Pokemon - That First Choice

I'm reminiscing of the good old days of Pokemon Red and Blue. As you recall there was the choice of one of three starter pokemon: Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle.

As you know with pokemon games the three were part of the rock-paper-scissors style that Pokemon is known for. Alas at the start of the original games the choice would seem to be an easy one. You began with your first gym battles against Brock and Misty, Rock and Water trainers respectively, both of which were weak to grass and strong against fire. Thus Bulbasaur was the best choice in the beginning, while Charmander would be the weakest.

Brock in particular was difficult, his rock Pokemon are nearly untouchable by normal type attacks, requiring you to train several pokemon to pretty high levels. Whereas Bulbasaur learned Vine Whip at 13, and Squirtle learned Bubble at 8, Charmander would never learn a move. In Red you could level Butterfree to level 12, where it would learn Confusion. But that would be if you started with a Caterpie and leveled it through Metapod (as opposed to starting at a higher Metapod that only knew Harden). If you had Blue, you were stuck with Beedrill, unless you managed to get lucky enough to find a Caterpie or Metapod, which had a 5% appearance rate. Your only other options were Rattata, the Nidorans, Pikachu, and Pidgey, none of which had a useful move early. (Yellow solved this problem by giving the Nidorans Double Kick at level 12)

Alas, there is an upside to picking Charmander. Fire type Pokemon are fairly hard to get to until Route 7, where one must search for either a Growlithe (Red, and only knew Ember until Level 50) or a Vulpix (Blue, which learned Ember immediately and that only until level 35). The other option was to transform their Eevee into a Flareon, which learns Ember at level 31. However the option for Flareon denies you the option of using Eevee to evolve into Jolteon, hands down the best Electric type in the game (If you didn't bother trying to get Pikachu, Jolteon is the only Electric type you will see until you get to the Power Plant).

But I digress, for most people the triad problem can be solved by trading with another cartridge that restarts its game multiple times (5 times and once more gives both cartridges all three). The fact that you can do this is the sole reason you begin by delivering the package to Viridian in the beginning, which would bore the hell out of most of today's ADD-riddled kids. Nonetheless the initial choice of one of the three helped give players a unique way of playing, allowing them to choose their play-style in a manner not seen since Mega Man's initial choice of bosses.