Pokemon players convinced these Gen 1 sprites just don’t make any sense

Pokemon Red & Blue assigned generic menu sprites to all the Pokemon in the game, but some fans think incorrect icons were used.

The Game Boy era Pokemon games dealt with strict memory limitations, which affected every aspect of the game. It’s admirable that the developers could cram so much in, considering the restraints of the hardware.

While every Pokemon had a unique battle sprite in the Gen 1 and 2 games, the same wasn’t true for the menu or overworld. A group of generic icons was used for most Pokemon, with a few notable exceptions, like Pikachu in Pokemon Yellow and Sudowoodo in Pokemon Gold & Silver.

The limited number of menu and overworld sprites meant that Pokemon had to share. Some fans think certain Pokemon were given the wrong sprite and should have been sporting something different for their appearances in the Kanto and Johto regions.

Pokemon fans think some ‘Mons were given wrong menu sprites in Gen 1

A user on the Pokemon Reddit has shared a chart that shows which Pokemon used what overworld icon in Pokemon Red & Blue. With 151 Pokemon spread over 10 icons, the other users in the thread pointed out bad choices made on the part of the developers.

Generation 1 sorted by their Icons. Did they overused the “Monster Icon” a bit too much?
byu/Murky-Ad7145 inpokemon

“We could move the Geodude line and Weezing line to the Pokeball group,” one user said, “Meowth line, early half of Nido lines to beast, Lickitung and Mr. Mime to the friend-shaped group, and Porygon to the bird group.”

“I never understood why Dragonite stayed on the snakeish sprite,” another user wrote, while another said, “Mankey line could easily be the Fairy body. Poliwag line the Surf body. Geodude, Koffing, Gastly lines the Ball body. Slowbro the Shell body. Get a bit more diversity there.”

“They should’ve done an amorphous blob icon for Grimer, Muk, Ghastly, Haunter, Gengar, Koffing, Wheezing, and Ditto,” another player decided, “Meowth and Persian should be in the four-legged-beast category. Zubat and Golbat should be in the bird category. Slowpoke and Slowbro should be in the fish category.”

Game Freak only had so many options for divvying out the Pokemon sprites, especially as they don’t all comfortably fit into specific designs. Luckily, advances in technology & increased memory limits allowed the devs to give all Pokemon their own sprites in future games, ending the debate once and for all.