Another of Kanto’s forgotten few and our first of many pure Poison types in Generation 1, Ekans is a fairly simple, archetypal snake design. For what it’s worth, I really like the strong gold and purple colour scheme, and the absence of teeth due to it being based on snakes that just consume eggs whole is not necessarily a choice that a blander snake design would have incorporated. While the Pokedex specifies bird Pokemon, that’s pretty dark considering the Pokemon world’s reverence for eggs and the fact that almost every Pokemon that can reproduce hatches from one. I will say however, while its original Generation 1 sprites (excluding Yellow) look far closer to Arbok and have more cohesion, they look absolutely nothing like Ekans itself to a fairly absurd degree, which is pretty funny. This is definitely one of those more forgotten Gen 1 Pokemon that TPC have seemed pretty content to let sit to one side for quite a while now, which is a bit of a shame but to be honest I don’t have too much to say about this evolution line in general.

Arbok is pretty much a whole other kind of snake that just also happens to be purple. This runs into those familiar problems of lack of cohesion once again, which is unfortunate, but Arbok also lacks a big wow factor like what Blastoise had to pave over similar issues. In Arbok’s case, it’s a fairly standard cobra design with its defining characteristic clearly intended to be the fascinating, distinctive face pattern on its crest. This had the interesting novelty of being something of a regional variant prototype, with Generation 2 and 3 Arbok introducing different patterns native to each region (though the sprite is the same no matter where the Arbok is from) but this was silently retconned out in favour of the Kanto pattern starting in Diamond and Pearl. If a Pokemon like Arbok was being created now, or perhaps even a regional form of Arbok with the same gimmick, I’d definitely expect them to have something like 6 cosmetic forms seen in the game each with separate form IDs so they wouldn’t just blend together, but sadly Arbok is a victim of circumstance here where it just wasn’t created at a time where that would be a priority.

Final Verdict: 5/10 – a passable, yet forgettable and consequently forgotten about Pokémon that I hope sees some kind of love in the future.