Worst Pokemon Sprites in Every Generation

- I use the Elgato streaming platform constantly for my streaming and video editing. If you would like to purchase one from my amazing sponsor, Elgato, head to the link in the description below. Greetings Pokefans! Michael here, and before the new

generation

of Pokémon begins, I thought it would be fun to look back at all the past

generation

s and have fun looking at some of the

worst

and simply horrible

sprites

and 3D models from the last seven generations of Pokémon. Pokemon. Obviously, what constitutes the

worst

is subjective, so these will be based on my opinions on the

sprites

and no one else's.

Also, there is no classification associated with these. I will simply be progressing in generational order. So, with all that covered, let's start with generation one, which is pretty famous for having a lot of bad sprites. I'll start by looking at the sprites for the Japanese version of red and green. In case you don't know, the sprites in the Japanese version of red and green are different from the sprites in the western red and blue. One of the first goblins that looks really strange is Venusaur. His body looks super squished like a pancake, while his flower stem is super tall.

To be fair, Sugimori's official art was created after the sprites were, so it's not like this design is bad. It is a little bad. Sugimori altered Venusaur's design to improve it. The Ekans sprite is another strange one. The open mouth appears to be much larger than the rest of its head, making it appear to be duck-billed. It's very strange. Wigglytuff is really bad. The mismatched eyes make him look deranged, so instead of being cute, he looks like something that would kill you in a horror movie. Gloom and Vileplume's sprites are bad because they make no anatomical sense.

For both of them, the viewing angle of the flower is almost top-down, but the viewing angle of their bodies is straight. Furthermore, the attachment points of their bodies to the flowers are too low. It looks like the lowest petals of the flower are where the body connects to them, making it look like they almost have windmills of flowers coming out of the top of their heads. They look ridiculous. Mankey's elf looks more like a mass that has sprouted tentacles than a distinct body with limbs growing out of it. Seriously, those aren't weapons. They are undulating worm limbs.

Machamp and Machoke's sprites look just plain creepy. Those smiles and wide faces are a little unsettling. The Farfetch'd elf has his duck bill curling into a smile, which I admit is charming, but also looks pretty ridiculous. I should probably cover the Gastly sprite, which obviously doesn't have the typical gas ball in the middle. But I don't consider it a bad sprite. It's just an initial version of Gastly's design that was later modified. Hitmonchan's sprite is just horrible. You've probably seen that meme that says it looks like a Doduo squatting to poop with a Togekiss looming creepily behind it, which is definitely true.

Also, the proportions look really strange and the fists covering most of his body make things look really strange. You can't tell what it looks like behind the cuffs of it. He's just a really horrible goblin. The Moltres sprite looks very different from the Moltres sprite today, but remember, the sprite was created first and then Sugimori made the art of it. Still, this Moltres doesn't look very good. It is extremely round, plus his eye seems half closed, making Moltres seem to fall asleep or very sad. The latest bad elf in red and blue is one you've probably seen before, because it's been featured in memes.

That goblin is Mew. The strange bulbous head with the tiny curved arms and fins on him make him look like he is on drugs. Now let's move on to the red and blue sprites. Blastoise, for some reason, gained a lot of weight. He looked totally fine in red and green, so I don't know why they made him look so bad in red and blue. Golbat's sprite is infamous, as it should be. That strange language is deeply uncomfortable. You can see the saliva falling and

every

thing. It's unpleasant. Gloom looks much better than in red and green, but although Vileplume improved, the position of the attachment point of Vileplume's body to the flower is still not correct.

It still seems too low and even seems to be to the side this time. Mankey has the same problem that he had in red and green, as he looks like a mass with tentacles. Machop and Machoke again look strange. Especially Machop. He looks flat like a gingerbread man. Between these games and the last one, somehow Cloyster's holding direction rotated 90°. That's weird and I don't know why that change happened. Both the Exeggcute and Exeggutor sprites are pretty bad in this game. One of Exeggcute's eggs is much bigger than the others, which makes no sense, and Exeggutor's facial expressions really scare me.

For some reason, Koffing now has his skull and crossbones above his face instead of below. I don't know why this change occurred. Chansey's upper body appears to have been grabbed and stretched to the right. It's really strange. Now let's move on to the yellow version, which definitely has the best sprites of the entire first generation because it came out a bit white after the anime started airing. Therefore, they could base the Pokémon's appearance on how they look in the anime, rather than older sprites. Which is good, because the Pokémon in the anime definitely look better than they do in the sprites.

Look, they finally fixed Vileplume! There are only two yellow version sprites that I have problems with. The first is Venusaur, who looks very different from her previous sprites because they were trying to emulate what she looks like in the anime. However, as a result, its head appears too large compared to the rest of its body, plus the flower appears too small. And the other sprite from the yellow version that I don't really like is Mewtwo's, because it looks like he's in the middle of a pelvic thrust. It's a bit strange. Now we move on to the second generation, which has many different sprites because they vary between the three versions.

