At the end of a long but breezy journey as a ten year old pokemon trainer you’ve become the champion and beaten your principle rival to boot. Professor Oak, your mentor, gives a final evaluation of your pokedex (a catalogue of the pokemon you have seen and caught) and tells you that you should keep going to complete the pokedex. As it stands you probably have quite a few spaces to fill but the most ominous one is  #150 a gap that lies completely blank as you wouldn’t have even seen this one yet (unless there’s been some sneaky trading going on). So who occupies the prestigious place of being the last pokemon in Pokemon Red’s pokedex? Well it’s (spoilers) MEWTWO. A reward for beating the game, a monster… no the monster  pokemon in Pokemon Red. Sure there are bigger ones (like Dragonite) and far more menacing looking ones (like Gyarados) but no Pokemon matches Mewtwo for sheer beastliness.

There are basically three reasons why in Pokemon Red Mewtwo is better than any other pokemon in that game: stats; moves; type.

Stats

Pokemon is essentially an turn based RPG fighting game, which means instead of fighting using reflexes and timing the fights are determined by effectively the relative powers of pokemon which are represented by numbers in the game.

The main numbers are: Level, Speed, HP, Attack, Defence  and Special.

Each species of pokemon in the game has a base level for the latter four which determines its objective strength relative to others while’level’ represents the growth of a pokemon. As a rough example in a fight between two pokemon  of a similar level, one with a high base speed (like Pikachu) will most often go first in a turn versus a low base speed pokemon (like Slowpoke). However a low level Pikachu may be slower than a very high level Slowpoke, as the Slowpoke could have gained points in its speed statistic, as it has earned experience through fighting, which compensates for being naturally slower.

All base statistics of a Pokemon are between 1 and 255 so a Pokemon with all five stats (not including level) at 255 would be 1275. As it turns out Mewtwo’s has the highest base stat total in Pokemon Red at 590 (an average of 118 per stat) and the closest rival, Dragonite has a base stat total of 500 (an average of 100 per stat). This average stat has only ever been beaten by one other pokemon in any other game (Arceus – average 120 per stat). So from a raw numbers standpoint Mewtwo certainly beat everyone in Red and only once since by a completely new pokemon (Mewtwo’s own temporary Mega Evolutions are the only other pokemon which go above Mewtwo’s average stat).

The raw stats are only a small amount of the story. What those stats do also has a huge implication on the balance and raw power of Mewtwo. In Pokemon Red the pokemon are given the five statistics.

Speed, as mentioned, determines whether a pokemon will use their move first or second in a round. Speed is a relative stat, if pokemon A’s stat is even one higher than pokemon B’s then it will go first in every round. Of course the higher the base stat the more likely it will be that that pokemon will have a higher speed than it’s opponent.

Attack relates to the physical strength of a pokemon. Moves which generally relate to hitting with blows will derive their full strength based on a pokemon’s attack strength. Defence relates to the resilience versus thous blows.HP (or hit points) determines how much stamina a pokemon has, how much damage it can take, in a fight if the HP of a pokemon ever gets to zero or lower it will faint and be unusable for the rest of the match (or it has been healed).

In an overly simplistic outline of how HP, Defence and Attack interrelate could be like this:

Consider three pokemon: the first has an attack of 16; the second has a defence of 9 and an HP of 10 and the third has a defence of 5 and an HP of 10.

The first one attacks the second: The attack and defence are compared and the difference (if attack is higher) will be subtracted from the HP. So in the case of first vs. second the first pokemon would remove 7 out of the second’s 10 HP leaving three. In the case of first vs. third the first pokemon would remove 11 HP which would faint the third pokemon.

Special works in a slightly odd way, in that the single number works as both the attack and defence statistics for moves which relate to non-physical attacks (like firebeams or psychic powers).

Mewtwo’s biggest stat lies in the realm of special. Not only is the best stat in its possession the one which gives it simultaneous benefit in offence, but also defence but its special base stat in special is bigger than anyone else in the game (a monstrous 154). This means that even if by design Mewtwo was just meant to be an offensive god, it will by almost accident be a god in the defence department too. There is some evidence that this is the case (or that Mewtwo’s statistics were overly generous) because in pokemon Gold/Silver, the sequel to Red when special was split into special attack and special defence, Mewtwo’s Sp. Atk was maintained at 154 but Sp. Def was bashed down to ‘merely’  90 (still better than most but not really spectacular any more).

To put Mewtwo’s special stat in context the highest attack stat in the game is 134 (Dragonite). A further context the only two pokemon which have a comparable level stat are Cloyster and Onix who have defence stats of 180, 160 respectively, but even these are neutered by low HP stats (50 and 35).

