All Pokemon have one or two types, out of 15, 17 or 18, depending on which game you are playing. Games under Generation 1 (Red, Blue (Green), Yellow) have 15 types: Normal, Fire, Water, Grass, Electric, Fighting, Flying, Poison, Ground, Rock, Psychic, Ice, Bug, Ghost, and Dragon. Generation 2 (Gold, Silver, Crystal) added two more types, Dark and Steel. Lastly Generation 6 (X, Y) added the Fairy type.
Types are an important game mechanism in Pokemon. They can halve or quarter the damage done to your Pokemon, or multiply your Pokemon's move strength by four. All types have strengths and weaknesses; for example the fire type is 'super effective' on the grass type, which means that if a Pokemon uses a fire-type move on a grass-type Pokemon, the move's power will be doubled. However Fire is 'not very effective' on the Water type, so if the same Pokemon uses that same Fire-type move on a water-type Pokemon, the move's power will be halved. On some types, moves do not have any effect at all: for instance, a normal type move cannot hurt a Ghost-type Pokemon, and a ground-type move cannot hurt a Flying-type Pokemon. Every type match-up is shown below. |