Hitmonchan is bullshit! (Gen 1)

[SpaghettiCat]

I'm playing Pokemon Yellow and thought I'd get a Fighting type on my team to punish Normal types. I do boxing so I picked Hitmonchan in the Saffron City Dojo.

I teach him Mega Kick via TM, and get all hyped up imagining how he would mega punch Rattatas in the face later. Well, it turns out that this boxer Pokemon--a literal fighter:

1. Never learns a Fighting type move (except Counter which is a crappy move because it only works against certain attacks and means Hitmonchan will take damage)
2. The only Fighting TMs he can learn are Submission--which does recoil damage and isn't even that strong--and Seismic Toss which does a fixed amount of damage, thereby defeating the whole point of being able to punish Normal type Pokemon.

How on Earth did they make the most literal fighter Pokemon the worst Fighting-type Pokemon available?!

 

[CodeHelmet]

I'm playing Pokemon Yellow and thought I'd get a Fighting type on my team to punish Normal types. I do boxing so I picked Hitmonchan in the Saffron City Dojo.

I teach him Mega Kick via TM, and get all hyped up imagining how he would mega punch Rattatas in the face later. Well, it turns out that this boxer Pokemon--a literal fighter:

1. Never learns a Fighting type move (except Counter which is a crappy move because it only works against certain attacks and means Hitmonchan will take damage)
2. The only Fighting TMs he can learn are Submission--which does recoil damage and isn't even that strong--and Seismic Toss which does a fixed amount of damage, thereby defeating the whole point of being able to punish Normal type Pokemon.

How on Earth did they make the most literal fighter Pokemon the worst Fighting-type Pokemon available?!

Generation 1 is infamous for being the Generation where certain Types shine and others do not. Fighting types happen to be in the bad category since the only decent Fighting Pokemon in the game is Hitmonlee and to a lesser extent Machamp and Primeape with the move Low Kick. Mankey learns it at level 9(Yellow ONLY) while Machop doesn't learn it until level 20. Submission is a decent Fighting move if and only if you can stomach the recoil. Seismic Toss is ironically a decent move since although it does a fixed amount of damage, it can hit Ghost Types in Generation 1.

You may think Hitmonchan sucks but his specialty is the Elemental Punches in Fire Punch, Ice Punch and Thunder Punch. These give him coverage to attack a wide variety of opponents as a Fighting Type Pokemon, including Flying types that he would be at a disadvantage against. Outside of that, however, Hitmonchan is the less utilized of the "Hitmon's" because the Elemental punches, if memory serves, use his weak Special stat as opposed to his much stronger Attack stat. Hitmonlee is the better variant of the two if you're looking for a Fighting Type Pokemon as he learns Rolling Jump Kick, Jump Kick and High Jump Kick(without the real negative recoil should they miss).

If you're doing a Yellow run, Mankey/Primeape is all you really need and even then his usefulness drops once you're past Rock Tunnel as the appearance of Normal Type Pokemon drops considerably(not to mention Rock Type Pokemon don't appear again until Victory Road). Against Lorelei, Jolteon is arguably the best sweeper for her, with Kabutops a honorable 2nd with Rock Slide doing decent damage(Rock > Ice).

 

[strangerhypno]

Some Pokemon made just to be hindered by their typing and movepool, this is especially rampant in gens 1-2, even Heracross didn't get reliable fighting type moves till gen 4. Even in current gens, GF can't be half assed to fix some. Nothing you can do in the base game about it unless you want a challenge and are a fan of Hitmonchan.

The best you can do is play some romhacks that tries to alleviate these problems some what. Or make your own rom hack of gen 1 because I'm pretty sure most gen 1 romhacks may not have done that much to balance gen 1.

 

[SpaghettiCat]

Thanks for the thoughts, I notice that there are a bunch of Pokemon like that that are created unbalanced. I'll just make do of his shortcomings.... I don't want to make the game too easy anyway by picking every powerful Pokemon.

 

[bobandbill]

Also working against Hitmonchan in early gens: the punches were Special type attacks, not Physical. This worked well for the likes of Alakazam, but not Hitmonchan.

Really, the physical/special move changes in gen 4 was a godsend for a lot of Pokemon.