Three adorable Pokemon, one unforgettable choice:
When Professor Oak first gave gamers the option of Bulbasaur, Charmander, or Squirtle, no one could have
suspected the massive gaming juggernaut that would be given that simple Pallet Town lab
But forget about changing the face of gaming and all that, what we want to know is, was our choice the best?
Which of the three Gen 1 starters reigns supreme?
After researching and running some polls, Bulbasaur was in a distant third, making today's debate between two
Squirtle and Charmander, a song of ice and fire.
Well, not really ice, it's more water and fire, but I'm really excited about the new season of Game of Thrones guys, okay?
Today we're looking at everything from stats to strategy to just plain old cool factor to determine which 'Mon is
Number One
Ladies and gentlemen of the internet, welcome to Deadlock.
(singing) I want to be the very best!
Let's finish this quickly. I can't stop thinking about my battle with Gary
Well, well, well, look who decided to show up today
Mister blame me for not letting him swear during his episodes.
Sorry I'm holding you to a higher standard Austin
And I just figured a guy as smart as you could write a wittier punchline than dropping F-bombs
But I don't know, maybe I was wrong. You have free reign to do what you want. I will totally look the other way
That said though YouTube's ad services might not be so kind
Look, if you were constantly discovering how your favorite video game franchises are predicated on
Mind-blowingly terrifying premises you'd drop a few salty slurs too
Haha, sorry sir,
who is the person who originated that format? Just saying.
Do you not even watch game theory? That's what I do literally every week. Anyway enough about our petty little squabble
Let's get this battle over with so you have another excuse to complain
What was the single greatest discovery in all the history of humanity?
Relativity? The transistor? The steam engine? No, it was the ability to control fire.
Over 600,000 years ago before even the existence of Homo Sapiens, hominins first learned to control fire.
With that came science, art, chemistry, cooked food, light at night and heat in winter.
Humanity has utterly dominated the entire world for good or ill for thousands of years and it all
Started with fire: a little bit of oxygen,
Some fuel and heat and boom you can literally change the course of the entire planet
Are you serious right now? What is this a video game debate or a hipster poetry slam? "In the beginning".
I don't wear these glasses for no reason and I'm just getting started.
The Greeks knew how important fire was, not even thinking that humans
Themselves were smart enough to come up with the idea and alleged that Prometheus stole fire from the gods themselves
and this is exactly why, objectively and unequivocally,
Why Charmander is the best of the first three starter Pokémon.
Charmander isn't a turtle waiting to be turned into soup
Whose only talent is creating their own broth.
And they're not a dinosaur with a parasite growing out of their back.
When you walk around with Charmander in your poké ball you're literally walking around with the power of the Greek gods,
An embodiment of the most important chemistry discovery in the universe and
Most importantly, a way to toast marshmallows anytime, any day and whenever you want.
If this is a try not to cringe challenge, I would be failing so hard.
Your opening argument focuses on ancient Greeks and mythological events that never happened?
I know your old channel was named ShoddyCast, but I didn't realize your arguments would be so shoddy too.
Oh! Shots fired! Not shoddy shots. Not that I think that any of what you just said merits any sort of a rebuttal
But just to be thorough, you say fire allows humans to change the planet. Great, good on you, clap and a half.
You know it also allows humans to live on that planet in the first place?
Uhhh, Water! In fact, as a scientist yourself, I have a feeling you know what enables Earth as a planet
To sustain any life in the first place.
Water. Huh, sorry couldn't quite hear ya, what was that?
Water! Oh, yeah, that's it.
That's the one good old h2-oh yeah!
Say it loud and say it proud.
Why are the atmospheres of Venus and Mars dominated by CO2 while Earth's isn't? It all comes down to water.
In the olden days Earth's atmosphere was likely dominated by Carbon Dioxide,
Similar to Venus and Mars but Earth also has vast oceans of liquid water.
Carbon dioxide dissolves easily in water so our oceans absorb much of that atmospheric CO2 and a few steps later,
We had ourselves the magical mix to create an atmosphere that allows us to support life.
