How Many Pokémon Can You Get Without Evolving in Pokémon Yellow?
The player can get up to 129 species total in Yellow without trading. Without evolving any Pokémon, and only collecting evolutionary stages that the player can get in the wild / as a gift or purchase / as an in-game trade, the player can get up to 101 species.
The Pokémon unavailable without evolving are as follows:
- Starter Evolutions (6) - 6 total
- The starters are only available in their base forms, leaving Ivysaur, Venusaur, Charmeleon, Charizard, Wartortle, and Blastoise inaccessible.
- Stone Evolutions (14) - 20 total
- While some stone evolutions can be found in Cerulean Cave, Nidoqueen, Nidoking, Clefable, Ninetales, Vileplume, Arcanine, Poliwrath, Victreebel, Cloyster, Exeggutor, Starmie, Vaporeon, Jolteon, and Flareon cannot.
- Fossils (2) - 22 total
- The Fossils can only be revived into their base forms, leaving Omastar and Kabutops inaccessible.
- Other (6) - 28 total
- Butterfree, Pidgeot, Rapidash, Hypno, Gyarados, and Dragonite are unavailable without evolution.
In Yellow, the player can receive a Machamp via trade; they evolve after being traded to the player. Since the player is not responsible for initiating their evolution,
some may choose to consider Machamp "acceptable" in a no-evo run - I would, since my personal philosophy is a little more like "Black/White 2 Habitat List" than strictly "no evolution". If Machamp is counted, the number of species is 102.