1st Gen Gen 1 Positives

I've noticed a lot of Gen 1 criticism in the Pokemon community as of late, probably to do with the original playerbase (gen X) aging out of the fandom and the jank of these games looking like just flaws from a modern perspective. [insert image of Gen 1's dozen's of glitches]

To me however, there is a distinctive crunchiness that gen 1 has that straight up isn't in the newer generations:
1. Critical Hit buff, critical hits are WAY more common in this generation with the critical hit rate being tied to speed, this makes a lot of early game battles for nuzlocke like a game of Russian Roulette, a Critical Hit Raticate Superfang will KO you. This also makes speed a distinctive advantage outside of moving first, sweeping with a Pokemon like Persian criting all the way is very satisfying. Increased critical hit ratio moves (razor leaf and karate chop) are amazing.
2. All Pokemon have an increased bulk t with the EV's being equalized, so despite the critical hits, most one-on-one battles are a 3 turn give and take. Honestly it feels like this is how the battle mechanics were designed to feel like, its simple but very satisfying.

A lot of other minor posititves I can give fall into this vein, it feels like later generations try to over balance this. When I was into competitive battling, I would suggest people getting into it to play Gen 1, as without the gimmicks of later generations, Gen 1 has the bare basic momentum that you need to master if you want to get better at competitive games.
3. If Hyperbeam knocks out a Pokemon, no recharge, amazing

When I learned about the Hyper Beam thing I was happy. Definitely one of the cooler things about the gen. Toxic + Leech Seed stacking is interesting too.

However I don't love freezing being permanent, fire not resisting ice, or draining moves not being able to hit subs. Every gen has interesting differences that are up to personal preference I suppose 😅

Well, it's what got Pokemon started, so that's a positive.

The games were a lot simpiler, there wasn't any complicated stuff like natures, abilities and etcetera, so you didn't have to worry about a Pokemon being "bad" because it had a "bad nature" or "bad ability" like the later generations. I understand that stuff is conveneient in modern times, but sometimes I can kinda appreaciate when they didn't exist yet.

It launched series that I spent so much time involved in.

And some sprites are cool. Like Charizard's Yellow sprite is so adorable!

The battle system is very quick, no slowdowns. In all its brokenness it's actually decently balanced. You can beat the game with basically any party you want, including Pokemon like Onix that aren't too great and you don't need to grind either. Just keep exploring and battling whatever you run into. Also, Gen 1 easily has the best (semi) open world experience of all the main line titles.

One of the best things about RBY is that it doesn't have the complications of IVs, natures, and abilities. You can just dive in with strong Pokemon. You don't have to breed nor grind for items to fix the stats. The RBY metagame was full of strong Pokémon that are outclassed in later generations like Aerodactyl, Lapras, Taurus, Starmie, etc. No held items either for battles so you don't have to worry about that Focus Sash popping up. Simpler times!

Another good thing is that the Pokeball animation isn't distracting. Repeat Ball and Dusk Ball are rather obnoxious with the repeating arrows or purple dusk cloud respectively in the newer games.

The soundtrack for RBY is legit the best the series has ever been. 8 bit sounds have a timeless feel to them and, nostalgia aside, it's aged really well.

• Wrap and Bind are broken if you're the one using them! Stunning opponents into not being able to move is great. Too bad it feels so cheap, lol.
• The music <3
• Not needing to worry about natures. I can't get a physical attacker with the Modest ability and feel bad about using it. 👍
• Using fast Pokémon works out really well because of the crit like you said. I tend to like faster mons, so this works in my favor.
• Flareon and Raichu!!!

Just some standout things. Of course also a big bonus that this was the gen that kickstarted it all.

it's the most fun game to watch getting speed ran (or is it sped run? speed runned? idk). getting your Pokemon down to red health sped things up considerably thanks to some weird thing with the text moving faster, so seeing pro runners utilize it and play the entire game with like 2HP added a lot of thrill for me. also the fact that it can be beaten in literally less than 2 hours (glitchless) which is pretty darn short for a full Pokemon game.

It's a fast game to crank out a run, which is always nice.

I very much prefer Stat Exp to EVs - it's a shame they scrapped this method.

It's full of glitches and that's beautiful. Those are the only games you can complete the Pokédex on one cartridge without hacking.

Gen 1 still feels mystical. I think many old retro games carry this vibe.

Though the graphics are significantly outdated, they still have a certain charm to them that later gamers, especially gens 6 and up just don't have. The lack of hand holding and hours of forced tutorials is also nice. I recently started another playthrough of Ultra Moon for a mono-color challenge, and holy crap there's way too many tutorials. I swear it took me two hours just to get through all of the "this is how you do this, and this is how you di this" before I could finally go out on my own. I liked how in the original there was a simple "here's how you catch pokémon" and then that was it. Everything else you had to figure out on your own. There also wasn't a constant "hey, you should use this move" throughout every battle, the game actually expected you to learn and form your own strategies. Plus the original red and blue sprites are just too funny not to love.