3rd gen was when I started the tradition of always choosing the Fire Pokémon at the beginning. Before, I chose Bulbasaur and Totodile.
Why? Because it was when Gamefreak started to troll us Fire-type fans.
Really, if you don't choose Torchic in RSE, you have only three options for Fire-types: Numel, Torkoal and Slugma. Between those, Numel is clearly the best, the others just plain suck.
DP made it worse by only making Ponyta available. The only new Fire Pokémon in 4th gen besides Chimchar were Magmortar (evo of Magmar), and Heatran (a legendary). Luckily this was sort of fixed in Platinum, when they made five lines available prior to beating the E4, all of them really good (even Flareon).
So from 3rd gen onwards, I always choose the Fire-type, even if the other starters look better or have better stats. It's my answer to Gamefreak's trolling. The only real break Gamefreak gave to us Fire-type fans was in 2nd gen, when they gave it two more resistances (against Ice and Steel), an advantage (against Steel), boosted Charizard and Arcanine's Special Attack stat, and created Houndour/Houndoom.