Ranking All 151 Original Pokémon From Worst To Best
14. Butterfree
People absolutely love Butterfree. From it being (reportedly, at one point) the most valuable commercial commodity after Pikachu, to WWE's Xavier Woods going off script on television to talk about how brilliant it is in a mid-ring segment. Quite what causes this fandom is open to interpretation, but if the Pokémon anime had been a real-life thing, then Butterfree would have its own quasi-reality spinoff show on E! now.
But it's not just a popularity thing that makes Butterfree so good, it's also one of the most important Pokémon in the games. Prior to getting out of Veridian Forrest, your team will likely have been made up of your starter, a Pidgey or Rattata, a Pikachu (if you're really lucky) and a Metapod. Once the latter evolves though, you go from exclusively relying on basic attacking moves to discovering a whole new depth to the game.
In the next few levels Butterfree starts packing sleep, paralysis, poison and confusion moves. This introduction to non-damaging attacks forces you to consider entirely new strategies - ones that stay with you for the whole game, even if Butterfree doesn't.
13. Scyther
Obviously I could go into great depth about why Scyther's one of the most potent and terrifying attacking Pokémon in the entire game, and why it can still maul some of the many, many Pokémon its dual Bug/Flying status makes it weak against, but I won't. It's a walking praying mantis with scythes for arms, and that's all anyone needs to know.
12. Ditto
I could just as easily have made an argument for Ditto being 12th from the bottom of this list, rather than 12th from the top. The fact is that it has no real practical use, looks a bit daft, and nobody in the history of the game has ever, ever used one, but that's not the point.
The point is - and this is amplified so much when you consider how badly this approach has failed in subsequent generations - that during the design phase they obviously wanted to do something completely unique. Looking now at some of the gimmicky abominations this has produced, like Shedinja being the deceased carcas of you evolving Nincada or Kecleon changing type almost every turn, Ditto's Transform was actually pretty cool. Getting to battle as the opposing Pokémon was, if nothing else, good fun.
Also, the backstory about it being a failed attempt at cloning Mew, and thats' why it contains the DNA of every other Pokémon, is pretty cool.