Life that allowed Pokemon, the game, to get made, Squirtle
And Charmander to get developed and us to have this debate today, so maybe Austin
Maybe you should start moving away from just arguing the primordial
Elements and instead start talking about I don't know the game
Maybe oh boy
You got me, Mat. Not like water can be found literally everywhere in the freakin solar system
But fine, let's have it your way. Charmander is by almost every metric
You want to go by the most popular of all the generation 1 starters my Twitter followers?
7,000 of the best and brightest people on the planet
Overwhelmingly voted for Charmander over Squirtle what and if that's not good enough for you got a year ago, Nintendo
Themselves surveyed over Half a million
Pokemon fans and built a master list of the top 100 most popular Pokemon ever
Good thing you didn't choose bulbasaur because that thing did not even make it onto the list. Charizard, though the final evolutionary form of
Charmander, placed at a whopping number 6, barely getting beaten out by the series Mascot, Pikachu
genetic freak, Mew, the God of the Frickin Pokemon universe, and some
Adorable little pink thing. Where's Blastoise, I can't even find hi... oh there he is, number 86.
Some super adorable pink thing, please tell me you know that thing's name
Sylveon, easily the most adorable of all of Evie's possible evolutions
well
I'm so glad to see that you were able to tear yourself away from
Twitter in order to do some actual research on Pokémon for this debate. That being said no offense to your Twitter fans
but while interviewing actual creators of these games Junichi
Masuda, producer of Omega, Ruby, and Alpha Sapphire
And Shigeru Amore, planning director of those remakes, Neither one selected charmander as their starter
But Sudo went with Bulbasaur and Amore chose Squirtle.
Two out of three ain't bad
Unless that missing third is the character you're looking to defend
oh
You know who else chose Squirtle?
Speedrunners.The people who truly are the best like no one ever was
Players whose literal job it is to beat the game as efficiently as possible.
Squirtle has a powerful move set to begin with, and with the addition of TM's like Dig and Mega punch
Squirtle really has no real weaknesses until the Elite 4
Squirtle is also
The only starter Pokemon that can learn Surf, which you need to complete the game, and you'll appreciate this one even,
Science! is on my side Austin. This article
Published by Scientific American ran the numbers and concluded that Squirtle was indeed the best choice.
You're not going to go against
Science are you Austin? I mean, it is the name of your show after all. I love myself a good speedrun, Mat
But as awesome as those guys are, you're not the average gamer if you're not even the best gamers. There's about
efficiency of Movement and muscle memory.
I'd say that's not how the average person is going to be playing Pokémon.
Charmander starts out slightly weaker than Squirtle by pure stat points,
I'll give you that, which easily puts you at a disadvantage for the first two gym battles.
But this only proves that it's the starter of the most skilled trainers who can overcome
Adversity for a huge payoff where charizard has a huge stat advantage over
Blastoise, both in overall total, but especially in the key stat they both utilize most
Special attack. This is a stat that dictates
how powerful things like fire and water type moves are, which would be all well and good if
Charmander and Charizard would actually get around to learning some dang fire moves. In Gen 1 Charmander only learns one fire move,
Ember, up through level
38. 38! And if you decide to evolve it along the way, which obviously you will since everyone's so eager to get their hands on
Charizard, I mean, even you, Austin, have abandoned defending Charmander at this point and
Have already moved on to his level 3 evolution, you're going to have to wait until level
42
Before you get your second fire type move, flamethrower.
Squirtle, on the other hand, learns water moves at levels 8 and 15, two special attack moves before even evolving into
Wartortle. (Austin) Pick a lane, Mat. You're bringing up eight gems and Tm
but now we're going to throw a
Badass Pokemon under the bus because it takes a little bit more time to master how to properly melt faces with fire
Yeah, fine
You gotta wait a bit for flamethrower?
But Charizard boasts an impressive list of learnable moves, including one of the strongest in the game, hyper beam.
Furthermore,
Charizard is a dual flying fire type, and as a result boasts several advantages over the turtalian (?) counterpart Blastoise,
who is a pure water type?
Hilariously, even without a shell, Charizard has more resistances, boasting a resistance to six different move types over
Blastoise's four, and an immunity to ground type where Blastoise is immune to nothing.
Glad to see that shell is really getting its mileage.
Also, Charizard can learn three hidden machines, some of the most important skills in the game: fly, cut, and strength. Blastoise
only gets two. Oh, how cute, at least you tried to be useful.
