Pokémon Who was the best in gen 1?

[The Idiot Ninja]

"what teal is saying isn't really arguable"

"this is an opinion that is highly debatable"

Choose one.

this alone is enough to discredit you and your entire spiel

you either can't comprehend the very simple message my post conveyed - "top 3 rn is arguable, but top 3 all time is hardly debatable" - or you deliberately misconstrued it to try to invalidate my post. and if either of these are true it's not worth trying to argue with you

I don't know how you can say that Mister Tim was the best player in 2015 with a straight face when a cursory glance at the thread of the single MT he won reveals that he got ridiculously lucky to make his way there and given the small sample size of tournaments you're judging him on that should by all means be considered a fluke. You want to prioritize PP results? Fine, but at least present all the results and not just the ones that make your argument look solid. Even ignoring the countless victories on Smogon, Marcoasd in 2015 won an MT, Cerulean Cup 1, Fuchsia Cup 1, Vermillion Cup 2, to Mister Tim who only won one MT and baaarely edged him out Season 5 points (still losing by a good margin on 2015 total if you include the two Season 6 MTs which were played in 2015, where Tim lost round 1 both times to Marcoasd's 3rd and 2nd places).

I'm not a smodrone or one who generally dislikes you, not nearly as much as other people around here, but this time I really have to say it: you're full of shit

 

[Mister Tim]

this alone is enough to discredit you and your entire spiel

you either can't comprehend the very simple message my post conveyed - "top 3 rn is arguable, but top 3 all time is hardly debatable" - or you deliberately misconstrued it to try to invalidate my post. and if either of these are true it's not worth trying to argue with you

I don't know how you can say that Mister Tim was the best player in 2015 with a straight face when a cursory glance at the thread of the single MT he won reveals that he got ridiculously lucky to make his way there and given the small sample size of tournaments you're judging him on that should by all means be considered a fluke. You want to prioritize PP results? Fine, but at least present all the results and not just the ones that make your argument look solid. Even ignoring the countless victories on Smogon, Marcoasd in 2015 won an MT, Cerulean Cup 1, Fuchsia Cup 1, Vermillion Cup 2, to Mister Tim who only won one MT and baaarely edged him out Season 5 points (still losing by a good margin on 2015 total if you include the two Season 6 MTs which were played in 2015, where Tim lost round 1 both times to Marcoasd's 3rd and 2nd places).

I'm not a smodrone or one who generally dislikes you, not nearly as much as other people around here, but this time I really have to say it: you're full of shit

I got a lot of second places in cups that year, but I’m not even trying to say that I was best player in any time

 

[The Idiot Ninja]

I got a lot of second places in cups that year, but I’m not even trying to say that I was best player in any time

Yeah, it wasn't an attack on you. You're a good player who I respect but you know just as well as me that "best in 2015" is a ridiculous claim from GGFan

 

[Mister Tim]

Yeah, it wasn't an attack on you. You're a good player who I respect but you know just as well as me that "best in 2015" is a ridiculous claim from GGFan

Mb this was the most interesting season coz 3 players could get 1st place(me, GGFan and Marco). That’s why he reminded me.

 

[GGFan]

this alone is enough to discredit you and your entire spiel

you either can't comprehend the very simple message my post conveyed - "top 3 rn is arguable, but top 3 all time is hardly debatable" - or you deliberately misconstrued it to try to invalidate my post. and if either of these are true it's not worth trying to argue with you

I don't know how you can say that Mister Tim was the best player in 2015 with a straight face when a cursory glance at the thread of the single MT he won reveals that he got ridiculously lucky to make his way there and given the small sample size of tournaments you're judging him on that should by all means be considered a fluke. You want to prioritize PP results? Fine, but at least present all the results and not just the ones that make your argument look solid. Even ignoring the countless victories on Smogon, Marcoasd in 2015 won an MT, Cerulean Cup 1, Fuchsia Cup 1, Vermillion Cup 2, to Mister Tim who only won one MT and baaarely edged him out Season 5 points (still losing by a good margin on 2015 total if you include the two Season 6 MTs which were played in 2015, where Tim lost round 1 both times to Marcoasd's 3rd and 2nd places).

