"The REAL struggle of Gen I: Movesets"

Recently, I replayed through Gen I once again after getting the last remaining Virtual Console games I hadn't yet got on the 3DS, and as per my usual thing, I played through with a team of mons I'd never used in a playthrough, as for a bit of variety. Not only did this highlight just how silly some mons were back then (Being fast as hell basically was a guaranteed crit and Exeggutor was kind of ridiculous, no wonder this thing is OU in the first two gens), but it also reinforced quite possibly Gen I's most severe issue, and an issue that still affects many Gen I mons to this date.Movesets.Now Gen I does have a lot of issues that affect the average playthrough, like limited money until endgame, no good grinding spots and weird level curve towards the endgame, and no bag space, as well as more subjective stuff like how they put barrels in the water as a barrier when they had a perfectly good rock they could've used instead, but anyway, movesets in Gen I are laughably bad.Let me paint a picture, my recent playthrough's team as Electrode, Primeape, Marowak, Porygon, Exeggutor and Kabutops. A decent, albeit strange team with no overlapping types. Now you'd imagine that I'd have pretty good type coverage here, unfortunately, without TMs, I absolutely didn't.First of all, Electrode doesn't learn a single Electric type move by level up, with the only things they get being entirely by TM. In fact, those TMs are the only non Normal type attacks they can learn.Primeape is another strange one. It learns two Fighting type attacks via level up, and one of them does set damage, and the other is.....Low Kick. Factoring in TMs, it gains access to Counter, which is incredibly strange in Gen I and more of a gimmick move than it already is, and Submission, which is quite possibly one of the most poorly balanced moves in the entire series. Aside from a bunch of Normal type moves that basically everything in Gen I gets, Primeape also gets Dig, and for some reason, the same two Electric type TMs Electrode can learn.Marowak is a weird case where it's level up moves are not much, but it's TM learnset is surprisingly decent....if it had good Special to work with, learning Ice Beam, Blizzard, Fire Blast and Bubblebeam on top of getting access to Earthquake.Porygon is odd. It learns three attacking moves by level up out of like 7 moves it learns, and with TMs, it gets the same two Ice type attacks Marowak can learn and the same two Electric type attacks that Electrode can learn, on top of getting Psywave (Which is the funniest joke Sabrina has pulled aside from attempting to stall with an Alakazam in my recent Yellow playthrough) and Psychic, meaning that Porygon feels more like a Psychic type than anything.Exeggutor really is something. Being a stone evolution, it inherently suffers from that 'can't learn much by level up' situation that stone evolutions suffer from. However, things get strange when you realise it learns not a single Grass type attack by level up, being entirely reliant on the mediocre Mega Drain TM, or on Solar Beam if you wait until Level 42 before evolving it, which is worth mentioning that Exeggcute learns not a single Grass type attack by level up, and can't learn Mega Drain by TM because.....???? This results in you being reliant on statuses and Barrage, or the Psychic TM, as it's one of the only TM moves it can learn that does damage.Then there's Kabutops, which, for some reason, learns not a single Rock type move. Yeah, that's right, it didn't even learn Rock Slide, despite Rock Slide being a TM. It also only got one Water type move by level up, Hydro Pump, at Level 53, althought it atleast got access to Water Gun/Bubblebeam/Surf via TM/HM. It also got the two Ice type TMs and for some reason learnt Absorb by level up?Kabutops also didn't get Cut as a HM until Yellow, much like how Charizard didn't get Fly as a HM until Yellow's release either. Weirder still you've got things like Lickitung not being able to learn Lick or the fact that some types have a whole one attack in the entire game.You're not the only person to suffer from this either, as every other NPC suffers from this. While a player suffers not just because of poor movesets, but also limited TMs per play session, the NPCs weren't under the same restrictions to be limited with things like TMs, but even still, some NPCs have shocking movesets on their teams.Lorelei's Slowbro only has one attacking move in Red/Blue, being Water Gun. To make matters even worse, the only mon on Lorelei's team that has a somewhat threatening moveset is Lapras, with basically every other team member having no move above 60 base power.In a weird twist, one of Bruno's mons gets worse between Red/Blue and Yellow, Hitmonchan, losing Mega Punch, the only attack it had that worked off of it's good 105 base Attack stat in favour of a fully special moveset, going off of it's laughable 35 base Special.Some of the mons from Gen I suffered so badly with moveset variety that it took around 15+ years to actually get good moves to work with, and in that time frame, most of the battle mechanics were overhauled, three new types were introduced and the physical/special split happened, and I'm sure you guys all know which specific mon I'm using as an example here. via /r/pokemon https://ift.tt/xryN6JL