they did! It’s funny, but it’s also an interesting look into how the world actually functions.)

- The game has the purest and most unfiltered vision of a 'complete' Pokemon experience. Filling the dex is heavily encouraged/mandatory (you wouldn’t use a map for Rock Tunnel, would you…….), though admittedly not handled with the most elegance, and in-game trades are much more frequent than later games, as well as being more desirable - there’s a good few Pokemon that are otherwise unobtainable, and in Yellow in particular you can just get a Machamp from an in-game trade! Though exploration and battling are clearly at the forefront, it puts much more emphasis on these other elements of Pokemon that would end up being eroded away over time. (Admittedly features like the GTS and Wonder Trade help keep trading alive, though those two definitely have their own issues)

- Barren movesets and HMs come together in a really strange way. Moveslots have the least value out of any Pokemon game in most cases because most of your options just aren’t that good, so you’ll be sticking to your few good ones. This makes HMs easier than ever to slot onto your team! You can have a slot taken by Flash or Cut or even Dig or Teleport for the whole game and you probably won’t feel it all that much! Not to mention that half the mandatory HMs - Surf and Strength - are actually just really good moves (more than half if you’re not using Flash, but you WOULDN’T use a map for Rock Tunnel, WOULD you???).

- When Pikachu faints it makes the most horrifying blood-curdling scream that a GB could ever produce and I think that’s awesome

Sure there are more than enough valid criticisms of these games and I still can’t blame anyone for not liking them. Someone in the 8th gym used tackle on me. Tackle! Like I don’t mind the limited movesets that much but I think that’s a bit excessive. But I think they tend to get weirdly overhated nowadays and for reasons that don’t really make much sense? Either complaining about very specific quirks and glitches (‘The AI is so bad!!’, I yell, as I intentionally send out a poison type to make Lorelei’s Dewgong spam Rest), or comparing them to later entries when they are not those later entries (limited movesets being a big one, I won’t fight tooth and nail to defend them but they really don’t feel as bad as you’d expect coming from, like, Gen 4 onwards). And I think there’s a lot of value in these silly little games that’s easy to overlook.