Do you remember? Feel free to elaborate. Here’s mine from Pokemon Yellow:
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I don’t remember exactly, but I think it would have been something like this:
Typhlosion level 44
Ho-Oh level 46
Gyarados level 42
Kadabra level 40
Sudowoodo level 24
Geodude level 6/blank?
I’m pretty sure I did the classic don’t-train-anything-other-than-your-starter, so was really short and just tried to make up the numbers. I do remember making Ho-Oh forget Sacred Fire for Fire Blast because Fire Blast was more powerful and I had no idea about the burn thing.
Later, in Crystal, I remember spending days/weeks trying to beat Lance because my team was so underlevelled. I finally beat him one cold day after school.
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My team was absurdly high level, even despite the higher levels of the Gen 1 league.
8 years old, barely learning my first words of english…I think my Electrode was Lv. 81 or something ridiculous like that. Sandslash was above Lv. 70. Fearow and Pika were around Lv. 60, Zapdos was just catch fresh Lv. 50 traded with the party’s HM-slave to deal with the league. Venusaur was around lv. 40, just used him to Razor Leaf Bruno’s Onixes.
The second time I beat it I think I traded Venusaur for Articuno, Lance became a breeze all of a sudden, haha.
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Yeah Blizzard in Gen 1 was broken!
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2nd gen League was quite something, I remember being so jealous of Lance’s Aero having Rock slide, I spent much time trying to figure out how to learn it to mine, only to discover it’s a game move error.
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Charizard in Pokemon Red. I solo ran the game my first time through.
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Yeah. The Elite Four in Gen 2 was infinitely more difficult than Gen 1. Even though the Gen 1 Elite Four had much higher level Pokemon, all you really had to do was type match and you were fine. But in Gen 2, building a team was much more difficult. There really weren’t a ton of team-building options because evolutionary stones weren’t available until postgame (so you couldn’t get Pokemon like Arcanine, Ninetales, Victreebel, Vileplume, etc.), and for some inexplicable reason, a hefty amount of Gen 2 Pokemon also weren’t available until postgame (Houndour, Larvitar, Misdreavus, Slugma, etc.). Also, the AI was much smarter, and Lance’s three Dragonite were REALLY tough.
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Preeeetty sure it was this one, I can’t look it up because I reset my first save to play with a different starter & team. Didn’t know you could take Pokemon out of games before that sadly.
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Yep my first team playing through Yellow:
- Venusaur
- Alakazam
- Articuno
- Flareon
- Golem
- Raichu (traded with my brother from Blue)
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Speaking of solo runs and Emboars, I actually solo ran my way through White 2 with an Emboar, it was almost Lv. 100 by the time I reached the League due to the long pre-league game. I had some sort of backup, but I didn’t use it much.
After nearly two decades of either competitive play or team building and breeding, all the leagues seem ridiculously easy. But it wasn’t like that in the beginning, that’s for sure!
Platinum was a bitch, I like to make things difficult for myself (and my goal was just to do the story mode as quickly as possible), so I had a way under-leveled team with plenty of weak spots. The Empoleon I used to beat Cynthia’s Garchomp had a hilarious damage calc, earthquake was almost always a OHKO and my return Ice beam was NOT OHKOing (but I thought there was a miniscule chance). Had to reset so many times, in the end I think I landed a crit or a freeze and won the damn thing.
Just a Nidoking in Yellow.
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The first time I played as a kid, I skipped every optional battle in the game, did precisely no training and relied on Charizard to do his thing with his mish mash of Effort Values… I wiped a lot and it was an achievement beating Lorelai, I thought there’d be a pokecenter after her before Bruno is it… didn’t go well!
Much later as a sad adult, I had a challenge with my friend over what the lowest team was that we could beat the Elite 4 with and not use any revives or other combat items (hold items were okay), was doable with a lvl 28 team and I had to sit down and work out exactly where my Jolteon was going to get the 
to level to exactly enough speed to outspeed Lance’s Aerodactl… think I focus banded lances dragonite and there was a destiny bond / leech seed lock involved as well… I enjoyed the 2nd run a lot more!
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As a 3- or 4-year-old trying to beat Pokemon Red, with the help of my dad: Charizard. That’s it.
I remember the final fight coming down to Charizard vs. Blastoise and I had no PP left on any move besides Cut and Blastoise had only a little bit of health left and if Charizard took one hit he was done. Used Cut, and in what felt like eternity that little sliver of health went down to nothing. My dad and I were ecstatic, squealing and jumping up and down. Those were the days…
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As a kid, my parents didn’t let me have a Gameboy until probably a year or two after all the other kids had one, so I “participated” in the Pokemon craze in elementary school by going to the library and basically memorizing the Prima guide book for Pokemon Red / Blue. Kids would come to me all the time and ask me where they could find X Pokemon, or which Pokemon learned a certain move. I was a walking encyclopedia of useless Pokemon knowledge.
When I finally got a Gameboy around the time that Gold & silver came out, I decided to play through Red version first (a friend gave me his copy), during which I basically had already mentally planned out my team for maximum type coverage + coolness factor:
- Venusaur (the only starter that wasn’t covered by the legendary birds’ typing)
- Golem (though he was a Graveler for basically the whole game)
- Alakazam (he was also a Kadabra for most of the game, and I replaced him with Mewtwo post game)
- Articuno
- Zapdos
- Moltres
Yeah I really liked legendaries…
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I too played Pokemon Red (and Blue). Bought Blue some months after receiving Yellow on my Birthday (along a Game Boy Color paid for with my own money) and bought Red a few weeks after that, they were both cheaper than Yellow. I wasn’t going to miss out on Missingno!
1-Gyarados
2-Rhydon
3-Golem
4-Dragonite
5-Machamp
6-Missingno
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It’s always amazing to see such unique teams people first played with. Electrode? Wild. I didn’t branch out to those more unlikely and uncommon mon’s until way later in future playthroughs.
I played blue–my first E4 team featured the most typical mon’s, I’d say. The final formation was probably this team, in this order. I was always trying to imitate “Gary” in every way. I might be a tad off on the team, as I can’t remember for the life of me what my original #6 was. It was probably another legendary or a Nidoqueen.
Pidgeot
Nidoking
Nidoqueen?
Articuno
Jolteon
Venusaur
Once I got to the rival, I knew I had to go back and grind and match his lvl’s. So I went back in with them all in their 60s, because it seemed so grand and climactic.
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