Nothing is really perfect – even our favorite video games aren’t without faults. There’s always going to be an issue or an aspect of a game that doesn’t particularly hold up. Even games as acclaimed as Ocarina of Time have problems.

This is especially true when games become older and older. A game could be amazing at launch, though may lose relevance as time marches on. While Final Fantasy VII was groundbreaking for its tiꦛme, gamers are now used to the better graphics and quality of life gameplay that more recent games have achieved.

Pokémon Red and Blue are just as guilty of being faultier the older it gets. Older players may have accepted those games as they were, warts and all, because theꦺy were the only quality games like that at the time. I🥀t didn’t matter if the games were painfully repetitive, kids in those days would gobble them up, as it was all they had.

Arguably, Red and Blue were able to succeed due to the fact that they had charm, but charm could only get you so far. There are a lot of things wrong with the original Red and Blue games, in fact, we counted 21. Does that make these🍎 games terrible? Of course not; as we've mentioned before, nothing is flawless. Someone somewhere said that love is blind, and that's certainly an explanatio🍸n for how we feel about the faults in games. Nonetheless, they are still present and we should all take a moment to recognize them.

21 Only One Save File 🎃

This is actually an issue that all the Pokémon games suffer from, and we all kind of accepted it at this point. It doesn’t really make it right that we've all accepted having only one save file as the norm, but here we are. The original Red and Blue could barely fit all original 151 P🧔okémon, and it is a miracle that those games can save all that information at all. So while it makes sense for those games to have only 🧸one save file, it is still an issue that the franchise is still dealing with.

Personally, I put a lot of love and effort into each of my Pokémon playthroughs. ꦦI don’t want to delete my original save file to make room for a ꦇnew game – I want to keep the file I have.

20 ꦐ Unnecessary Duel-Typing

All Pokémon are a specific type. For example, Squirtle is a Water-type Pokémon and can use water-based moves. A lot of Pokémon have a second type, like Chari🐻za🙈rd being a Fire and Flying-type.

Red and Blue oddly added a second type to various Pokémon that did꧙n’t really make sense. For instance, did you know that Geodude and its evolution line are all rock and groun🔯d types? I have no idea why, but it just makes them super weak to water. Most of the grass types have also suffered from odd additional typing. Nearly every Grass-type in the game are also part poison. This includes Bulbasaur and its evolution line. It really doesn’t make sense.

19 ✱ 🐠 It Is Super Repetitive

You walk into the grass. A flash of light hits you, the iconic music starts playing, and you are thrust into a random Pokémon battle. Those are in everyone’s first few minutes of gameplay. Want to know what will be your last few minutes of gameplay will be? The exact same thing. The games are super repetitive. There is a serious lack of variation in how to play the game. You’re always fighting Pokémon, and most of it is unavoidable. It doesn’t help that Red and Blue are also terribly slow, making the wꩲhole process of battling Pokémon very tedious and boring.

18 ✱ Grindin🍌g Was Painful

Grinding, the act of leveling up your playable characters through battle, has always been a part of RPGs since the dawn of time. Red and Blue aren’t the first games to invent📖 grinding, however, thꦛey did make grinding very painful.

In order to level up your Pokémon, you'll need to defeat other Pokémon, which will give you experience points. The issue Red and Blue has with experience points is that your Pokémon doesn’t really gain a lot of experience points from fights. It becomes increasingly difficult to gain EXP the higher your level since you will continuously need more points. Grinding has always been a hassle for players, but Red and Blue really tests player’s endurance.

17 Psychic-Types Were Too O♌P 🥂

If you have played some of the more modern Pokémon games,♔ you may 🍸not realize how overpowered Psychic-types were in the original games.

In Red and Blue, Psyc🎀hic Pokémon had very few w💫eaknesses. They were only weak against Bug-types, and good luck getting any good Bug-type Pokémon in Gen I. Worse yet, there were hardly any Bug-type moves for Pokémon to use in Gen I! Add in Psychic-type Pokémon’s high stats, and you have yourself the most powerful type in the game. There is a reason why Mewtwo, the strongest Pokémon in both games, is a Psychic-type.

16 ꩵ There Are Hardly Any Ghost-Type𒁏s

Lavender Town is probably one of the most memorable things about the original Red and Blue. With its hauntin𒐪g music and surprisingly serious nature, Lavender Town is also home of♒ Ghost-type Pokémon.

All Pokémon fans know the original ghost trio of Ghastly, Haunter, and Gengar. However, did you know that those three were the only trio of Ghost-types in the original games? Apparently, the developers of Red and Blue couldn’t bother to come up w🐷ith more Ghost-t🎃ypes and simply left it at three. While it made ghost Pokémon appear more exotic, it didn’t really make sense for there to be only three ghost Pokémon in all of Kanto.

15 🌸 🍸 There Were Hardly Any Dragon-Types

If ghost Pokémon got squat in the original games, then the Dragon-types got extra squat. To be fair, Dragon-types ar🀅e meant to be one of the most powerful kinds of Pokémon. Having Dragon-types as rare relates to the mythicalness of dragons in real life.

That doesn’t excuse the fact that the there is only one d𝓀ragon move in the entire game; Dragon Rage, a move that deals exactly forty points of damage every time it is used. It’s a terrible move, and it doesn’t make sense for it to be the only one.

14 ❀ Brock Was Too Hard 🧔

Brock is the first Gym Leader you come across in the games, and he is notorious for being very difficult. He is a Rock-type Gym Leader, an🐠d rock-types are known for their strong defense. They are also strong against most of the Pokémon you can capture at that point. In fact, the only way you can beat Brock’s rock Pokémon is if you choose Bulbasaur or Squirtle as your starter Pokémon. You also need to level them up to a certain point for them to learn a grass or water move. If you choose Charmander then good luck, because you are probably won’t be able to have any Pokémon that🙈 are good enough against Brock’s team.

13 Limited Inv🌸entory Space 🦩

Red and Blue had to fit in a lot of data in their cartridges. Not only did they have to fit in 151 unique Pokémon, but they also had to fit in an overworld fo൲r players to traverse in. This is not including the different animations and sprites that needed to be incorporated in the game🥃s.

As you could imagine, Red and Blue really pushed the Game Boy cartridge to its limit. To fit all that, certain sacrifices needed to be made. Inventory in the original Pokémon games was well-known for how limite🥂d it was. If you wanted to free more space, you'd need to permanently remove things from your bag to make room. 𒆙You're also forced to keep key items, which tend to take up even more space.

12 🌌Hard To Navigate Menu System ♔

Pokémon Red and Blue are old-school Game Boy games, meaning they were originally released without color. It was just white on top of more white. Not only did this aesthetic make the games look bland, but it also made the menu system very difficult to navigate. All of the text was in the same font, so it was hard to tell anything apart. 𒀰The bag wasn’t sep🐈arated by any pockets; so everything you owned was on one screen. Key items would be lost within the bag, and there were hardly any shortcuts to gauge where everything was.