6. Charizard

As you can see, it’s somewhat difficult to make Charizard look anything but awesome.

Okay, maybe Gold and Silver’s are a bit too cartoony and the first generations make you wonder how they distinguished Charizard from Dragonite. But even the goofiest looking of the lot—Red and Green’s—appears to be blowing a fireball into its own hand. That must be a heck of a bar trick.

Although one thing sometimes distracts me about Charizard, and that’s his wings. There is no way those things could support his bulk in midair! Yellow’s sprite is the only one that even comes close to making them look flight-worthy. They’re actually almost as long as his body, and extend behind his tail, unlike in all the other sprites. Maybe Red and Blue’s as well, since they appear possibly folded. But I guess we’ll cut them some slack, because A) suspension of disbelief, B) the wings have to germinate from nowhere out of Charizard’s previous forms, and C) later sprites ditch the wings’ smoothness in favor of a more haphazard, bat-like style, which definitely earns them some cool points.

The Winner:
FireRed and Leafgreen

Because if you’re going to make a pokemon your version mascot, you’d better get his sprite right. And they did. The positioning, the roar, the upturned paws, all perfect. The next two sprites look plenty tough as well, but they just can’t match this one’s “master of all I survey” pose.

Plus, could those DS sprites be any bigger? I mean even for DS sprites. Here I was all impressed by the way they utilized space for Venusaur’s sprite, but look at them side by side:

Charizard’s not even that big! Pokémon media list him at 5’7”, and Venusaur at 6’7”. But I guess they’re not meant to be to scale, so whatever.

Finally, I just want to point out that if anything looks cooler than a Charizard, it’s a shiny Charizard:

Too bad nobody ever sees a shiny pokemon in their lifetime, ever