Moves

A pokemon’s moves will play a large extent to how well it can use its stats. A pokemon with all the stats in the world will do little if its only move is splash (a joke move that does literally nothing). Mewtwo has access to a lot of moves and has access to a wide range of TMs (special devices which teach a move straight away). I will consider the moves Mewtwo has in the form that most people who encounter it in Red will see and then its most fun one.

This is Mewtwo’s move set in the Cerulean cave (in reverse order of fun): Swift; Barrier; Recover and Psychic

Swift is a normal type move which is medium strength but has the massive advantage of never missing. It is a nothing overly special but is coupled to a powerful foe, commands at least some respect.

Barrier increases a pokemon’s defence stat. Each time it is used the pokemon’s defence increases by 50% of the original amount.

Recover is a move which gives back a pokemon 50 percent of its health. In itself it is a fairly annoying move to come across. In the context of the battle with Mewtwo its almost walks into throwing the GameBoy into a wall territory. In pokemon the way to capture one (and increase your team) is to weedle a pokemon’s HP until it is the tiniest of slivers, to give the maximum chance of being able to catch the pokemon. Unlike a battle to the faint this means that the last few HPs of a pokemon need to be surgically shaved off, rather than a brutal assault. If a pokemon faints the chance to catch it goes, and as there is only one Mewtwo the chance to catch him at all goes too! When you get Mewtwo to his last slivers of health, using weak moves like cut and scratch to leave just a pixel of HP bar remaining the move recover undoes all of that work and the enthusiasm just drains.

Finally Mewtwo has psychic, a move that is the most powerful move for all psychic pokemon. It hits hard normally, but coupled with Mewtwo’s legendary special stat it packs quite a wallop. The other thing that helps is that because Mewtwo’s type (see below) is psychic the power is also multiplied by 1.5. TRULY MULLERING.

Perhaps Mewtwo’s best move (or at least the most interesting in the context of Mewtwo’s legendary imbalancing act) is Amnesia. Learnt at level 81 this move increases a pokemon’s special stat (later games weakened the impact to merely boosting spec. def) but here, within 3 uses makes Mewtwo’s special stat 4 TIMES its orignal value. To reiterate: it’s defence against special attacks is increased 4 times AND its special attack (for use with Psychic) is multiplied by 4! A mindboggling choice for a mindboggling pokemon!

finally what makes Mewtwo completely ridiculous, is his type.

Type

A pokemon and is basically an animal. Each of these falls into a particular class known as ‘type’. A pokemon type relates to, for example, what kind of environment it lives in or the nature of its body. There were initially 15 types of pokemon. In addition to the pokemon having a type each move in the game is also assigned a type too. Certain types of pokemon are stronger against some types and weaker against others. For example the most logical instance in Pokemon Red were the trio of types Grass-Water-Fire. Fire is weak versus Water but strong against grass (I guess it’s hay like), and to complete the loop grass is strong against water (um…).

A pokemon’s type will tell you which moves will be strong and weak against it. And a move’s type will tell you what types of pokemon the move will be strong against. This interrelationship is summarised in a handy table.

Mewtwo’s type, psychic, is resistant to attacks from: Fighting, Ghost (actually immune) and Psychic attacks (as a general rule, attacking a pokemon with a type move that is the same as the pokemon usually results in a weakened attack). So far so not very resistant to most, as a comparison grass, rock and flying are resistant/immune to at least four types of move.

The opposite of resistance is weakness. So while psychic pokemon are resistant to a fair few attacks. They must surely be weak to a similar number? Well the answer is no. Psychic pokemon are only weak to bug type moves.

Bug type in Pokemon Red is the runt type of the lot. It is usually attached to a weak pokemon and the moves associated to it are some of the weakest. In Pokemon Red the two strongest bug type moves – pin missle and twin needle (out of a grand total of three moves) hit on average with less than half the power of Mewtwo’s signature psychic.

While the psychic type is not unusual it certainly does not hinder Mewtwo in any rebalancing sort of way.

Conclusions

In some ways Mewtwo is the ultimate pokemon. It has the best stats and synergy with its type and moves which make it unbeatable (well, maybe beatable with six good enough pokemon). This might make it seem like a stupid thing to put inside the game, but I don’t think so. Mewtwo is only available to a player after the game has effectively been beaten, the biggest test has been passed and here is a small super cool reward for doing that. Within the games story a series of journals can be found in the cinnabar lab. The journal’s tell of a scientists regrets at creating a pokemon too powerful to be tamed. Somehow though I don’t think the creators of Pokemon had any regrets when creating the ridiculously powerful Mewtwo.