I remember sitting on my bedroom floor in 1998, squinting at a lime green Game Boy Color screen, trying to figure out why my Charizard kept getting bodied by Misty’s Starmie. I had the official Pokemon Red and Blue strategy guide open on my lap—the one with the colorful artwork and the promise that I’d become a Pokémon Master if I just followed the instructions. But here’s the thing: those old guides were filled with half-truths, weird translations, and straight-up myths that we all just accepted as gospel.
If you’re diving back into the Kanto region today, whether it’s on original hardware or a Virtual Console release, you need a different kind of roadmap. The game isn’t what you think it is. Underneath the 8-bit sprites and the catchy chiptunes, Red and Blue are held together by digital duct tape and some of the most bizarre programming choices in gaming history.
The Psychic Type Problem Nobody Told You About
In the original Pokemon Red and Blue strategy guide lore, we were told that Bug-type moves were the hard counter to Psychic-types. Technically, that’s true. In practice? It was a disaster. There were basically no good Bug moves. You had Twineedle, which was exclusive to Beedrill (who is Poison-type and thus gets melted by Psychic attacks), and Leech Life, which had a measly power of 20.
Psychic was god-tier.
The developers actually made a massive mistake in the coding: Psychic was supposed to be weak to Ghost-type moves, but a programming error made Psychic types immune to Ghost attacks. If you used Night Shade, it worked because it dealt fixed damage, but Lick? Zero effect. This meant Alakazam and Mewtwo had no natural predators. When you're building a team today, forget the old "type chart" advice from the 90s. If you don't have a high-speed Pokémon or a massive Snorlax to tank those hits, a Psychic-type trainer will end your run.
Critical Hits and the Speed Stat Connection
Most people think critical hits are random. In modern Pokémon, they mostly are. But in the original 151 era, your "Crit Rate" was tied directly to your base Speed stat. This is why Persian was secretly one of the most dangerous Pokémon in the game. Because Persian is fast, its Slash move—which already has a high critical hit ratio—would crit almost 100% of the time.
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If you look at an old Pokemon Red and Blue strategy guide, they might tell you to focus on "Attack" power. They're wrong. You should be looking at "Base Speed."
- Jolteon is better than Zapdos in specific niche scenarios because it crits more often.
- Dugtrio is a glass cannon, but a terrifying one because of that Speed-to-Crit pipeline.
- Slowpoke and Snorlax almost never land a critical hit naturally.
It changes the way you value your roster. A high-level Tauros isn't just good because of its moveset; it’s good because it moves fast enough to break the game's math.
The "Special" Stat Confusion
Before Gold and Silver split the Special stat into Special Attack and Special Defense, we just had "Special." This made certain Pokémon absolute tanks. Take Amnesia, for example. In later games, Amnesia just raises your Special Defense. In Red and Blue? It raises both your offensive and defensive power simultaneously.
If you give a Slowbro the move Amnesia, you are essentially creating an unkillable god. Two turns of setup and you’re hitting like a truck while taking almost no damage from the likes of Blastoise or Alakazam. Most players back then just spammed damaging moves, but the real Pokemon Red and Blue strategy guide secret is status boosting.
Why You Should Avoid the "Starter Trap"
We all love Charmander. He’s iconic. But picking Charmander is essentially setting the game to "Hard Mode." Brock’s rocks crush fire. Misty’s bubbles drown it. You spend the first four hours of the game struggling.
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Bulbasaur is the "Easy Mode" pick. Not just because of the first two gyms, but because of the Leech Seed and Toxic glitch.
Yeah, there's a glitch.
If you use Leech Seed and Toxic on the same opponent in Red or Blue, the damage scaling for both moves stacks. Every turn, the amount of health drained by Leech Seed increases alongside the Toxic poison damage. You can take down the highest-HP bosses in the game by just sitting there and watching their bar drain to zero. It's cheap. It's dirty. It's extremely effective.
Finding the Real Rare Pokémon (It’s Not Just Safari Zone)
The Safari Zone was the bane of my existence as a kid. Throwing rocks? Bait? It felt like pure luck. And honestly, it mostly was. But if you want to complete your Pokedex without losing your mind, you need to understand the "Encounter Slots."
Every tall grass patch has a specific table. But did you know that your player name actually affects what you find during the infamous "Cinnabar Island Coast" glitch? This is how you find MissingNo, sure, but it's also how you can encounter high-level Pokémon that shouldn't be there. If you put specific characters in the 3rd, 5th, and 7th slots of your name, you change the wild encounters on that strip of water.
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It’s technical. It’s weird. It’s exactly why we're still talking about this game thirty years later.
Accuracy is a Lie
In Red and Blue, no move is 100% accurate. Even if the game says it is. Due to a quirk in how the game checks for hits, there is always a 1 in 256 chance that a move will miss. This is known as the "1/256 glitch." You can have your opponent accuracy-lowered to the floor, use Swift (which is never supposed to miss), and still see that "Pokémon's attack missed!" message.
It’s frustrating. It’s Kanto.
Wrap Up Your Kanto Journey the Right Way
To truly master these games, you have to stop playing them like they are modern RPGs. They are broken, beautiful puzzles.
- Prioritize Speed: Use Pokémon like Starmie, Tauros, and Alakazam.
- Abuse the Special Stat: Use Amnesia whenever possible.
- Forget Ghost-types for Psychic coverage: Use physical attackers like Snorlax with Body Slam instead.
- Bind and Wrap are broken: In Gen 1, if you use a multi-turn move like Wrap, the opponent cannot move at all while the move is active. If you’re faster, they just... lose.
If you really want to dive deep, your next step is to look into the "Nidoran Speedrun Route." Even if you aren't trying to break a world record, the way speedrunners use a single Nidoking to dismantle the entire Elite Four reveals more about the game's mechanics than any 1990s magazine ever did. Focus on X-Accuracy and Horn Drill—it’s a guaranteed 1-hit KO that ignores all defensive stats.
Stop grinding levels in Victory Road. Start looking at the math. That’s where the real Pokémon Master is made.