Data crunching the stats of the three starting Pokémon of the original games has found that Squirtle offers the best stats, both in the early game and later on.
Additional data crunching in the article shows that the overall power level has not increased significantly between each version or generation of the games.
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Data Crunching the Pokémon Starters
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(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 25 2014, @07:56AM
Does it really matter which starter is best? Every one will allow you to easily complete the game with very little strategy, you don't even need to catch a second Pokemon or grind levels to complete the early pokemon games. Simply taking the most direct route is entirely doable with any starter, I know because I have actually done so.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday April 25 2014, @09:37AM
Might be useful competitively if you're a UU-tier player looking for a good Rapid Spin'er, but it's not like starters are hard to trade for online. Last starter I chose was Charmander for a novelty Double NU Castform team. Yeah, starters are *that* useful competitively.
(Score: 2) by elf on Friday April 25 2014, @12:57PM
The geek in me thinks pointless facts like this are quite cool :)
(Score: 2) by hybristic on Friday April 25 2014, @08:36PM
I love Pokemon. Always have. I even have a tattoo of Squirtle rocking his Squirtle Squad glasses and everything. A popular reaction to people seeing my tattoo is that I should have went with Charmander. And to an extent I have to agree. While Squirtle has the most stat potential, his evolutions kinda suck. I mean I love Blastoise, but he doesn't really ever gain an edge. Charmander however learns to fly and can learn Dragon moves. Also when you look at how many quality fire Pokemon there are, you don't have many options. Charmander makes it easy to find a high quality fire Pokemon that will work well at every stage in the game. You can then get a Gyarados and Execute and have a quality team that can counter most Pokemon types.
(Score: 2) by NCommander on Friday April 25 2014, @08:17AM
I actually spent about two months in middle school completing the National Pokédex, and got all 150 (there wasn't a known way to get Mew at the time). Never played any of the later games in the series, though I heard Black and White actually even had a decent plot beside "Catch Them All". I believe on that file I started with a Squirtle as well after having too many issues with Charmander, and restarting.
Still always moving
(Score: 2, Informative) by Daiv on Friday April 25 2014, @11:22AM
Not having significant increases in power levels between versions or games means you keep the prior game players when they don't get blown away instantly by the next game players. Too many games release subsequent versions that are designed to decimate previous versions and rather than encouraging players to just get the next version, it makes them quit.
Pokemon games are partly still popular because each version only incrementally increases the power between versions.
(Score: 5, Informative) by lhsi on Friday April 25 2014, @12:40PM
One of the designers of Magic: The Gathering talks about this from time to time - in order to get people to buy the new expansions it can't be less powerful, but making things more and more powerful is not sustainable.
What they do it, as the game is quite large, they make a couple of areas slightly more powerful at the same time as making other areas slightly less powerful. Overall the level is about the same, and the different areas all get their own time to shine. It was compared to a treadmill I think.
(Score: 1) by Jesus_666 on Friday April 25 2014, @02:16PM
Balancing is hard, especially when current card/mons/etc. can interact with those from previous editions of the game.
(Score: 1) by Dachannien on Friday April 25 2014, @02:39PM
This doesn't really matter, because the Twitch crowd will accidentally set Squirtle free about a third of the way into the game. And who plays Pokemon without ten thousand of their closest friends these days, anyway?