THE BEST AND WORST POKEMON SPRITES - Comparing Gen 1 Pokemon Sprites (Green, Red, Blue Yellow)

In this video we look at all of the Pokemon Sprites from the Gen 1 games. (Green, Red, Blue Yellow) There are some really great sprites, but there is also some ugly ones. For the most part the ones from Pokemon yellow are the most accurate.
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#Pokemon

[@BahuschBahusch]

Green is a really mixed bag. It had some of the worst but also some of the best sprites. That Porygon sprite was top tier.

[@Havok0ne]

Almost every pokemon: Guy on the left: I like yellow, it's anime accurate etc. Guy on the right: I like blue. 😂

[@johncorpuz3861]

…the guy to the right would clash with my artistic style and taste ALL day 😅

[@diegorivera5363]

ok the black shirt dude literally is just a troll on his choices

[@davepicklebeen6137]

I think overall yellows sprites are better . The ridiculous sprites in red/blue are part of its charm though .

[@PokemonExplained]

100% agree

[@drakegomer]

I must say blue shirt is really looking at it from an anime perspective and detail, and black shirt is focused on the pose and accepting the more classical look which I can also really appreciate. I wish they BOTH would say their 1st and 2nd favorite and not just the black shirt guy.

[@Retrospect1991]

Uhhhh are you blind? There both wearing black-

[@rauchschwalbelp7693]

​@@Retrospect1991nope, left guy has a dark blue shirt

[@captndingpot3981]

I would like to see a gen 2 version of this video. There are differences between Gold, Silver, and Crystal's sprites. Crystal TBH would sometimes choose one or the other and that's it. Crystal also sometimes changes the color of each Pokemon like Chikorita going from a yellowish tan to green. You guys can also mix things up and show the prototypes of each of the Pokemon.

[@rdrrr]

Gold/Silver's sprite color issues are interesting. It's because the games were backwards compatible - you could play them on a black-and-white Game Boy. As a result the sprites had to be colored so they'd also look acceptable in grayscale. Crystal abandoned backwards compatibility so it doesn't have that constraint.

[@CyanSixFour]

Blue Grimer is still my favourite Pokémon sprite to this day. Can never get enough of the rollercoaster-pose

[@PokemonExplained]

haha, i see what you mean 😂

[@Fomortiis100]

I know this is an old video so this comment will never be seen, but the reason why the Green sprites are so janky is because they were created first, before any of the official art was drawn. It was afterwards that Ken Sugimori refined the designs through his artwork, which were then reflected in Blue and Yellow which released after Green. It makes a lot of sense to design the monsters around the limitations of the hardware first and then clean up the designs afterwards.

[@alexh2790]

I'd go so far as to say some of the Yellow sprites actually suffer from trying to be too close to the show's look.

[@positivea9111]

@@alexh2790 So they didn’t have put the effort into the sprite since they can copy most of the poses from the anime.

[@leparraindufromage366]

I think it's best not to look at accuracy with respect to the Anime at all, because Green and RB clearly were released before the Anime and the whole point of Yellow was to streamline the sprites and gameplay with the Anime because it became so popular. Some of the Green and RB sprites were amazing while a lot of the Yellow sprites were just 'Anime accurate' and not very appealing otherwise

[@adamsrankings8860]

19:10 Geodude in blue looks like some kid's head with arms coming out of it

[@PokemonExplained]

hahaha 😂

[@RichardBlaziken]

While I think most Yellow sprites are the best, they're also very clearly pixel-overs of official artwork, which is why many of them are too detailed for their own good. Red/Blue and Green all made sprites from scratch, and I think that's a lot more charming

[@RichardBlaziken]

Also! I'd love to see you two discuss the G/S sprites! G/S has totally unique sprites per game for every Pokemon. Crystal would be nice to have as a comparison, but it usually just animates one of the two sprites from G/S, so it's not as interesting to compare.

[@yasq1482]

The short haired guy doesn't like Yellow for some reason 🤣

[@btv4120]

I know right? He's voting Blue for everything even though some of those sprites are trash

[@rgep4ever]

Guy with the short black hair seems like a troll, always liking the bad ones.

[@Galacsia]

Black shirt guy is just wrong with his choices.

[@sirwolfy9372]

Slowbro: red/blue: how long is your tail????

[@BBMacsWorld]

The worst sprite is definitely Mews green sprite 😅

[@PokemonExplained]

Right, it's so ugly!

[@dawnkist1456]

I think yellow doduo looked almost like a gen 3 sprite but with simpler colors

[@CrookiNari]

My first time seeing the Green sprites was on the plates I put on my New 3DS. Many of them look better than Blue imo, but some are just awful (Green Mew is the worst to me).

[@patitoduck123]

Late comment but I wish you guys added a counter on the side somewhere to see which version was winning as you ranked each Pokémon. Great video nevertheless!

