The 25 Best Gen 1 Pokemon

The first generation of Pokemon features 151 creatures to capture and train. Nearly all of these Gen 1 Pokemon are considered among the best of all time, particularly the starters and legendaries from these original games.

There are several types of Pokemon from the first generation that are also alarmingly overpowered, as Pokemon Red & Blue featured some terrible balance issues and game-breaking bugs.

Updated February 1, 2025, by Andrew Scariati: The best Gen 1 Pokemon have something in common: if used correctly, they can break the game. While you might already be familiar with some of the strongest Gen 1 Pokemon, several unheralded choices exceed expectations. We’ve added an honorable mention you might not have ever seen to the best Gen 1 Pokemon.

Honorable Mention: MissingNo.

When it comes to the best Gen 1 Pokemon that break the game, few fit the bill better than MissingNo., as this Pokemon can corrupt your save file due to the game trying to display a Pokemon that doesn’t exist.

The easiest way to encounter MissingNo. is by watching the demonstration on catching Pokemon from the Old Man in Viridian City, and immediately flying to Cinnabar Island. Surf along the coast until you encounter MissingNo.

Performing the glitch to encounter MissingNo. will corrupt your Hall Of Fame and cause other bizarre side effects, including increasing the sixth item in your bag to a quantity of 128. Examining the Pokemon also distorts the game’s graphics, but can be fixed by looking through Pokedex entries. This glitched Pokemon perfectly fits the definition of game-breaking.

25

Vaporeon

Vaporeon is often seen as the most competitive member of the original Eeveelutions, with excellent defensive moves like Acid Armor and Double Team alongside the powerful TM Toxic to slowly drain your foes. In a standard playthrough, though, Vaporeon is still one of the best Water-type Pokemon in the game thanks to an absurd Special and HP stat.

This lets it remain defensive against all sorts of Grass and Electric-type moves that would normally defeat it in one hit, as well as giving its Water-type attacks a huge boost.

Thanks to HM Surf being so powerful, it can be extremely effective to evolve your Eevee into a Vaporeon and toss Surf onto it for an overpowered Gen 1 water cannon.

24

Charizard

Starters are meant to represent equal choices, but the first set of starters in the Pokemon series functioned more like difficulty options due to how they stack against certain Gym Leaders.

Charmander was the hardest to train, being weak to the first two Gym Leaders and only taking off in the late game.

Once it’s finally evolved, Charizard is unstoppable against the later foes of the Kanto region. Its powerful combination of Fire and Flying-type moves is only available through legendaries like Moltres, giving it a huge edge over all sorts of Pokemon and having few bad matchups outside of Lorelei’s Water-types in the Elite 4.

23

Aerodactyl

If you don’t want something as common as a basic Normal-type bird, you need not look further than the overpowered Aerodactyl for an excellent Flying and Rock-type force. This Pokemon is exhausting to acquire since you can’t find the fossil to restore it until late in the game.

Aerodactyl’s biggest downside in the first games of the series is that it lacks any actual Rock-type moves, but that’s made up for thanks to its excellent Normal-type moves like Take Down and Hyper Beam. It even boasts some unusual TM moves like Fire Blast and Dragon Rage to mess with any opponents you might not be able to deal with.

22

Venusaur

If you want to flex on your friends, Venusaur has one of the best Gen 1 glitches to abuse. In the original games, Toxic and Leech Seed essentially ran off of the same damage counter, meaning you would restore health from their Poison status and increase the Toxic damage when either effect activates.

Venusaur is one of the few Gen 1 Pokemon to learn both of these moves and so long as your foe can’t wipe you out immediately, this combo can annihilate anyone, even Lance’s Dragonite in the Elite 4.

If you just want a great Grass-type tank for your sun team, then you won’t be disappointed with this powerful starter Pokemon.

21

Muk

Muk is one of many Poison-type Pokemon in the game, and its moves are hardly anything special. However, the one exception to this is Minimize, one of the greatest Evasiveness boosters in the series that combos with Muk’s physical defense.

Since most of the game is filled with physical Normal-type attackers, Muk can almost always just spam this move six times to become nearly impossible to hit. Afterward, all you have to do is let them faint via Toxic or Poison Gas or instead restore your health with the unexpected Mega Drain in your arsenal.

