Gen 1 (and 2, to an extent) handled secondary-typings really awkwardly – at the time, I remember it had a bit of "wow this must be some weird Japanese thing that isn't carrying over culturally" charm to it, where I wasn't sure of shit like
- what's the difference between Ground/Rock and Rock/Ground?
- why is Gyarados part flying?
- why are Nidoking and -queen part Ground? is it a joke on "Moon Stone"?
- why isn't there any pure Ghost type?
for the most part it turns out to be because GF didn't know tf they were doing the first go round
I think they ended up only half-implementing what they would've done had they had more time, and then yeah, you would've seen more crazy shit like Ninetales as Fire/Psychic
I much prefer where it ended up going, where a few Gen 1 Pokemon have these implied secondary typings, and get access to some 'weirder' TM moves, without necessarily having the actual typing itself
IMO Gen 3 and on went too far with sort of 'actualising' implied typings. Metagross line to me was something that always stuck out as should've been pure Steel, with Psychic only implied, and it's only gotten worse from Gen 3 going onwards