I'll start with the gold version sprites. Chinchou's goblin looks like he's been stepped on, and it almost looks like his eyes are coming out of the top of his head, instead of from the front. Slugma's eyes are placed higher on his head than most other interpretations of Slugma. I think this aspect is much more unpleasant, but I suppose it could be classified as an older design, not a problem with the object itself. Corsola's elf places the coral branches in strange places. Instead of all four coming out from the top, two come out from the top and two from the side.

It definitely doesn't look as good as other Corsola designs. I think Igglybuff's eyes are too small, which makes him look more creepy than cute. Smoochum looks like a killer Chucky doll, and I don't like that. Not a bit. None of the other sprites really bother me, but I did want to point out that Spinarak and Sneasel have completely different colors in gold and silver than anywhere else. Even glass version. I don't know if this was a mid-generation design change, or just a very overlooked bug, but it's a strange thing that happened. Now let's move on to the sprites for the silver version.

Unfortunately, Vileplume seems to have regressed a bit and his head now appears to extend much further above his eyes than he should. Weezing's head now looks like it's stuck on top of the larger Weezing's head, as we've seen before and it's a really strange change. I don't know why they keep doing this. Chinchou, Igglybuff, Slugma, Corsola, and Smoochum sprites have the same silver and gold emissions. And finally, for Crystal, pretty much all sprites are taken from gold or silver and then animated. So all the sprites I would discuss here are ones I've already covered. We now move on to the third generation, starting with Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald.

As you might expect, the further we go in the generations, the fewer bad sprites we'll see because they've gotten a lot better at creating sprites, so some of my reviews from here on out might get a little nitpicky. Nidoqueen's elf looks a little silly, like he's about to sneeze. Weezing again has that strange placement of the smaller head on top of the second one instead of to the side. Is this an alternative Weezing design? That it took them a while to give up? Like what? Lugia's head seems too big. I know she's closer to the camera than the rest of her body, but the same goes for Ho-Oh's sprite, and Ho-Oh's head looks normal.

In FireRed and LeafGreen, the only sprites that differ from Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald are those of the Kanto Pokémon, and I have to say that I don't really have a problem with any of them. Good job. The next one would be the fourth generation, but I checked the sprites and I think they are all well done. Again, good job. But then we get to the fifth generation and (grunts). Generation 5 made the sprites move constantly, instead of just having an animation at the start of a battle, and I really don't like this decision. For a lot of the 5th generation sprites, a lot of the movements make the lines look broken, dotted or static and they look really bad.

Additionally, some movements deform body parts in certain ways that seem really unnatural. Seriously, I'm not a fan of the 5th generation mobile sprites. They look good if they don't move. But when they move (growls). Although I must say that the fire in the animated sprites looks amazing, like if there is always an open flame on a Pokémon in the 5th generation sprites, it looks pretty good. Like I said, I don't like the 5th generation sprites as a whole, but I'm going to list several of the sprites that I think are the worst offenders. Fearow's beak appears to break into segments when it moves.

The smooth contour of the electrode becomes pointed when rotating. Mew's tail looks horrible when it moves, like it becomes static. Houndoom's queue is in a similar situation. It seems to have different segments. Phanpy's trunk appears to split in half when she brings it in. That seems painful. The Lombre water lily becomes static when it turns its head. Azurill's tail becomes a complete mess when she moves it. Sharpedo looks good until the moment she opens her mouth wider and turns her body, at which point all the lines are ruined. Deoxys-Speed's arms are in the same situation as Mew and Houndoom's tails, where they appear to be segmented when in reality they are smooth and continuous.

This sprite animation doesn't really seem to work very well with long, spindly, spindly limbs. Kricketune's arms and antennae look horrible. The Luxray tail is another long, thin limb that gets damaged a lot. Ambipom queues also have this problem. Watchog's queue is a very bad example of how segmented it looks. I distinctly remember thinking her tail looked bad when I played the white version for the first time. The Sigilyph are a pixelation disaster. Yamask's arms appear broken and pixelated again. Escavalier looks fine if he is in the neutral position of him, but when he swings his spears and his spiral shell, they both end up looking horrible.

And finally Lampent's arms always look horrible because they move constantly. These are not all the examples, but these are the ones that I think are really horrible. They look totally fine when stationary, though, and I wish they'd stuck with just stationary sprites. That covers all the bad sprites from the main series, so now it's time to talk about 3D models. However, before we talk about the main series, I wanted to cover some of the Pokémon 3D models that were used in console games prior to the sixth generation. In games like Pokémon Snap, Stadium or Coliseum.