20

Golem

Golem resists Normal and Electric attacks, making it a valuable tank for early competitive battlers. Electric and Normal moves were some of the most common for a long time, and even with its weakness to Grass and Water-type moves, its defenses are good enough to counter plenty of overpowered Gen 1 Pokemon.

On the attacking side, Golem can learn Explosion, which is such a useful move for a tank that’s so hard to defeat. Simply hit with what you can, and if you think you’re about to faint, Explosion will take out your opponent right with you. Golem’s great physical Attack stat ensures it can defeat nearly any other powerful Gen 1 Pokemon.

19

Exeggutor

There was a time when Exeggutor was at the top of the food chain. It has a great type combination of Psychic and Grass-type, and getting access to powerful attacks like Psychic, Mega Drain, and Sleep Powder allowed it to prepare for all kinds of opponents.

Filling multiple roles in a team is incredibly rare among most Pokemon, as they can often be intended as single-purpose attackers with only a few great moves and strategies. Exeggutor has just the right mix of status moves, defense, and offense to be good wherever you need it to be among your team.

18

Gyarados

At first glance, Gyarados is a solid choice for any team due to good stats and sweeping moves like Surf and Blizzard. It’s nothing spectacular but is good enough for most tasks and a fun project if you don’t mind grinding your Magikarp against some wild Pokemon for a while.

Once you realize Gyarados can learn Thunderbolt via TM, everything changes. Gyarados can function as a counter for every Water-type, including others of the same species, while featuring absurd Normal-type moves that take advantage of its excellent physical Attack stat.

17

Articuno

When a Pokemon lacks a diverse set of moves, it essentially needs to be perfect at what it aims to do. Articuno is a great example of this, as it’s one of the strongest and fastest Ice types in the game and one of the greatest users of Blizzard.

It might suffer from a wide set of weaknesses, but Articuno is difficult to deal with in Pokemon Red & Blue, and even more powerful in Pokemon FireRed & LeafGreen thanks to some polished mechanics and a better range of attacks. Even without spamming Blizzard, you can still pull off some great strategies with Mind Reader to land an inaccurate Sheer Cold for a comical one-hit defeat.

16

Tauros

Tauros is a staple of the Gen 1 Safari Zone. It’s powerful, fast, and can take advantage of some of the best Normal-type moves like Hyper Beam and Take Down.

It’s slightly behind in more modern games, since Normal-type moves are much weaker in metagames with Ghost and Steel-types, but Kanto adventurers will surely find them useful against nearly every opponent in the game.

Ash knew exactly what he was doing when he caught 30 Tauros in the Pokemon anime, even if the average trainer only really needs one. It’s hardly anything complicated, but if you want just a solid physical beater, it’s absolutely worth spending some time adventuring the tall grass until you find one.

15

Lapras

Lapras is a well-rounded package. It has a great mix of offensive and support capabilities, some powerful moves like Blizzard and Thunderbolt, and it can even frustrate opponents with status moves like Confuse Ray and Hypnosis to ruin their plans further.

Lapras is able to take quite a few hits as well due to some remarkable HP and Special Defense stats of nearly any Water or Ice-type Pokemon. This gives you enough time to whittle down your opponent’s HP, and since you get it as a gift in Silph Co and don’t have to hunt it down, there’s little reason not to use it in your team.

14

Dragonite

Dragonite isn’t the best, but it’s great at a specific strategy that can break the game, all thanks to a move called Wrap. Nowadays, this is a terrible attack that no one will ever use, but this game could easily lock out opponents and lead you to slow and guaranteed wins in any matchup.

In the original Pokemon Red & Blue, Wrap prevents the enemy from taking any action. It becomes stuck in an endless loop until Wrap finally misses, or the ability ends its duration.

Since NPCs don’t switch out their Pokemon, this can result in an endless loop, but Dragonite’s excellent Attack stat and abilities like Inner Focus and Multiscale are immensely important in clinching the battle.

13

Rhydon

Rhydon is a great Rock and Ground-type Pokemon to use if you want something a little faster and more diverse than Golem. It can dish out a lot of damage with Earthquake, but like Nidoking it has some unusual attacks like Fire Blast and Thunderbolt to deal with some weaker Grass and Water-type threats.

