When I had Blue in physical Game Pak form, I picked Bulbasaur as the starter. Many years ago, I remember reading in a gaming magazine (don't remember exactly which, though) saying that players could only choose Bulbasaur, and that if they chose Charmander or Squirtle, they had to trade with someone for a Bulbasaur.
Ten years after trading in my Game Boy Pokémon games, I bought the Virtual Console re-releases of all three internationally-released Gen. I games for my 2DS. On the VC copy of Blue, I again chose Bulbasaur, as I wished to relive my experience that I had years ago with Blue on my Game Boy Color as much as I could (to the point of having many of the same Pokémon I had then on this playing of that version.)
On Red, which I never had in its Game Pak form, I chose Squirtle, which also is advantageous against Brock (probably the reason why the aforementioned gaming magazine told readers about picking Bulbasaur). I never liked that everybody bragged about having Charmander/Charmeleon/Charizard back in the day, especially since it was at a disadvantage against the first two gyms.
On Yellow, even though every player was stuck with starting with Pikachu, I put Bulbasaur and Squirtle on my team when I got them. Again, I don't care about Charmander, so I never bothered putting him on my team on this or any other game.
