Yes, and mine was a redirect of your pun.
Anyway, at least Charmander can actually do damage. Bulbasaur would probably just like, make my balls smell like cheap perfume.
The earliest games supposedly didn’t have room for more than one save anyway- without cutting content. Wether you believe that or not though, there are several game design and franchise reasons for it. Firstly, not only does the 1 save cement the idea that this is your adventure, and all choices are final, but it also means that for more than one person (like siblings) to have their own game they need multiple cartridges. It helps force social interaction (an important feature of the games starting in gen 1,) and trade, and it also offers some security. It makes it harder to dupe Pokémon. You can’t simply copy a file on to the same cartridge to dupe, an easy trick even if the game didn’t include a copy feature. It makes it so you need multiple play throughs, trade, and or multiple cartridges to see the potential and game experience with all Pokémon even in a single version. Now that hacking is much easier and security is mostly server side, they may start easing up on that.
They already eased up on the trade thing with the GTS system. It'll take awhile, but you can get every pokemon in a single version now, and the version exclusives are traded among their corresponding other entry almost ritualistically, especially with legendaries.... although sometimes it's hilarious if you put up a Pichu for a day asking for a Rayquaza and then wind up with an obviously hacked shiny one with perfect IV's.
We have come a long way from link cables, that’s for sure. The other thing I’m sure of, is if someone wanted to see the fall of security like block chain encryption for things like bitcoin- all you have to do is start using block chain to protect the integrity of Pokémon and within 6-12 months of release someone would break that too.
Anyway, at least Charmander can actually do damage. Bulbasaur would probably just like, make my balls smell like cheap perfume.