[@ellyflounder]

I love how you spent 35 minutes of content just to say the idea yellow has the best sprites of gen 1

[@coriseoris]

Of course I knew the universally known starter and early route sprites, but it was cool to finally see all of the sprites at the same time. I’ve only actually beaten a kanto game once on leafgreen

[@jaywebster7508]

How many times do we need to hear ‘yellow is more like the anime’ .. yes because they made yellow after the anime came out so they redid the sprites to match 🥴

[@MichaelSotoCE]

The yellow sprites definitely look better on console. They tried to give the game a yellow tone and also make the line work softer.

[@Srrrgp]

Koffing in green…the smoke at the top looks like his two hands

[@TokyoLeee]

Yellow blastoise is peak blastoise sprite hands down

[@Jstef09]

18:51 I think the tentacruel in red/blue was the perfect looking sprite

[@Zz-_-]

Charmeleon and Wartortle's red/bule spites have a catch my fade look to it I fux wit it

[@sophiemuylaert9493]

Yellow meowth is getting sturdy

[@TheGoldenMidas390]

The big sprites like rhydon, nidoking/nidoqueen, etc are supposed to have a chibi style, because of japan culture they tried to do the big pokemons more chibi looking, thats why they are so fat with big eyes

[@yuumijungle548]

15:18 i actually have a special connection with the golduck sprite of red and blue. when i first tried the missigno glitch as a kid, the very first pokemon i found was a level 200 something golduck, i find it fits perfectly, it just looks intimidating, to me this is not just golduck, this is how a level 200 golduck looks that one shots your team xD same goes for golbat aswell btw, 12:30 even tho the tounge looks weird, when its a level 200 golbat it just looks intimidating, because of that i kinda like both of these, they look creepy and fit the shitty graphics at the time perfectly.

[@kingzerko]

Cool!

[@RealAaron317]

Wigglytuff for red/blue looks like a Furby.

[@alishegamer8490]

Blue Ivysaur is my favorite pokemon probably. Not a gen1nner, but really love the design. Way better and more memorable then what we have rn, aka bigger bulbasaur but teal

[@davirafaelfranke9303]

I don't know why but i legit like red and blue sprite for Exeggutor, while I dont like it's design on litteraly every other instance, i have no idea why, maybe it's just nostalgia

[@positivea9111]

Maybe because Pokémon are monster they tried to make it look like a monster

[@drmann15]

TLDwatch: yellow for all of them with standard deviation for odd poses

[@aldairmontiel3133]

I'm still waiting for the silver, gold and crystal round

[@shellshocktrigger7591]

I think fearows pokémon green appearance is fucking brutal, it looks so ferocious

[@ZeiYuga101]

Dude on the right definitely got something against yellow lol.

[@anonymousanonymous5732]

Fairly certain the reason the outlines on yellow look strange are because the sprites were resized poorly. That created the weird artefacts in their outlines. Quite a number of Pokemon Sprites from Gen 1 were resized poorly. Basically the artist drew them at a larger size then they were compressed to size was necessary.

[@MutedAndReported3032]

Green’s Gengar just looks like Big Chungus ngl

[@irvlogchannel0423]

Yellowwwr... i dont knowrr

[@Zz-_-]

Yellow version jigglypuff is an arsonist

[@benjaminpeters6729]

They should look at back sprites

[@sampanna6983]

They're all the same

[@benjaminpeters6729]

@@sampanna6983 bad

[@bobwaka1]

For me the best art (quantity wise) was green, it really captured the feel of the pokemon. Basically their poses were more accurate to the pokemon and the lines on the pokemon were good. For Red their poses were iconic but the art looked like a watered down version of green. For Yellow the art is technically better but it doesn't feel like what the wild pokemon version of it would look like.

[@CaptainStowed]

Yellow was made after the anime, rgb was made before. Is why the sprites are more “accurate”

[@lianataylorr]

Guy on the right feels like he purposely doesn’t pick the yellow ones even when they’re clearly superior

[@YawnBlue]

I kind of feel like I get it though. Sure, it's nice that they figured out how to translate the anime's style back into the games, but there's something appealing about the crunchiness of the Green or Blue sprites (and attributes that we'll never see again).

[@JadeSuspects875]

Nidoqueen has a better design in Blue version.

[@TheRelicStone]

I grew up with blue and yellow but I love red and blue sprites more in almost every one.

[@MichaelSotoCE]

Red (us)and Blue had the same sprites. The collections are R/G (Japan), blue (Japan) or red/blue(USA) and then yellow

[@MrDwarfpitcher]

Yeah me too They look a little more monster like, a little more menacing.

[@positivea9111]

@@MrDwarfpitcher Now a day’s Pokémon look more humanoid than Jynx.

[@bigdaddystep.]

Anime depictions aren’t canon and therefore cant be used to determine if an original sprite is good or bad.

