Here is an uncomfortable truth about Pokémon turning 30: it forces you to do the maths on your own childhood. The franchise that began as a pair of Game Boy cartridges in 1996 has outlasted careers, relationships, and several competing theories about what games are even for. It has released across every Nintendo platform since, spawned a trading card empire, a globally dominant mobile game in Pokémon GO, and a cinematic universe that somehow starred Ryan Reynolds as a detective Pikachu. And yet, strip away the merchandising behemoth and the competitive tournament scene, and what remains is something surprisingly intimate: the memory of picking your first starter.
To mark the occasion, a group of writers were asked one simple question, with no parameters attached: which Pokémon is the best? The results are not a ranked list. They are not statistically defensible. They are, however, genuinely revealing about why a franchise about collecting fictional creatures has held this much cultural staying power for three full decades.
Chris Pereira made his case for Alolan Exeggutor, the improbably elongated palm tree variant that arrived with Pokémon Sun and Moon. "Such majesty, such lack of grace," he wrote, capturing the specific appeal of a creature that looks like it was designed by a committee that had only seen photographs of trees. The Alolan forms, introduced to reflect the tropical setting of the Alola region, were a genuine creative risk from Game Freak, and Exeggutor remains the most gloriously unhinged of the lot.
Jessica Cogswell went deep on Dragapult, the Ghost/Dragon-type introduced in Sword and Shield, and her reasoning reveals just how much thought goes into Pokémon design that most players never notice. Dragapult's pre-evolution, Dreepy, is described in the Pokédex as a prehistoric amphibian reborn as a ghost. The real-world inspiration appears to be Diplocaulus, an ancient creature whose boomerang-shaped skull maps neatly onto Dragapult's silhouette. The head shape also draws from the Northrop B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, right down to chevron detailing that mirrors the aircraft's aerodynamic profile. The eyes, meanwhile, resemble military semaphore flags. "Just look at him," Cogswell concluded, after working through all of that. "He's sleek as hell." Hard to argue.
Steve Watts kept it brief and earned it. He picked Squirtle because, thirty years ago, his pet turtle had recently died. "There have been hundreds more Pokémon since then," he wrote, "but Squirtle is still the one that first gave me that feeling: come on, little guy, let's go on an adventure." That sentence does more for the franchise's enduring appeal than any marketing campaign ever could.
Darryn Bonthuys nominated Sprigatito, the Grass-type cat starter from Scarlet and Violet, with one significant caveat: do not evolve it. His argument is that Sprigatito's appeal is entirely in its pre-evolved form, and that allowing it to develop into the more humanoid Meowscarada is "perfection ruined by evolution." It is a genuinely coherent position. The Pokémon design language has drifted noticeably toward more anthropomorphic forms in recent generations, and not everyone has followed willingly.
David McCutcheon chose Reuniclus, the gelatinous Psychic-type from Pokémon Black and White, on the grounds that "a blob that is semi-developed" is deeply relatable. He described it as a "glass cannon Psychic/Hugging-type," which is not an official classification but should be. Jake Dekker went with Gulpin, a round Poison-type he admits he has never actually used in battle because he dislikes the evolution. The honesty there is refreshing. Plenty of people carry a favourite they would never use competitively, and that is a perfectly legitimate relationship to have with a fictional creature.
Tamoor Hussain made the case for Gengar with characteristic intensity, arguing that the Ghost-type's unsettling expression conceals a creature that simply wants to be loved and is having a very good time. His recommendation to watch the Pokémon Journeys episode "A Chilling Curse!" as supporting evidence suggests this is a topic he has thought about at length. Lucy James picked Snorlax, describing him as "aspirational," which is either a gentle joke or a lifestyle philosophy. Probably both.
Cheri Faulkner rounded out the list with Rapidash, the flaming horse Pokémon she has been pining for since she was reading her Game Boy screen by streetlight from the back seat of a car. She noted the Galarian variant with what can only be described as genuine reverence.
What is striking about the list as a whole is how little it has to do with competitive stats or game mechanics. Nobody mentioned base speed ratings or move pools. The choices are almost entirely emotional, shaped by the specific moment a person first encountered a particular creature and felt something click. That is not a trivial thing for a franchise to achieve, let alone sustain across thirty years and more than a thousand individual species. The Pokémon Company has done many things well and a few things poorly over three decades, but the core instinct, that every player should find at least one Pokémon that feels like theirs, remains intact.
With a new generation reportedly in development, the question of whether the franchise can keep manufacturing that feeling at scale is a real one. The design space is not infinite, and there are legitimate arguments that the series has become too sprawling to sustain its early coherence. But then someone mentions a turtle that died, or a horse glimpsed by streetlight through a car window, and the argument feels a little beside the point. Pokémon has never really been about the games. It has been about the specific kid you were when you played them, and the creature you chose to take with you.