>>36883187>>36883300I think there was a good chance of many kids using the masterball on things that weren't mewtwo.The main chance being the legendary birds in gen 1 had that awful mechanic where they couldn't be caught by any regular ball if you didn't have a status inducing move. So kids were likely to use that masterball if they couldn't land a single ball on the birds due to not having a status inducing move in their party. Snorlax was probably the second highest chance you'd use one.
After thinking on it further, Chansey in particular in the unknown dungeon has a special draw to it that the other pokemon in the dungeon do not have. The distinction of being a really rare pokemon you can catch outside of the safari zone. That might add extra draw to catch chansey over the others. Chansey being given more draw than the others would make sense considering how the special defenses of this thing deal with mewtwo more than anything else so the design might want to tempt you to catch this more over other pokemon.
Another game design thing I realized is how Viridian Forest is used to showcase the evolution mechanics more to a new player to the game and to spoil that pokemon can indeed evolve 3 times.
Another thing I realized is that before you get to cerulean city there are 4 pokemon you can catch to evolve with a moonstone. This could help introduce the concept of evolving stones to the new player and it's indeed how I remember discovering stone evolution back when I was 9 or 10. I remember evolving my nidorino with it on my first playthrough. It also serves to maybe hint to the player that the pikachu you caught in viridian forest can evolve with a stone, considering the level it is at by celadon city without even going to a second form and considering you've just seen it can be a raichu by fighting surge. So the game does a really good job of helping you deduce how pikachu should evolve.
This analysis is fun
