It honestly baffles me how people say that gen 1 Pokemon were the pinacle of Pokemon design.

Sure, there's a few memorable ones in there; but the vast majority of Pokemon designs are cheap shit They mostly just get bigger or barely change at all when they evolve.

You could argue that modern Pokemon sometimes do that too, but they don't do it nearly as bad as Gen 1 did.

Really, if you truthfully think that Gen 1 was "the best Pokemon" then I think you are just blinded by nostalgia and aren't actually a Pokemon fan. Just a fan of popular things and nostalgia.

Let's not forget that the original games were riddled with bad game design and bugs so much so that all later generations have almost entirely different game mechanics.