I'm not a smodrone or one who generally dislikes you, not nearly as much as other people around here, but this time I really have to say it: you're full of shit

No, pointing out that you can't go with a sentence without massively contradicting yourself does not discredit me in any shape or form. Indeed, I certainly needn't worry about what the likes of you have to say, especially given your vile meltdowns in the past in which you belittle those that have achieved more than you. With that in mind, it is not a surprise that you're so harsh towards those that came before you, even though they were the ones that paved the way for Marco, Peasounay, Alexander, and yourself in the first place. You don't think the playerbase in 2003 was good? How do you know? Who have you played from that era besides me? Did you watch the games? Yes, mechanics were vastly different back then, but top players used Pokémon and movesets that are accepted standards to this day. If not for these players, RBY would have died 20 years ago after the official World Championship. If you want to argue influence, nobody is more influential than the first crop of great players. Everybody else who has succeed them (I won't even place myself in this category as I did not invent, popularize or conceptualize the basics besides lead Jynx, which came a bit later) is merely keeping the tradition alive that they created.

While you can't actually prove that players from antiquity were bad, all I have to do is simply exist to prove that wrong. I'm from this era, and I played most of the elite players of the early 2000s (Nitro, Hipmonlee, Undone, Cloggerdude, GDPT, Shuveit, etc). If any one of them (we've already seen Hipmonlee do it in RBY and Nitro do it in GSC) ever decided to make a comeback, they would most certainly be able to catch up and play the game at a competent level. But, do you know what's truly funny about this? You chimed in to claim that teal's blatant trolling was the truth when I was arguing over his claim that RBY was a "guessing game" until three years ago. If you defend that, you're either a Smodrone troll who gets his jollies from derailing discussions or incredibly delusional.

Who cares if Mister Tim got lucky in the season he won? Do you really want to be foolish and go down that road? I've lost dozens of games to bad luck, as has everybody. The only statistic that isn't subjective is that he won. It wasn't just the season he won, either: look at his placements in other tournaments--and no, I'm not only acknowledging what he accomplished on PP. He went deep in the Smogon GC as well, outplacing the likes of Marco and M Dragon. The major argument against him is that he ended the year on a weak note, but he ended up having better numbers overall. Hell, I even say this as somebody who is highly critical of Tim, but nobody can deny he won more than anyone else that year. I don't care about your "SPL record!"

Did you even bother looking at the cups in 2015? Most of them were in inchoate stages and weren't on the level they're at now. The 2015 Vermilion and Fuchsia Cups were entirely different tours than they are now. And what about the Ultra League and Tokusane Cups? Mister Tim performed the best in those. Marco outperformed Tim from August to December, but four months a year does not make and eight is more than four.

I wasn't aware I was disliked here. Perhaps you're actually referring to your home, a worthless cesspool of stupidity, toxicity and immaturity. I suppose I wouldn't be looked upon favorably in an environment like that, but that's alright. I'm beloved and respected in this realm, which is the most important thing.

 

[The Idiot Ninja]

you're actually really stupid it you cannot understand what i'm saying when i say "this part of teal's message is arguable, this other part is not"

 

[GGFan]

That's cute. Let me try.

Stupid person's way of thinking: call someone else stupid when all else fails.

My condolences to stupid you and your stupid way of thinking.

Love,
GGFan

 

[teal6]

i dont need to write a lot of words ggfan to get across my point. i'll write it out as succinctly as possible.

average players of 2018 are miles better than top players of any time before like, 2015. the level of skill prior to that point could be considered outright amateur in comparison. people who you would expect to do "ok" in a big team tour like wcop or spl today would be absurdly dominant in years past.

 

[GGFan]

I can write as many words as I please. At first I wrote a great deal because I had to at least respect the possibility that this wasn't typical Smogon trolling and thus entertained the idea of having a real discussion, but now that it's obvious there's little to say other than that you're wrong and all of the arguments I've presented are correct while everything you say is trolling.

So that's another victory for me. I didn't even need "Shimtup," the legendary blade that has been passed down throughout the ages to only the most exemplary warriors, to slay not one but two vile goblins. I've still got it after all of these years--my, I've come a long way after inventing the double switch and switching Ground types into Thunder Wave.

 

[Hipmonlee]

I mostly agree with GGFan except that I taught him the double switch and that Jynx lead was a thing long before he started playing.

So just to respond to the original post, cause I like talking about pokemon history.

So I started playing in 2001, from my experience of playing people after their prime I felt like Sonuis, Fish, EeveeTrainer, Haste2 and Nitro are the best players from before then. Plus they all won major tournaments so its kinda justifiable. But when I started playing the guy to beat was Vineon, he was a class apart.

