Part 1: The beginning
Let's horribly break Pokémon blue
In the late 90s Nintendo released a gameboy game in America. This game was simple, a bit rough around the edges, childish, but very very good and very very addicting. This, my friends, was the start of the Pokémon craze. The reception was unlike anyone has ever seen, children were glued to their gameboy screens for so long that parents tried to keep them away by connecting the little monsters to the devil. Schools made futile attempts to ban the drug as 10 year olds snuck in with little portable systems hidden in their lunch boxes. Only to end up in a fisticuff brawl as a trade or a battle went horribly wrong during recess. No one was safe, Pokemon affected everyone, and for being such a popular series rumors eventually arose.
Oh the rumors that arose.
Every neighborhood had their own special pokemon rumor, Bill's backyard, Mewthree, how to get Mew itself, POKEGODS, fighting Prof. Oak, all involving ridiculous methods of access, like using a precious itemfinder in a particular location 1000 times and right at the thousandth time pressing start and saving the game then restarting but you need to have pikablu in your party and to have him you need to do something or other.
Ladies and gentlemen, in this thread we will not only be exploring these rumors, how to do what is mentioned in these rumors, but much more. We will encounter creatures that were meant to be sealed forever; we will enter forbidden lands that will most likely crash the game after taking one step, WE WILL DO WHAT NO MAN HAS HAD THE BALLS TO DO.
FOR TONIGHT. WE. WILL. BREAK.
Q: OH MAN ANOTHER POKEMON LP HOW ORIGINAL
A: Wait! Before you hit that back button allow me to say this will be a very different Pokemon LP. At least I think so. Instead of the usual collecting badges with first person narration and general confusion over how the world works, we will focus on one-well two-maybe three-things only. The main one being glitches. Wonderful unpredictable glitches.
The LP will be informative in the fact that I will try to explain how some glitches occur. Some, not all of them though. My knowledge all comes from internet research, most of the stuff you'll read here has already been discovered by a larger source, with an explanation to support why it happens. Other than that I'm just as clueless as you.
I'm still gonna get badges and beat the E4 and all that shit but that'll be more of a sidequest perspective than anything.
Q: Glitches!? What!? That sounds stupid.
A: Perhaps it is, but in the first generation pokemon games glitches run rampant and are quite interesting. Well they don't really run rampant, since I'm going to be sharking this game a lot to do what I need to do, but there are enough out there to allow anyone to break the game without the use of a gameshark.
Q: there are a bunch of blobs and the music is weird oh man there's a letter therewhatsgoingon
A: A lot of the glitches we will run into will be graphically oriented, as well as sound. I guess you can call this LP a bit of a hybrid since some of what happens when running into a glitched pokemon/trainer can't really be described in words. Let me just say this, and I know it's going to sound stupid, but when listening to some of these videos/soundfiles for the first time, try not to do it before bed. It sounds really stupid, but if you have fond memories of the first gen games as a kid the manipulation can get kinda freaky.
Q: Will you be taking Glitch requests?
A: Uh, sure. I don't see why not.
Q: You're using a gameshark you CHEATER
A: Don't even think about saying this, you'll just look stupid.
Also to people who want to ask what I'm going to show off please use spoiler tags. I know spoiling GLITCHES of all things is probably trivial but I like to keep what I'm gonna do a secret for this thread.
Alright, I think I got everything settled, let's get started.
NO
Pretty simple name, but what we name ourselves actually affects a certain famous glitch in the future. Granted, if I made my name a bunch of symbols said glitch will turn out more entertaining, but I decided to stick with this for easier reading (more for me than for you). Besides, what we can't encounter we will through gameshark!
Keep thinking "Derp" is spelled "Durp". Not that it matters much for this LP anyway, I can't be the only one who thinks Blue's overworld sprite is the derpiest thing made.
Aaand just like that we're ready to walk in the grass, begin our adventure with Oak and have good clean fun. I would like to take this moment to thank god the Gen 1 games don't force you to have any tirades with your mother. Hell, you can completely ignore her in this game! From gen 2 she forces a bunch of pointless story crap that no one ever cares about. So, let's just take our first step in the grass and...
Haha yeah right
Q: Wait, are you walking over the barrier?
A: Yep! The walk through walls code is on now, and I'll be making good use of it for most of this playthrough. It's a bit annoying turning it on and off since the game crashes if you go out of bounds, or it'll freak out during a scripted event where red has to walk himself. For example, when you have it on when you meet Oak for the first time Red will just keep walking north until he goes out of bounds and the game crashes. There can be some neat things to be found through the WTW code and I may not know it all, if you know some interesting places to check out feel free to share!
Now, what we're doing here is just a quick show off of what happens when you go into a fight with no pokemon. I'm pretty sure every kid with pokemon and a gameshark has done this, but we'll do it anyway just to ease into the explorative spirit of the thread.
