>>46032220Let me address my claim that Normal (and sometimes Psychic) are placeholders for Light-type in gen 2. Refer to this:
https://tcrf.net/Proto:Pok%C3%A9mon_Gold_and_Silver/Spaceworld_1997_Demo#Battle_MechanicsIn the spaceworld beta, Normal is super effective against Dark. Normal also resists Dark.
Dark was not immune to Psychic- in the beta, Dark only resisted Psychic.
Some blatantly sun-themed pokemon, like beta Espeon and Sunkern, were Psychic-type.
Why would this be the case? Why would some theoretically Light-type Pokemon be strong against Dark, and others weak to it?
My theory is that GF was wrestling with balancing these two types. Why would one include two “equal and opposite” types, Light and Dark, and make one consistently weak to the other? What’s the point of introducing one cool type, and another that loses to it every time? Children would cry.
What if the developers wanted some Light-type Pokemon to be weak to Dark, and others to be strong against it? Does this go against all common sense for how types work in Pokemon? Yes.
Consider this from the standpoint of a hypothetical developer: You want some Light pokemon to be strong against Dark, others weak to it, and vice versa for Dark pokemon. You absolutely cannot figure out how to make this work within the Type system you’ve built.
As a temporary solution, You make some Light-types Normal, and you make some Psychic. As seen in the beta, this means that the “Normal” placeholder pokes will have an advantage over Dark, while the “Psychic” placeholder pokes are weak to Dark.
This gets you the result that you wanted to test, two types with varying weakness/resistance to eachother. What it does not get you (an incompetent game freak employee) is an actual, coded Light type.
