Best starter hands-down

That’s a weird looking Charmander
- Everyone knows that Charmander was the starter of the bullies.
  
  Look, if you don’t wanna get flamethrowered, stop being so flammable.
  
  Charmander: bully
  Squirtle: likeable funny guy
  Bulbasaur: bookish/nerdy type
  And yes, bulbasaur is the best
  
  As a bullied kid that back then just wanted a cool dragon, I protest that insinuation!
  
  show me on the doll where the dragon rage hurt you.
- Enjoy making pidgey spam sand attack against Brock.

He’s the number one in the Pokédex and in my heart.

That bad boy never left my team.
Squirtle isn't as good as Squirtle Squad, which would be peak. But it's not an option.
And Charmander is just the basic pick. Picked by people who are 100% distracted by fire.
- And Charmander is just the basic pick. Picked by people who are 100% distracted by fire.
  I cannot lie, this attack against me was super effective

Charmander gang assemble! (to beat up Brock in an backalley)
- Were you also extremely stubborn and killed geodude over and over until you were high enough level to scrape out a win on onyx?
  
  Get out of my head ;)

Hehe, I just left my starter pokemon at the front of my line up for the whole game. He ended up hitting max level, and none of the pokemon behind him ever really got to fight. He was one-shotting with "not very effective" moves. I also didn't keep any of the buffs or debuffs, just attack moves. Since I was basically only using one Pokémon, he had to have a bunch of attacks cuz they would run out of uses. I wasn't as young as you would hope for a "tactic" like that to be my solution to the game. But to be fair, it kept working... so was it really wrong?
I assume it was pokemon blue, mainly cuz I picked blastoise. My level of creativity as a kid means I very likely wouldn't have picked blastoise if I was playing pokemon red.
- The last time I played gen 1, this was my strategy up until I caught an Abra. After that, once I got.some.levels on Abra and he got a psychic attack, my starter only came out when Abra ran out of moves. By the time you hit the Elite 4, you can just one shot pretty much everything with a well-leveled psychic Pokémon.
  
  I never really understood why people liked Alakazam, they never really impressed me that much. Like, sure, he can one shot things when he's overleveled but so can a Gyrados or anything else
  
  You can do this with multiple different pokemon, soloing the elite four. Its more about attack variety so you can counter the wide range of pokemon types but ive done it with zapdos and also mewtwo.

I picked Bulbasaur because I was already a hipster at age 8 I guess. Everyone else picked Charmander (fire dragon!) or Squirtle (Blastoise has GUNS!!!), so I just had to pick the one nobody chose.
Jokes on them though, Bulbasaur is probably the strongest pick. Or at least the one that makes the game the smoothest and easiest.
- Yeap. I picked the grass turtle to cheese Brock and Misty fights. He can also learn cut.
  Then caught the lowest level magicarp I could find to slot 1. Gyarados with surf.
  Had maxed Gyarados for the Gary Chameleon.
- Starters were secretly difficulty setting. Bulb easy, squirt medium, char hard
- Never really played Pokemon, but I thought Charmander is the meta pick because the low level stuff is all mostly weak to fire?
  
  The first couple of gyms in Gen 1 are actually really good for Bulbasaur, and getting a strong early game is typically what you want from a starter as mid to late game you'll have access to a bunch of other 'mons to cover what types you need.
  
  The first gym is rock, the second is water, the third is electric. Charmander has a really hard time in those first two matchups and only hits neutral in the third. At this stage of the game, it's really difficult to fill out your types because the wild Pokémon are largely birds, bugs, and rats.
  If you're really lucky, you'll hit the extremely low encounter rate for Pikachu in Viridian Forest, and if you're even luckier, you'll catch one. But that only helps you against Misty.
  In contrast, Bulbasaur is super effective against the first two gyms, and is merely neutral against Lt. Surge and his electric mice.
  And by that point you've fed two whole gyms full of trainers and gym leaders into your Bulbasaur (by virtue of not having to constantly rotate through your back line just to survive).
  Which means it can both take a beating and lay a smackdown in what is on its face a "neutral matchup".
  After that point the game opens up dramatically and that initial advantage fades.
- Duuuude I forgot what a big deal it was that he had fucking guns! Haha

More of a Squirtle guy myself, but no hate for the bulb.
- The bulb sends you his thanks.
- Same.

Your game must be glitched cause that's not Squirtle. Or your title of the post got misspelled.

Good post op!! My first Pokemon game was FireRed and bulbasaur was my first choice too - one day I want to restart my save and soft reset for a shiny one!
- Huh? There was no shiny in firered
  
  Shiny were introduced in gen 2? The odd of a shiny in fire red was 1 in 8192. Fun fact: you could techically get shiny pokemon in gen 1 but the value for wild pokemon was bugged and i'm pretty sure they had no shiny sprite. Which mean they would only become shiny by trade.
  Just imagine it: your best pal whip out his new pokemon silver cartridge he got for christmas, sadly your momma didn't have money this year for you, so you put your yellow one in and start semi playing while looking at your friends game. You begin some rando trade after his second badge , his team is getting wrecked by a cow..? bam! He show you the electrode you just traded, THAT DAMN INVERTED POKEBALL BECAME GREEN WTF!!
  Nowaday you would probably have to pay an extra dlc for that kind of stuff.
  https://bluemoonfalls.com/pages/shinies/gen-1-shiny-hunting

I always started with Bulbasaur mostly because my favorite color is green but also because grass types absolutely obliterate the first gym. I also find poison/leech to be a fantastic combo for catching pokemon later. Really get em down to exactly 1hp if you want.

Only pokemon game I ever played
- It's really fun to go back and emulate it with a randomizer. Basically all the Pokemon spawns are now random, even the starters if you want. I got rekt by a level 2 Mewtwo one time lol
  
  Zelda Link To The Past is also good with a randomizer