>>22555737>Gen 1 (RBY)An easy misconception would be to think that there is any truly overcentralizing Pokemon or type that could sufficiently describe the competitive scene other than the rightly banned Mewtwo.
This is as much a 'Psychic' meta as much as it is the 'Psychic > Rocks > Normals > Psychics' meta. This is as much a Chansey meta as it is an Alakazam meta, or a Tauros meta.
The best way to think about Gen 1's competitive scene is a battle of attrition with Status as the main players.
Who got put to sleep by Gengar/Exeggutor? Whose Chansey/Lapras froze first?
Did anyone manage to land a Thunder Wave on Tauros/Alakazam/Starmie/etc?
These are all more important questions than whether Tauros truly dominated Gen1 OU like that one old Smogon article said it did, or whether the scene only had X number of viable mons (and how that number changes when allowing things like Wrap, and whether the few legitimate BL mons count as viable).
Due to the introduction of items in Gen 2, and especially with the introduction of Leftovers mitigating any sort of chip damage as basically doing no damage, Gen 1 really stands out for its mechanical differences. You couldn't just run a cleric, or switch in later to use Leftovers to 'undo' previous damage. Every turn, every damage, every action mattered.
There is no generation where Status is as powerful as in Gen 1, where Sleep/Freeze/Paralysis are almost as powerful as the Fainted status itself. The chip damage made every switch count and every immunity matter, it made every status either fully debilitating death sentence or a lifeline of a guaranteed win (whoops, you TWaved my Chansey).
You can go through the list of Gen 1's competitive OU/BL mons, and instead sort them by the status they had access to, the statuses they were weak against, and how plentiful were the matchups in which the statuses it could inflict/were weak against.
>Gen 1: the Triumvirate of Sleep/Freeze/Paralysis. 