2003 was my year. From Dec 2002 to Nov 2003 I entered basically every ou tournament I could, including an IBT and didnt lose a single tournament RBY OU battle. I mean, I was lucky as fuck, and the standard overall was a bit low (with a few top tier players excepted) but I was still way better than everyone else.

I think there was a specific reason at this point that the standard was fairly low. The main simulator for GSC at this point was the GSBots, but RBY had to be played on PBS. So not many players were making that transition.

But there was a young crop of enthusiastic dudes who were still learning, and in 2004 they started to actually get good, by the end of 2004 the standard was really high. I remember having some amazing games at this time with the likes of Lesm46, Redwall Dude, Metal Scyther, and you can throw GGFan in there too. But most of those guys ended up losing motivation at that point and giving it away just as they were starting to really get it. Or in GGFan's case he kept getting banned.

Then in 2004 Smogon starts. The pool of players overall is getting bigger, but we are having issues with sims again. We have an RBYbot but the main sim is now Netbattle. Netbattle is a much, much better sim than an IRC bot too, so fewer people are bothering with RBY.

Eventually we get RBY on Netbattle and all of a sudden a new gen comes out and we move to Shoddybattle and that doesnt support RBY either. So again RBY is taking a major back set to the newer gens, and basically this sort of situation, where RBY isnt supported on the main sim, lasts for a very long time.

As a consequence most of Smogon's RBY players from this time are great at pokemon, but they just dont really get RBY. Instead its guys from other sites that are specifically focussed on using Netbattle who really are getting good. So the name that stands out for me from this era is Floppy, and by this era I am talking about really quite a long time.

But nowadays you have the best of all worlds. The main sim supports RBY and has a ladder, so you have the huge player pool and there are big tournaments so there is the motivation, and I have said it before, the standards have never been better. But I dont think the standard is so much better that the names I have mentioned here wouldnt have coped at their prime. They would have to learn a lot, but if they were playing they would have learnt it.

One of the reasons I have stuck around after WCoP this time is because of times like this when the standard has been particularly high (like 2004) it often hasnt remained high very long. It seems like already a lot of your top players are hinting that they have done everything they can in RBY and are thinking about giving it up. It can be quite an unforgiving game.

I think a thing definitely have to come to terms with is that maintaining standards requires work, and its inevitable your workrate is going to fade. Its really hard to keep playing when you know you are playing to a worse standard than you are capable of. Especially when you have previously played to an extremely high standard. It can definitely feel like you are undermining your previous work---and in a way you are. People will assume that you were only ever as good as you currently are and your previous tournament wins were only because the other players were bad. This thread is proof of that. But those people are wrong.

The average players of today are no better than the average players of previous years. Trust me. I've seen it all.

 

[GGFan]

I started double switching as early as TOS finals, and most certainly pulled one off in our first ever game, which I won (OH, HO HO HO HO HO HOOOOO!) As for the Jynx lead, I never said it wasn't used, just that it was shunned by several people and that I was the one that showed otherwise.

I was red hot in 2003, actually, as I won the most tournaments out of any player that year (12). I disagree that the standard at the end of 2004 was high, as this was when GameFAQs was barren, which was arguably the epicenter of competitive play. 2003 was the best period in the history of the game for a long time--maybe even until Pokémon Perfect's inception, though I argue it was quite competitive in 2006 and 2007.

Getting banned from Smogon meant nothing, as the quality of RBY on Smogon was unremarkable until recently (on that note, it's largely because of Pokémon Perfect's existence). I'm considered the game's "iron man" for a good reason.

 

[Hipmonlee]

You probably missed out on the quality play in 2004 unfortunately. I may be getting my timings messed up as well, it might be more end of 2003ish.. It was definitely pre-smogon. But those guys were definitely really starting to figure things out. But it was definitely a very brief flash.

And this would happen on smogon as well from time to time. Though I dont think ever as intensely as that specific instance.

Also I taught you double switching long before there were any TOSes.

But do you have logs of any of these battles? I'd be keen to see them.

 

[Disaster Area]

I love soaking up the history! Hipmonlee I knew that competitive RBY had always been a bit "away" from Smogon in a sense - other communities moreso than Smogon being the center of gravity for the metagame's playerbase throughout its history - but I didn't really know exactly why. How did PO and rby2k10 fit into it? I remember hearing - but don't know if it's true or where I read it - that when PO was deciding on what RBY tiers to have on the simulator, they had a choice between smogon's and rby2k10s and you basically let RBY2K10's be PO's official RBY tiers and put Smogon's RBY tiers to just OU and UU.