A wild blank! (Well actually it's a pidgeotto) What is happening now and what is about to happen is pretty much the same for any wild pokemon you meet without pokemon yourself. Also notice how it says I have nothing but fainted pokemon, not sure what that means but hey it's there!
Since the game NEEDS to have red let out a pokemon we have this monstrosity out. The " !" is the first pokeglitch for this LP, and it's pretty... Lackluster actually. It only has one move, you can't keep it (Which will be seen why shortly), and it's also kind of weak. However, as you can see its release just pretty much fucked up the battle screen! Pidgeotto's name is now replaced with a bunch of blobs and its health bar has shot through the roof! I should also state that with " !"'s release the music slowly quiets down until it's completely silent, no interesting glitchy music here but it's kinda creepy how the music just dies. " !"'s cry is a strange sequence of a distorted Seel/Dewgong cry followed by a regular Zapdos Cry.
This is " !"'s one and only move. It doesn't even have a name! However, the typing is interesting in that it's the "Cooltrainer" type. For those that don't know or may not remember, Cooltrainers are one of the many different types of trainers you can fight, they tend to be the hardest ones too, just ranking behind certain gym leaders and the Elite 4. This won't be the first we'll see this kind of typing in a glitched pokemon.
Now, when you try to use the one move " !" has it'll disobey you for some reason, either it won't obey or use a different move, in my case it always used "Pound" despite the fact that Pound isn't even part of its move set... In general, this guy acts like a high level traded pokemon, despite the fact that it's only level 12, and traded pokemon won't disobey you until level 20 if you don't have any badges. Honestly, the simple answer is that the game just doesn't know what to do here, so it's all jargoned up, everything is going to hell and at this point it's just trying to get out of this situation.
Pidgeotto is using its own weird attack, but it seems to just be a renamed quick attack, also I may have been wrong about " !" being weak, since it's only level 12 and can survive a quick attack with little damage from a level 30 pidgeotto. Then again it's impossible to look at its stats because the "Pokemon" screen is blank when you try to view it. Every time I try to use it, Pidgeotto's health bar also increases in size.
After four attempts of trying to have the Cooltrainer move work, " !" is already out of PP. It never does work really, and interestingly you can't use "Struggle" to fight. Struggle is basically a last resort move any pokemon can use when it's out of PP. I've actually never seen it in action myself, but allegedly it's not very affective. No other moves can be chosen, so we're gonna have to run out of the fight, which makes the game crash
What just happened is the same for pretty much every WILD pokemon encounter, but what happens when we fight a trainer with no pokemon?
To answer this question we must venture south of Pallet Town toward Cinnabar Island, if we try to go north Oak will stop us at any place. Yes even if you try to go across a barrier Oak will interrupt you. He'll actually just be moving across the screen from right to left in an endless loop that you can't get out of but it's still interrupting nonetheless!
This fine gentleman will be our test subject. A fisherman stuck upon an island waiting for any traveling seamen to give him a hit
This guy has a seaking (Not glitched at all during battle!) and we have good ol " !" again. The same thing pretty much happens, except in the middle of the battle...
A sudden flash of gray screen appears!
The game restarts, you would think that because this is something a lot of people have done there'd be an explanation on why this happens, but I can't find anything. Either way, the game doesn't restart as cleanly as you would expect...
Jigglypuff turns into... THAT.
The various pokemon that appear on the intro screen now face the wrong way... They also flicker in and out randomly but good luck grabbing a screen cap that could appropriately represent that. Pressing start will bring up a gray screen again, but if we press "A" twice the game will continue on from the last save point!
I actually had a save file on this ROM before this LP where I tested out a bunch of other glitches just to see how they behaved and such. The game appears normal, but it's far from it. When you try to talk to people, there are no text boxes; you just have to keep mashing B blindly until the person stops talking. You can't see the start screen when you bring it up, but if you happen to click the pokemon menu...
The overworld sprites disappear and the area becomes the background for your pokemon menu! Sure you can't see their names but you can go between them just fine. Bringing up their stats makes all hell break loose though, it brings up this mess...
And then the game suddenly thinks you're in a battle and apparently you throw a pokeball and catch some unknown entity and then the game crashes. At this point everything flickered like crazy and I couldn't get such a good screenshot, you can see nurse joy at the top flickering a bit so you know I'm not just speaking bullshit.
Other than that, the game in this state if you DON'T look at pokemon stats is pretty boring, trainers don't notice you, you can't get into any random encounters at all, you just walk around with nothing to do. Still, the random battle in the overworld was pretty entertaining, so I guess we got that out of it.
RUMORBUST: What happens when you walk into the grass fields east and west of Pallet town?
Absolutely nothing, except for the game crashing. There are no secret pokemon, no level 100 wilds, your best friend in Elementary lied to you. I just thought you should know.
That should be enough for now. Next time: Pokegods! Oh and Brock too I guess