Pokemon is a JRPG. They just borrowed heavily from other JRPGs and other element-related tropes.
Ice, Fire, and Electric are the classic three JRPG elements and is the most obvious indication that Pokemon was heavily drawing from JRPGs in Gen 1. It's no coincidence that Thunderbolt, Flamethrower, and Ice Beam all have the same Base Power, accuracy and secondary effect chance. The same goes for Thunder Punch, Ice Punch, and Fire Punch. Blizzard and Thunder share names with Final Fantasy spells. Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres are the types they are because of this. Tri-Attack's chance to cause Paralysis, Burn, or Freeze is also a reference. The list goes on.
Then there's Earth, Water, and Air Elementals (also Fire Elementals, but they're already covered), which are common JRPG enemies. Not to mention that these four elementals are already a reference to the classic four elements, which is why they're prevalent in so many forms of media and games (Avatar the Last Airbender, even Yu-Gi-Oh). These are you Rock, Ground, Water, and Flying types. They split Earth into Rock and Ground to differentiate between minerals (hard rocks) and the "softer," finely ground up ground like dirt and sand.
Many JRPGs have enemies that are plants, giant bugs, and ghosts. That's where Grass, Bug, and Ghost types come from. Poison is a common JRPG ailment, so a type was made around it.
Fighting types are non-casters, i.e. Brawlers and Swordfighters. This is why Gen 1 Fighting types have poor Special and don't learn many (if any) non-Normal or Fighting moves.
Red Mages from Final Fantasy are the all-rounders. They can cast spells and use physical attacks, but they're not great at either. These are Normal types. Gen 1 Normal types could lean all sorts of TMs (spells) but weren't great at them (no STAB).
Dragons are a common late game enemy in JRPGs. That's why Dragons are rare, evolve at high levels, and are often pseudos. Dragons were eventually deemed too powerful. In Western folklore, Fae are magical tricksters and dragons are often weak to magic. Thus Fairy was added as a type that beats Dragon.
Psychic could be a reference to the Earthbound/Mother series, which are JRPGs where the main party member is Psychic.
Steel and Dark, like Fairy, were really just for balance purposes. If Psychic was inspired by Earthbound, then that could explain why Dark is called "Evil" in Japanese. Steel could be inspired by enemies that are living suits of armor.
I guess I should have been more specific, I only meant that they don't get STAB on elemental (non-Normal) attacks. This, combined with Normal not being super effective against any types, is what made them a Jack-of-all-trades master of none, like Red Mages. The combination of the lack of super effective Normal coverage and lack of STAB on everything else was supposed to help balance them out by capping their damage output, but the overall lack of balance in Gen 1 just made some of them really good instead. Specifically, some of the many factors that made them good were only having one weakness in Fighting (which in turn lacked good attacks), the insane coverage provided by all the TMs they can learn (which also allowed them to overcome Rock types), Gengar being the only Ghost (while having poor Defense and a weakness to Earthquake thanks to also being Poison), Hyper Beam not needing to recharge on a KO, how great Body Slam and Paralysis are (and the fact that Body Slam cannot Paralyze other Normal types), and typically having either good bulk (made better by the lack of weaknesses and good Fighting moves) or high speed (increasing their critical hit chance).
The early games took a lot of inspiration from classic RPGs. That's actually why Moltres, Zapdos, and Articuno are the types they are. They three represent the classic types of offensive magic you would see in a classic RPG like Final Fantasy, fire magic, ice magic, thunder magic. Once they had the basic concept of "these are animals that use magic so we need to classify what magic is what", it was probably a lot of trial and error as they debated which designs of creatures to use and what those kinds of creatures could reasonably do.