Honestly the fact that RBY2K10 was reaching its death as I joined, plus the fact that Smogon had been so historically standoffish to RBY (and looks to be going more that direction again I hear) helped me build on the RBY community Lutra had gathered here... also the limited resources on smogon and the tier lists both had me thinking "I could do better than that" at least after a bit of experienceand now we have done better than that (although the retiering has stalled and tiering honestly is such a tempermental and difficult process at the best of times...)

 

[Hipmonlee]

rby2k10 is a good example of how the small side communities are often the best places to grow the non current gen OU tiers. Like they all started on Netbattle when Smogon was focussing on Shoddybattle (I think, I am not exactly sure of their origins). You get a pool of dedicated players with the attitude of trying to improve as much as they can and after a bit of time you'll get great players out of it. I think also being outside of the mainstream gives a group of players a bit of motivation as well, to prove themselves against the arrogant smogoners or GSBotters or AzureHeightsers or whatever.

And smogon's RBY tiers were old and not great.

So in the olden days before smogon, UU was just decided by whatever people felt in their hearts was UU. So you would say something like "lets play a UU game" and your opponent would turn up with Lapras and Victreebel against your Vileplume and Dewgong. When you had a UU tournament the host would just declare the list of what was allowed for that tournament and people would bitch and moan and play anyway. Or rather sign up then not actually complete games..

So when smogon was making tiers me and Justin8649 had a big argument and eventually somehow came to some kind of an agreement. And for me, my thinking was mostly influenced by one big UU tournament I had played in early on where Dodrio dominated the shit out of the even and everyone agreed it shouldnt have been allowed. So I was working on the principle that Dodrio should be banned from UU, and went from there.

So we had this huge BL list. Which wasnt intended as a playable tier, it was intended as a guide for new players to understand what they should expect to see in OU and what they shouldnt. And then everything else was UU, which was intended to be playable.

But either way these tiers didnt see a lot of actual use.. Like playing RBY was rare enough in itself, RBY UU was basically non-existant.

Then rby2k10 came along they started actually playing these tiers. When I got wind that that was happening I was concerned that the tiers werent very good and people were giving them some kind of respect that they didnt really deserve. So I deleted them, and went to a model that was basically OU and not OU. Which I think upset the rby2k10 crowd a bit.. My hope really was that they would actually evaluate the tiers properly and build a tier system that actually worked for them, rather than what was a pretty shoddily put together and poorly maintained set that we had. And I think they did? I dont know to what extent their tierlist resembled the original smogon list in the end tbh.

So for a sim to implement multiple tiers in RBY it was a no brainer to use their lists rather than the smogon ones.

 

[magic9mushroom]

two years after I invented using a team of six Pokémon as opposed to two or three.

No, that was the Fisherman with six Magikarps on Route 21.

 

[Roostur]

This statement is pure personal speculation coming from you, not everyone's. As someone who has played the game as early as 2004 when RSE386 was main gen in Netbattle, I reassure you Celia wasnt the best in the game as you state. The only "legacy" he left behind is THAT one team, which by all means isnt perfect nor 350IQ but an attempt of hard stalling in an era were curselax was mostly banned and frowned upon, probably even before the release of NYC pokemon event moves. And by the way the forums you've searched to find topics(Aeturnus Societus) regarding that team were mine; a collaboration of all the netbattle clans united. The teams we posted there (iirc the celia team was posted by ViL or imperfectluck) came solely from us trying to spice interest up by passing down 'unused' or cool stuff that werent really usable or for archive pursposes to have older gen sub categories 'filled'. There are actually GSC forums still up from the GS Bots era, were in a hundreds of pages Celia's name is never mentioned as best nor hailed as top dog not even once. I'd advice you to search more and get a truer grasp of this gen if you really want to delve into such (probably meaningless) discussions. To my knowledge, nor ViL(did you know about his unbeatable celebi team?), nor Celia, nor bob(insane raikou encore team), names you might hear today were the best of GSC back then but are the players that transitioned better from the GS Bots to Netbattle before gen 3 became main. (eg GSC celebi was unbanned for a while in Netbattle iirc, thus ViL's celebi team).

