Editor’s Note
While many credit the fourth generation with launching Pokémon’s competitive scene, this article explores why seasoned players often consider the third generation’s “OU” metagame on Game Boy Advance to be the series’ competitive peak.
It is well known that Pokémon games have two distinct sides, and beyond their campaigns, there exists a huge community of fans dedicated to competition. Many believe that this aspect started with the fourth generation, but the reality is that some nuances need to be made because, in fact, the most expert players believe that the best metagame in the series is the single battles of Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald for GameBoy Advance (Gen 3 OU).
On the internet, it is considered that the competitive Pokémon scene was born with the fourth generation: that of Diamond, Pearl, and Platinum for NDS (2007-2009). This is because those were the first games in the series where you could play over the internet, and also because they introduced a very important change: the split between physical and special attacks.
How did attacks work before DPPt? Until that point, the type of each attack determined which stat a Pokémon used to launch it. All Water-type attacks from the first three generations, for example, were exclusively special; which worked to the detriment of creatures like Gyarados that have a much higher base physical attack (125) than special attack (60) and therefore do not benefit as much from the Same Type Attack Bonus (STAB).
The combination of these two realities paints a difficult picture for the competitive Pokémon scene in the RSE era, but here’s an important fact: people played anyway, not on consoles linked together with a Link cable (how nostalgic to talk about these things, right?) but from PCs, using unofficial simulators like the now-defunct NetBattle.
And the people who did that were so passionate that not only does this practice continue to this day, but they have also created their own rules, categories, and spaces to ensure that no game or creature is forgotten. That includes, of course, a third generation that has proven to have much more exciting and deep battles than some thought. So much so that 20 years later, frequent Gen 3 OU tournaments are still held, and people continue to discover new ways to change viability rankings.
OU is a term coined by the huge and incredibly active Smogon community, which means Over Used, referring to the Pokémon that are most repeated among those that can be chosen in each context. So Gen 3 OU represents the pool of creatures from Ruby, Sapphire, and Emerald that people use in the highest-level single battles.
And the reason this specific metagame is held in such high esteem is that experts consider it the one that requires the most skill from the user, partly due precisely to the limitations that RSE had.
To explain this, I will give you a practical example. In the fifth generation, a move called Scald was introduced, which has 80 power, 100 accuracy, and a 30% chance to burn the opponent. It is considered one of the most broken attacks in Pokémon history, to the point that Game Freak had to remove it from many creatures; and while it existed, it was almost mandatory to give it to any defensive member of your team.
That’s because Scald has no disadvantages (limited accuracy, immune opponents) and was a safe click for any scenario: it entailed no kind of risk, but great rewards by completely nullifying basically any physical attacker due to burns.
For example, Focus Punch has 150 power, but it has -3 priority and only hits if the user is not hit that turn. That is, it must be launched only when reading a switch or a status move: otherwise, the attack fails and the user is left exposed during the process.
Similarly, Explosion is a definitive wall-breaker because it attacks with 250 power and uses only half of the defending Pokémon’s physical defense in the calculation, but in return, the user is knocked out upon using it. For this reason, it is reserved solely for eliminating some key threats that people identify as the opponent’s “win condition” and requires perfectly reading switches: we are talking about sacrificing one-sixth of the entire team in one move.
Both moves are very popular in Gen 3 OU, mainly to punish the opponent when they seek to tip the scales in their favor with some beneficial switch (e.g., trapping the user with Dugtrio or Magneton). But this same pattern repeats throughout the metagame because each Pokémon’s arsenal is quite limited, and the most knowledgeable players get an idea of what the opponent can do in each situation. This also facilitates the birth of new tactics, initiatives, and strategies over time; like an offensive Claydol that a few years ago would have been considered sacrilegious.