[@Zz-_-]

Charmeleon blue for sure

[@princessliam5949]

All gen 2 ones be good, need to check all videos if u have made a video, great vid just found chanel

[@HobGungan]

Even though the Yellow sprites are more "accurate", I find a lot of their poses severely more awkward and off-putting than Blue (Green is mostly the worst though). You know what, I'm going to do my own list as I watch and post it in a separate comment later.

[@minsengo]

Agreed. A major weak point in many of Yellow's sprites in my opinion are that the poses are static. Gyarados, one of the most vicious Pokemon looks coiled up and looks nowhere near as dynamic than in it's R/B sprite. Seadra is facing away in Yellow, whereas R/B it's front-facing and look like it's in action. Even a Pokemon with no face like Starmie/Staryu, looks more dynamic just by being posed upright in R/B, compared to in Yellow where it looks like it's lying down.

[@positivea9111]

I feel like that’s the problem since they can get it accurate there was no reason to try something new with it.

[@positivea9111]

@@minsengo Not to mention that Porgon was better in the Red and green since they got the color correct, but in Red and blue made it look creepy, and Yellow look nothing like Porogon since the color look off and look a bit to wide.

[@RedEyd]

... ...

[@SaresuGaming]

Bro green pikachu is the winner here

[@dr.shaman]

left dude is an anime fanboy , yellow ones suck most of the time, too light sprites

[@happiestaku6646]

Yellow wins every time.

[@alexh2790]

Seems like a wash to me. While Yellow might've been more contemporaneous to the show, too many of them look washed out, messy, and dont use enough screen real estate. Although having weird proportions in some cases, Green and Blue tend to look like they were designed with more consideration for the limitations of the hardware.

[@positivea9111]

Maybe since they know what the Pokémon look like because of the anime they don’t have to put a lot of effort to try to make the sprite good since they can copy it from the anime.

[@SMPandanic]

to be fair... green was released in japan first

[@DayneJ93]

This other dude just straight up picked every single shit sprite that there is aye

[@pokemastr1326]

Pikachu in yellow is cool, at least he's not a marshmallow

[@RebornAudio]

Bro. You gotta stop with the fat comments lol

[@remvaizor3522]

I think so many sprites in Yellow are just horrible. Yeah, they might be anime accurate, but as a sprite art, they are bad. Not enough contrast, blurred line art and really awkward poses. Game Freak just trusted that all who play the game already knew what these pokemons look like, so it didn't matter if poses were weird. Don't get me wrong, there are still some really good ones, like Exeggutor (which was later reused in Gen 2). But as a whole, I don't like them, it's like an awkward teen phase. They just needed a little bit more work and better hardware. Gen 3 was the moment when they got the sprites to look consistently good. But yeah, Red/Blue sprites are definitely my favorite, most of them look really unique and fun. This is the ideal Golbat body. You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like.

[@positivea9111]

And the problem is that most of the yellow sprite just stay still while most of Red/Green and Red/Blue look like there ready to attack because it is a battle obviously, and it make look a bit off since most of them don’t look their ready to fight.

[@sampanna6983]

Wow. You just wrote exactly what I wanted to write. Including the yellow Exeggutor being used in Gold and Crystal. 😭 But yeah, I agree. They got the details right because they now had source material, but most of the angles are really weird. They look quite flat because they dropped the checker pattern shading and blank whites from red and blue which made some parts of sprites (Like Butterfree's eyes or Metapod as a whole) appear more realistic. And you can barely tell the checker pattern squares on a tiny gameboy screens. The red and blue ones have much mote dynamic poses and well defined black outlines instead of the outline either being non-existent or being a shade very similar to the sprite's colour in yellow.

[@adamsrankings8860]

A lot of the yellow sprites look like a real-life photo of that pokemon

[@MutedAndReported3032]

Man, the sprite for Pidgeot in Red and Blue is terrible

[@SWAATSFan]

I think Pokémon Yellow had the best prites out of all Pokémon games ever. Newer ones look good too, but Yellow had the spirit from the anime and what was the typical thing in the game. I mean look at Meowth's sprite, Nidorino, Charmander and Magmar. Sadly the game sucked because they really had the audacity to cut Pokémon out of that game even for a special edition and even though they already had the Red & Blue split with the edition specific Pokémon.

[@movezig5]

You know, there are some people out there who just shouldn't use face cams. I mean, _I_ wouldn't. Just sayin'.

[@squish162]

Well that's just mean

[@pksprite6401]

Even the objectively bad RBY sprites are just part of the charm. Good vid tho

[@zdhmfkemoscwcbmqygwq9737]

text

[@yacinebennaceur82]

All of the sprites in Red/Blue were (and still are) absolutely awful, it's just facts at this point. The remastered versions in Yellow were such a breath of fresh air back in the day.

[@squish162]

cap