Squirtle squirtle squirtle!
Squirtle - Tiny Turtle Pokémon (#7)
Japanese name: Zenigame (Zeni meaning money, and game being a form of the word for turtle)
Pokedex in Red/Blue/Yellow: After birth, its back swells and hardens into a shell. Powerfully sprays foam from its mouth..
Pokedex in Gold: The shell is soft when it is born. It soon becomes so resilient, prodding fingers will bounce off of it.
Pokedex in Silver: The shell, which hardens soon after it is born, is resilient. If you poke it, it will bounce back out.
Pokedex in Crystal: When it feels threatened, it draws its legs inside its shell and sprays water from its mouth.
Height: 1 foot 8 inches
Weight: 20 lbs
Evolution: Squirtle -> Wartortle -> Blastoise
Type: Water
Squirtle is a basic Pokemon, with no weird types or attacks. He's just a straightforward water-type, which makes him pretty forgettable in the Game Boy games and Stadium series. While he was one of the Pokemon available to the player at the beginning of Pokemon Red and Blue, he's even started to become less important, available only as a rare find or in an NPC's team in the later Game Boy games. Only beginners are likely to have him in their team when playing against another player, or even when facing off against NPC trainers.
In the Pokemon anime, though, he is the main man. Ash's Squirtle, known as "Squirtle," (Creativity is not Ash's forte), is Ash's only water Pokemon for the most of the series. He first hooks up with Ash in episode #12, Here Comes The Squirtle Squad, after his gang, the Squirtle Squad, kidnaps Ash, Brock, Misty, and Pikachu. (At one point, they threaten to dye Misty's hair if Ash doesn't come back.) The Squirtle Squad is, of course, being tricked by Team Rocket, and after Ash puts an end to their hijinks, Squirtle joins him. Squirtle stays with Ash through the rest of the first series and almost all the way into the second series, getting all the good lines (despite being incapable of saying anything other than his name) and putting out fires by spraying water out of his mouth. It's a shame that the Squirtle Squad never appears in the games.
Squirtle is just a blue-skinned turtle standing on his hind legs, drawn with soft lines. His tail is curled and vaguely resembles a squirrel's or a stylized wave. In the anime, whenever Squirtle is leading the Squirtle Squad (they come back for a couple more episodes, later on), he wears a pair of angular sunglasses to set him apart from the generic Squirtles. The sunglasses plus the petty crimes the Squirtle Squad gets themselves into are a large part of the anime Squirtle's appeal.
To date, Squirtle has appeared in...
In actual play in the Game Boy games and Stadium, Squirtle, being a first-stage Pokemon, is pretty much a joke at the Poke Cup level or at the Prime Cup level. He qualifies for Pika or Poke cup competition, but he's just too weak to be very useful, with low Special stats for his water attacks. He's got high Defense, but who cares? Water types are a dime a dozen, and they get much better than this. For those determined to have a Squirtle on the team, Hydrop Pump or Surf is about as good as his offense gets, and Withdraw or Defense Curl can frustrate physical-based offense.
Squirtle's name, like the names of most of the Pokemon, is a pretty obvious pun. 'Squirt' + '-tle' from turtle. The English name is actually a two-layed pun, though; he has a curled, squirrel-like tail and a mischevious personality (in the anime, anyway), so the 'Squir-' in Squirtle works just as well for Squirrel. The Japanese name, Zenigame, is a combination of 'zeni' (money) and 'game' (a conjugation of turtle), but the joke there escapes me.
(Back to Everything2 Pokédex)
Sources: GameFAQs, pokemon.com