Is Gengar worth it (Gen 1.)?

Question

From memory, Gengar is the only gen 1 Ghost type.
Ghost are super effective against psychic, (a broken type in gen 1.) but Gengar is also part Poison. So is he worth it?

Answer 1

I know this have already been answered but I need to highlight a few things.
First of, Gengar is good, both competitively and ingame. It have good stats and a good movepool and although it is finicky to evolve a Haunter, Gengar is definitely worth it. As a sweeper but never as a Psychic type killer. This is because even though Ghost was supposed to be super effective against Psychic a glitch made Psychic immune to Ghost. As such Gengar's main selling point as a Psychic killer is thwarted dead in its tracks.
But even despite this glitch Gengar would have been average at best at Psychic killing. This is because of a few other factors. Firstly, Lick was the only Ghost move in gen 1 (and it was already bad back then). Then we still had the physical/special split, so all Ghost moves would have been physical, whilst Gengar is a special attacker.

So to summarise:
Psychic types were broken beyond belief in Gen 1.
The Gen 1 games were also broken.
Gengar is still good. He was one of the best sweepers in the game and still is, but to kill Psychic types with any efficiency Gengar had to wait a generation.

Comments

Okay! I'm gonna try to find a Gastly / Haunter as soon as i can.

Answer 2

It depends on what you want.
Gengar would be useful for beating the Psychic-type gym with an advantage.
A good moveset for gengar for gen 1 could be
Lick
Nightshade
Hypnosis
Dream eater
Try to lead with Hypnosis most of the time, it may really help.
If you don't want three attacking moves you could replace lick or nightshade and put substitute in it's place.
But, it depends on what your team is and what you want.
Hope I helped!