A lot of them look bad, especially the previous generation Pokémon, because the last generation Pokémon made their models, well, later. But while many of them don't look very good, here are some that actually look very bad to me. One of the most memorable for me is Kangaskhan. His movements are wild and erratic, and his body parts seem uncomfortably tied together. It doesn't look good. Another is Nidoqueen. His torso is incredibly cubic. It seems ridiculous. And then there's Lickitung, whose eye placement looks like a hellspawn. And now let's talk about the 3D models of the main series.

Since the same models are used in the sixth, seventh and eighth generations, I will talk about all those generations in this segment. Overall, I think the 3D models are good. They seem to do a very good job of representing Pokémon in 3D and it was the right step to bring Pokémon to the more modern generation of games. However, there are some models that make Pokémon look much less cool in 3D than they do in 2D. One of the most infamous examples is Typhlosion. There are many problems with this model. The most obvious is that your fire is not always lit.

That is true for this entire evolutionary line and it is a mistake. His fire lights up constantly on literally

every

other sprite in the main series before this, and it looks much cooler. Have him sitting there withbare neck just doesn't look good. I understand that Typhlosion only lights his fire when he's in combat, but where do you see this model most of the time? Damn combat! Also, the pose is not good. He is very upright, which makes his neck appear much shorter. Compare how Typhlosion looks on this model to any other sprite. What happened to the boys' necks?

The pose is also quite boring. This is actually a problem for many 3D models. Because the neutral position of most Pokémon is to just stand there in a neutral position. You know, looking forward. Now this isn't terrible, because you know, it's better for watching Pokémon as to how it would normally be, but a lot of times it can make battles feel a little bland because they're just standing there instead of ready, ready to attack. DJTHED on the Smogon forums altered the Typhlosion model to create one that looks much, much better than the existing one.

Because the fire is always lit and is in a much more interesting and dynamic pose. I hope in the next release of Typhlosion I get a better 3D model. Another Pokémon that I think became a lot less cool with the transition from 2D to 3D is Archeops. In his official art and his gen five sprite, he looks great. The proportions are appropriate. It has big wings, looks like a cool raptor, a hybrid of Archeopteryx. It's drugs. But then they gave him a 3D model that ruined everything. They made his arms and wings much smaller, so it looks like he's struggling to stay afloat rather than being the fully effective flyer we know him to be.

Also, instead of having their eyes facing forward, they both look in opposite directions. It makes him look heartless and stupid. The 3D model of Archeops looks so bad that if it had been entered in 3D instead of 2D, it might not have ended up like my favorite fossil Pokémon, hell, I might not have liked it at all. There are other examples of Pokémon getting bad 3D models, but these two are the most egregious for me, potentially because I really like them as Pokémon. So I'm more offended by being screwed in the 3D model department.

Before we finish, there is another issue with 3D models that I wanted to cover, and that is color. 3D models often have dramatically altered colorations from previous generation sprites, and most of the time that's a bad thing. The main problem is color saturation. Many Pokémon 3D models have colors that are much less vibrant and look really washed out compared to previous generation sprites. One of the most notable examples is Starmie. Starmie's 2D sprites show her as a deep, vibrant purple, but the 3D model of her is so pale that she looks like she's dying. So that's one problem, but another problem is that a lot of bright colors were completely ruined in the switch from 2D to 3D.

A notable example is Lanturn, who had both his normal color and his bright color ruined. The normal coloring lost a lot of saturation, but the bright coloring lost so much that it almost looks like the normal coloring. Before the sixth generation, the brilliant Lanturn was a nice deep purple color, which was clearly distinguishable from the blue of the normal color. But in 3D models, you can hardly tell the difference between the two colorations. Another shiny that was ruined by the new colors of the 3D models was Fearow. This one is near and dear to my heart because Fearow was the first shiny Pokémon I ever caught.

In FireRed and LeafGreen, the game I caught it in, it's a nice bright yellow color. It also has this coloration in gens four and five. But in the 3D models it's vomit green! That? Because? Why did they do this? I admit it's closer to the bright coloring that Fearow had in the second generation, but they changed a lot of the bright colorings from the second generation to make them look better in the third generation. Why would you go back to that horrible shine? It really sucks. Fortunately, it looks like Sword and Shield are taking a big step forward in making all the colors in 3D models truly vibrant and saturated again.

We certainly did that with quite a few Pokémon. But a lot of the colorations in the 6th and 7th generation are just bad. So that almost concludes this video, but before you go, I want to let you know that I'm giving away a copy of Pokémon Sword or Pokémon Shield, the winner's choice. The winner will be announced the day before Sword and Shield comes out, and will be an electronic copy. So if you are the winner, you will be able to play the new game immediately, as soon as it comes out. If you're interested in participating, which I don't know why you wouldn't be, the link is in the description below.

Thank you so much for watching and a very special thank you to my patrons on Patreon. If you want to help support the channel and support me and get some cool perks in return, the link is in the description below. If you are interested in seeing more fun Pokémon content, I recommend this video. Alright, that's all I have for now, so until next time Pokefans. I have to catch them all.