As a bonus for tolerating my rant, as I have never been involved in the RBY scene to answer the OP question;

About ADV, back when it was current gen among the best players were goofball, Loki, Veteran in Love and last but not least, my personal favorite, biggest rival and a great friend of mine, Husk. He rarely lost, and played incredibly wellmade semi stalls based around Zapdos, with intelligent EV'ing and incredible predictions even when playing casually or friendlies. His style was a direct opposite of mine (which was versatile mons with aggression to keep tempo control). Honorable mentions to Giga Punch and imperfectluck(council / kd8 otome) too. Needless to say, Netbattle's ADV was vastly different than the ADV you came to know now, because of Sleep Talk mechanics. Most of you never came to know the terror of Restalk Zapdos and other prehistoric beasts such as Restalk BulkyMetagross, Restalk Regice, Dusclops and so on.

About DPP, on Shoddy and early DPP (Garchomp era, Salamence era) the absolutely phenomenal players on the ladder and tournaments were panamaxis, Aldaron and earthworm(who knocked me off 1-0 by getting a 50-50 tie in smogon official 4, the last tournamentI participated on Smogon before retiring).

The whole time I was reading this I was waiting for you to finally tell me who the best was and that moment never came.

 

[Pais]

marcoasd caput mundi

 

[GGFan]

The main issues with RBYK210 were that its founders were assholes who were more interested in trolling and belittling others--especially older players--and how esoteric their circle really was. Only a handful of people experimented with their tiers (tiers which were, to a large extent, not tested in tour play), all of whom would stop playing a year or two after the site was established. Activity in tours was also a major problem, as about half were canceled in its first year. And let's not forget the anniversary tour, which took half a year to reach the finals despite the cash prize and was actually canceled--in the finals.

I will say that one significant development they contributed to the metagame was Gengar's influence. Gengar became a lot more common from 2010 up until about 2013, which was when I introduced FriendlyMie on the PO ladder. Gengar usage gradually began to plummet over the next couple of years.

Going back to the topic of tiers, we did have tiers on GameFAQs in 2003, but they were, as Hipmonlee said, largely determined by gut feelings. For example, in the summer UU tournament my opponent used Persian, which is considered OU now. I used Victreebel in the semi finals and Cloyster in the finals, which are obviously OU Pokemon by today's standards. There was, however, a tier on GameFAQs called "restricted UU," which was basically the ancestor to NU. I wrote up a tier list for it based on Haste2's recommendation, though in retrospect it was pretty inconsistent. For example, the tier had Butterfree, Magneton, and then Charizard, who is obviously a step or two above the other two.

In 2004 an attempt to write an official tier list on GameFAQs was attempted, but the thread was derailed by trolling, inability to compromise, and also not enough people contributing (it was largely just me, Redwall Dude, and maybe Hipmonlee). When I created THE Alternative in 2005, a major goal of mine was to create an official tier list. I divided my tiers into OU, BL, "top UU," "UU," and "NU" (NU was originally "restricted UU"), and finished the project in 2006. I made a few changes here and there over the next two years, ending up with these tiers in 2008.

OU
Tauros
Alakazam
Chansey
Exeggutor
Slowbro
Jynx
Rhydon
Golem
Zapdos
Articuno
Starmie
Snorlax
Lapras
Gengar

BL
Persian
Raichu
Jolteon
Hypno
Clefable
Kangaskhan
Moltres
Dragonite
Golduck
Gyarados
Mr. Mime

Top UU
Tentacruel
Electabuzz
Dodrio
Machamp
Sandslash
Charizard
Nidoking
Venusaur
Victreebel
Dugtrio
Blastoise
Cloyster
Omastar
Kabutops
Tangela
Nidoqueen
Weezing
Poliwrath
Kingler
Pinsir
Raticate
Fearow
Vaporeon
Ninetales

UU
Wigglytuff
Aerodactyl
Hitmonlee
Venomoth
Onix
Muk
Scyther
Marowak
Pidgeot
Lickitung
Porygon
Vileplume
Arbok
Rapidash
Primeape
Electrode
Magneton
Magmar
Dewgong

NU
Ditto
Farfetch'd
Hitmonchan
Golbat
Butterfree
Beedrill
Parasect
Seaking
Seadra

These tier lists would be used in the German circuit, primarily on Pokemonexperte and Pokefans, and were definitely referred to by the RBY2K10 people. However, like with RBY2K10, these tiers could be scrutinized for a dearth of contributors (though there were twice as many finished tours on TA than RBY2K10, so the sample size was much larger, at least).