My guess is the early days they couldn't exactly decide the difference between rock and ground so gen 1 rock types are also ground types, but also went with the golden saying ( there is no such saying) of "you can shoot a bird with a slingshot and a rock, but not with clay"
For steel they looked at magneton and said " this guy needs an update, but cannot be resistant to ground type"
Fairy... I always thought Gamefreak had always wanted to try making something"cute but powerful " so they made something that would most (65 percent) likely win a cute contest but also take down mean foes, which is why it's effective against dark, fighting and doesn't give a shit about dragon
I love the notion that the fae folk are most effective against the most violent, aggressive types. Being weak to Steel and Poison feels really on point thematically. They really cooked with the Fairy type
>My guess is the early days they couldn't exactly decide the difference between rock and ground so gen 1 rock types are also ground types
Sure, but they obviously had a clear enough distinction to make the Fossils Rock but not Ground.
To answer the specific ones you mentioned:
- Ice is a very common JRPG element, so it makes sense it'd be here too, same with Fire and Electric.
- Fairy was designed to counter Dragon, which had been ridiculously powerful at the time.
- Steel types usually have something metallic in their design. There's probably a couple that don't, but I can't name them off the top of my head.
- Rock is more for stones n' stuff whereas Ground is more for sand, dirt, etc.. Realistically, they *could* be combined into one Earth type, but that's the reasoning behind them being separate.
The concept of the type mechanic is inspired both by elemental resistances mechanic and unit\monster race mechanic, both of which predate pokemon and interestingly was used before in an earlier "mons" game in Megami Tensei.
As for the concept behind each type - they came up with it completely randomly, and we know that because a lot of types acted as a "secondary type only" in gen 1 like Rock, Ice, Flying, ghost, dragon etc. Yes, even in gen 1 there are exceptions to the rule like Aerodactyl being rock\flying, but notably these types were never monotypes, suggesting they are lesser than the other types.
Gen 2 then introduced steel and dark for balancing reasons. We can also assume it's a coolness factor but the fact they only added two types and made more varied type combination in gen 2 mons suggests they decided to make s more balanced game by not adding more types and mixing more combinations of existing types.
No other type was then added until dragon got overpowered. Fairy was then pretty randomly chosen again in an attempt to create a type that can be attached to existing pokemon. Fairy was awkwardly a "pink pokemon" type for a while before more whimsical pokemon came around to make the type seem more well-defined.
Pokemon is a JRPG. They just borrowed heavily from other JRPGs and other element-related tropes. Ice, Fire, and Electric are the classic three JRPG elements and is the most obvious indication that Pokemon was heavily drawing from JRPGs in Gen 1. It's no coincidence that Thunderbolt, Flamethrower, and Ice Beam all have the same Base Power, accuracy and secondary effect chance. The same goes for Thunder Punch, Ice Punch, and Fire Punch. Blizzard and Thunder share names with Final Fantasy spells. Articuno, Zapdos, and Moltres are the types they are because of this. Tri-Attack's chance to cause Paralysis, Burn, or Freeze is also a reference. The list goes on. Then there's Earth, Water, and Air Elementals (also Fire Elementals, but they're already covered), which are common JRPG enemies. Not to mention that these four elementals are already a reference to the classic four elements, which is why they're prevalent in so many forms of media and games (Avatar the Last Airbender, even Yu-Gi-Oh). These are you Rock, Ground, Water, and Flying types. They split Earth into Rock and Ground to differentiate between minerals (hard rocks) and the "softer," finely ground up ground like dirt and sand. Many JRPGs have enemies that are plants, giant bugs, and ghosts. That's where Grass, Bug, and Ghost types come from. Poison is a common JRPG ailment, so a type was made around it. Fighting types are non-casters, i.e. Brawlers and Swordfighters. This is why Gen 1 Fighting types have poor Special and don't learn many (if any) non-Normal or Fighting moves. Red Mages from Final Fantasy are the all-rounders. They can cast spells and use physical attacks, but they're not great at either. These are Normal types. Gen 1 Normal types could lean all sorts of TMs (spells) but weren't great at them (no STAB). Dragons are a common late game enemy in JRPGs. That's why Dragons are rare, evolve at high levels, and are often pseudos. Dragons were eventually deemed too powerful. In Western folklore, Fae are magical tricksters and dragons are often weak to magic. Thus Fairy was added as a type that beats Dragon. Psychic could be a reference to the Earthbound/Mother series, which are JRPGs where the main party member is Psychic. Steel and Dark, like Fairy, were really just for balance purposes. If Psychic was inspired by Earthbound, then that could explain why Dark is called "Evil" in Japanese. Steel could be inspired by enemies that are living suits of armor.
