>>57685052Even with only one evolution family, Ghosts are a strong aspect of gen 1's overall design and world. Pokemon could come in a wide variety of forms, including occult spirits. The crude CGI on the early TCG cards made Gastly/Haunter/Gengar look like the coolest motherfuckers, and the anime put forth the notion that they were actually the Achilles heel of the other group of extremely cool motherfuckers of early Pokemon, that being Psychic types. (Of course, I later played the video games and learned it wasn't so simple, but whatever.) An entire town in the Pokemon world was dedicated to contextualising the existence of monster ghosts, with a big burial site tower where they discouraged intruders with illusions.
Although future gens added much-needed further Pokemon for the type, I don't think it ever reached the same sort of conceptual high and relevance within the fictional world as gen 1. Gen 2's Morty has clairvoyant/spirit medium powers, but it's not very important or directly linked to his training Ghost mons beyond the thematic association, and there's no great location for Ghosts in Johto, while in Kanto Lavender got cleaned up and the Pokemon Tower replaced with a new radio station. Gen 3's Mt. Pyre interior is a 90% optional area taking cues from Pokemon Tower that houses a total of two new Ghost mon families. Gen 4 has a central legendary Ghost type Pokemon in Giratina, but rather than any sort of god of the dead or such, it's representative of it being a creature banished to inhabit the mirror world-esque Distortion World. There's been a lot of cool Ghost mons up to this point, but very few of them honestly make it onto my top favourites list (I do, however, LOVE Litwick) and I feel like their potential is kinda being wasted in some ways that I can't fully articulate besides the pop culture zeitgeist just moving away from how things were during the late 90s when gen 1 was current, and the Pokemon franchise following suit.