I'll think of you getting around like a crappy boat while I'm flying in the sky on my literal dragon
Except not. First off Charizard isn't even a dragon type. So sorry there. Secondly
Good luck finding the time to fly around on your dragon because you'll be too busy chip
damaging your way through mountain moon in brewing your way through endless waves of Yield you'd
Remember how I said
Speedrunners choose squirtle well it's in part because he ripped through the most obnoxious
Parts of these games the cave that are you filled with?
Ground-type endless logs where your charmander is relegated to the back of the party?
Well that proves is that any trainer with the guts to pick charmander is going to make it to the end of the game?
Stronger than someone who just coasted their way through because they picked Ez mode
Charmander Forces you to get good and teaches you the patience that you really need to become a true
Pokemon Master plus petty though it is charmander Gets its entry in the Pokedex before squirtle
It's like the game itself knew all along the charmin is more important and wanted to give them the prominence
They deserve over raw turtle soup
Really well first off. You've already used that Joke the turtle soup joke
It wasn't funny the first time it's even less funny the second time you use it secondly
I'm certain to see why you swear so much you're using
Pokedex entry numbers and the Main point in your argument
Is your ad hominem is not going to distract me matt and I just keep this betty ball rolling I own
Pokemon red growing up for which Charizard was the Mascot and
Charizard me to come back as the mascot of fire red a remaster of the original Pokemon red and
wait, where's
Water blue, that's right. There. Isn't one they decided to make the japan-exclusive
Pokemon Green instead
Ha not even Nintendo wants you hair loss then considering that according to this chart?
Pokemon blue sold more copies in the us, then Pokemon red
5.0 two million to four point eight three
Million though, that's a great statistic Matt
I love it too bad it comes from a chart with Literally no credibility whatsoever
They don't even whisper source for any of its numbers. Hey
oh look it's on this chart here in my pocket that says nobody bought Pokemon blue and
Concludes that Austin Horrigan is the sexiest YouTuber in Illinois not
Really a lot of competition, but whatever
I mean, it's not the best source of data out there, but it is all the info
I was able to find online, but now at a time
They singlish your flame once and for all the big you game ending elephant in the room three words water be
fire
That's it as I said before Charizard while slow in the beginning is a friggin beast in late-game
And he can learn hyper beam with a higher
Special attacks of stat used to determine the damage output of this move he can hold his own in a fight against blastoise
Charizard has a higher speed which means a
Significantly higher quick percent and a higher special attack higher than blastoise is special defense
Hyper beam has a higher chance to hit also
90% accuracy versus your blastoise is hydropump
the only move and blastoise is entire repertoire even remotely capable of giving Charizard Pause a
lot of its a
lot of it alright than smart guy you're so good at computer modeling run the numbers for who in
Charizard or Blastoise hundred Matches go
Running the numbers you find out that 75% of blast voices to beat happen in Round three Charizard
gets to move first so great but
in 100 battles over 80% of Charizard zar defeated by blastoise, but the beginning of round three, so I
Rest my case again. I'm Gonna walk dramatically out of frame
fine, so what water beef fire and grass beats water paper Beats rock and the entire game is a
series of checks and balances
Almost as though no Pokemon were objectively perfect for every situation
but that doesn't erase the fact that charizard has higher stats across the board and
As a little bonus my baby has a tiny wittle charmander toy, and my baby's adorable Matt
Adorable are you saying that babies aren't adorable and therefore right all the time?
I don't know. I'd say a half turtle half machine with giant water cannons coming out of it's shell and pretty God damn
awesome
Apologize for the swearing, but I wanted to steal a phrase out of Austin's book for emphasis and dramatic effect
How to do I totally do that better, and I won the debate
so we're even
Ladies and gentlemen in the internet, we have reached a deadlock
Now the decision is in your hand which Gen one starter is the best are you hot for?
Charmander or did squirtle put Austin on ice-- and hey let's throw in bulbasaur there, too
We just didn't have three people to debate with us and bulbasaur was clearly third place in all the polls that we saw so anyway
there are no more annotations click the I icon in the upper right hand corner of the screen to cast your vote or
Tell us what you think in the comments below?
Don't let your childhood down which Jen one starter reign supreme