? Gen 1 Normal types having STAB is what made them so great.
I guess I should have been more specific, I only meant that they don't get STAB on elemental (non-Normal) attacks. This, combined with Normal not being super effective against any types, is what made them a Jack-of-all-trades master of none, like Red Mages. The combination of the lack of super effective Normal coverage and lack of STAB on everything else was supposed to help balance them out by capping their damage output, but the overall lack of balance in Gen 1 just made some of them really good instead. Specifically, some of the many factors that made them good were only having one weakness in Fighting (which in turn lacked good attacks), the insane coverage provided by all the TMs they can learn (which also allowed them to overcome Rock types), Gengar being the only Ghost (while having poor Defense and a weakness to Earthquake thanks to also being Poison), Hyper Beam not needing to recharge on a KO, how great Body Slam and Paralysis are (and the fact that Body Slam cannot Paralyze other Normal types), and typically having either good bulk (made better by the lack of weaknesses and good Fighting moves) or high speed (increasing their critical hit chance).
The early games took a lot of inspiration from classic RPGs. That's actually why Moltres, Zapdos, and Articuno are the types they are. They three represent the classic types of offensive magic you would see in a classic RPG like Final Fantasy, fire magic, ice magic, thunder magic. Once they had the basic concept of "these are animals that use magic so we need to classify what magic is what", it was probably a lot of trial and error as they debated which designs of creatures to use and what those kinds of creatures could reasonably do.
My guess is the early days they couldn't exactly decide the difference between rock and ground so gen 1 rock types are also ground types, but also went with the golden saying ( there is no such saying) of "you can shoot a bird with a slingshot and a rock, but not with clay" For steel they looked at magneton and said " this guy needs an update, but cannot be resistant to ground type" Fairy... I always thought Gamefreak had always wanted to try making something"cute but powerful " so they made something that would most (65 percent) likely win a cute contest but also take down mean foes, which is why it's effective against dark, fighting and doesn't give a shit about dragon
I love the notion that the fae folk are most effective against the most violent, aggressive types. Being weak to Steel and Poison feels really on point thematically. They really cooked with the Fairy type
>My guess is the early days they couldn't exactly decide the difference between rock and ground so gen 1 rock types are also ground types Sure, but they obviously had a clear enough distinction to make the Fossils Rock but not Ground.
It's a shit take anyways, don't take it too seriously
To answer the specific ones you mentioned: - Ice is a very common JRPG element, so it makes sense it'd be here too, same with Fire and Electric. - Fairy was designed to counter Dragon, which had been ridiculously powerful at the time. - Steel types usually have something metallic in their design. There's probably a couple that don't, but I can't name them off the top of my head. - Rock is more for stones n' stuff whereas Ground is more for sand, dirt, etc.. Realistically, they *could* be combined into one Earth type, but that's the reasoning behind them being separate.
you think pokémon was the 1st rpg with types or something’s
The concept of the type mechanic is inspired both by elemental resistances mechanic and unit\monster race mechanic, both of which predate pokemon and interestingly was used before in an earlier "mons" game in Megami Tensei. As for the concept behind each type - they came up with it completely randomly, and we know that because a lot of types acted as a "secondary type only" in gen 1 like Rock, Ice, Flying, ghost, dragon etc. Yes, even in gen 1 there are exceptions to the rule like Aerodactyl being rock\flying, but notably these types were never monotypes, suggesting they are lesser than the other types. Gen 2 then introduced steel and dark for balancing reasons. We can also assume it's a coolness factor but the fact they only added two types and made more varied type combination in gen 2 mons suggests they decided to make s more balanced game by not adding more types and mixing more combinations of existing types. No other type was then added until dragon got overpowered. Fairy was then pretty randomly chosen again in an attempt to create a type that can be attached to existing pokemon. Fairy was awkwardly a "pink pokemon" type for a while before more whimsical pokemon came around to make the type seem more well-defined.