RB Golbat is the best depiction of Golbat in any form of Pokemon media, ever.
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This sprite is often the go-to when people talk about Gen 1's sprites, for better or for worse. The tongue is off-model with how its depicted in any other part of the franchise, it's a lot
longer than it usually is, and the eyes are completely off. It's the perfect exemplar of how Pokemon hadn't quite found its visual identity yet, and the series wasn't strictly focused on maintaining a positive brand image. The differences are pretty glaring when you look at it side-by-side with its official art:
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But here's the thing: I love these differences. The Golbat of the RB sprite has so much more personality and energy to it than I've ever seen in any other depiction of the Pokemon. The long, salivating tongue and its narrow eyes make it look
hungry, in a way that's never really been conveyed elsewhere. Let's take a brief look at its Pokedex entries:
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It gorges, it gulps, it drinks blood until it literally cannot fly anymore. Golbat is gluttonous to an extreme, and nothing conveys that better than this sprite. Is the anatomy incorrect? Yes, of course it is - but its Red and Blue sprite tells me so much more about its personality because of the creative liberties it takes with its design. If I'm being frank, I think Golbat is a really bland and dull Pokemon after Generation 1 - a sentiment that's not helped by the existence of Crobat - and a large part of it is that its personality has simply vanished. The open mouth is still the central design element, but that hunger you see in its RB sprite has seemingly dissipated.
For what it's worth, I think the RG sprite and
especially the Yellow sprite are bad about this too. In general, I think the Yellow sprites represent a rough transition period between the weirdness of Gen 1 and the "standardization" we'd see for the rest of the series, but Golbat gets the worst of it. These sprites are also boring to me, despite liking Gen 1 sprites on the whole.
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I don't think we'll ever see anything quite like the Red and Blue sprites again, and while that makes sense as gaming hardware and the Pokemon franchise continues to grow and evolve, I look back on them with fondness, and think they deserve a better rep than what they get. Their sheer contrast from the rest of the series' design philosophy is what makes them so compelling to me, and the Game Boy's hardware meant that these sprites had to be creative in how they presented the personality of these creatures to make them stand out as living, breathing entities.