It’s a shame Rhyperior isn’t as useful now, as its low speed and a long list of weaknesses make it much harder to fit into today’s teams. Nonetheless, modern games can still use the powerful Rhydon as a tank thanks to the Eviolite item that boosts its defenses by 50 percent, giving it much more of a fighting chance than it has in most games outside of Gen 1.

12

Starmie

Starmie is one of the best defensive choices in the game. It boasts access to Recover for regaining HP and sustaining itself during long battles. Status moves like Thunder Wave can paralyze foes and set up easy wins for your other Pokemon.

Beyond that, it’s just really efficient as a special attacker who can learn many powerful Water, Electric, and Psychic-type moves. It’s not the best Gen 1 Psychic-type, but it’s one of the easiest to catch and hardest to fail with.

11

Jolteon

Speed is a crucial aspect of Pokemon battles. Since it decides who gets to move first, you want higher Speed in most instances of a regular playthrough, but older games also tied your critical hit rate to this stat as well.

With Jolteon having one of the highest Speed stats in the game, its power was able to defy a lot of the expectations of other Pokemon. This is helped further by Gen 1 having very few Ground-type Pokemon in most of the game, and later remakes even gave it access to moves like Double Kick to deal with most of its bad matchups.

Newer Eeveelutions have proven to outmatch the original three, but Jolteon cannot be argued as the best Eeveelution from Gen 1.

10

Snorlax

The anime did not do Snorlax any justice. It’s a little on the slow side, but that’s not an issue when you have a Snorlax shooting Hyper Beams at any opponent, while also dealing with damage and status moves with a quick Rest.

If that wasn’t enough, it can learn Surf for extra coverage, and many games let it even learn Explosion for a surprise knockout. This is a superb Pokemon to use that can adapt to any team. Given that the two Snorlax blocking the roads are easy to find, it’s not difficult at all to get one on your side quite early in the game.

9

Zapdos

Zapdos is a good mixed attacker boasting great Attack and Special stats. Its ideal moveset includes Thunderbolt and Drill Peck to take advantage of those good stats, but if you can manage an Agility move first, it’ll quickly be faster than Jolteon and have just as much a Critical Hit rate.

You do have to be on the lookout for opposing threats like Golem and Rhydon, since Zapdos doesn’t really have access to anything that counters Rock-type Pokemon. That said, as a part Flying-type, Zapdos will be able to avoid any powerful Ground-types that would have greatly threatened it if it was pure Electric-type.

8

Jynx

If it isn’t clear by now, the key to being strong in Gen 1 is to just be a Psychic-type. Jynx is also part Ice-type, so it gets access to a mean Blizzard attack, but Jynx has some of the same strengths as Starmie in the form of great Speed, versatile moves, and a wonderfully unique typing.

That said, it’s worth warning that Jynx is much more fragile than most other Psychic-types in Gen 1. This is still easy to counter through its signature move Lovely Kiss to accurately put opposing Pokemon to sleep, giving you time to swap out to a Pokemon that can handle Jynx’s threats.

7

Cloyster

Cloyster has an excellent defense stat and can learn some ferocious attacks, it’s rarely seen as a threat in older Pokemon games. Newer games in the series gave it the powerful Shell Smash to double its Speed and offensive stats, but in the old games, this powerful oyster could slowly drain out an opponent’s health with no trouble.

Cloyster can slowly drain HP via Clamp, which functions just like the move-disabling Wrap but does far more damage in exchange for accuracy. Having the option to lock enemies out of attacking is always good, and lets Cloyster deal with any foes that it might not be able to deal with through Surf or Ice Beam.

6

Slowbro

Sometimes, all it takes is a single attack to change the dynamic of a Pokemon. For Slowbro in the original Pokemon Red & Blue, that move is Amnesia, which will boost Slowbro’s Special stat and make it both more defensive and offensive in any battle.

It’s definitely on the slow side, but Slowbro’s great defensive stats give it enough time to get a quick, and it can easily heal with moves like Rest if need be. Alternately, just throwing Thunder Wave onto an opponent can quickly slow them down to your level, giving Slowbro an immediate edge in any battle.