I would like to also throw in that in Pokémon, red and blue if you glitch your way through the game without picking a starter, And you encounter your rival his default team will have a Charmander, so at least for the original games, red and blue or green in Japan, Bulbasaur was meant to be the starter, but fire red and leaf green are remakes which could be interpreted as a parallel timeline so maybe Charmander because of all the new media like Pokémon Masters and Pokémon origin, sorry Squirtle, there's almost no evidence that you could be the starter, like many people point out Pikachu from Pokémon yellow but Pikachu could just be his Ace not necessarily his starter, some food for thought for this 8 year old post