Part 8: Missing Number
Thread re-opened! Kinda feel bad for not warning you guys first but I think you get the picture. Just... Don't get too carried away from now on. I'll be sure to point it out if you do, no more topic closing promise
.With that out of the way, I give you a special update
07: Missing Number
Welcome back! Hope you enjoyed the little thread hiatus, we're up and running again so let's go do what I think a lot of readers have been waiting for, the Cinnabar Island (and if you are so inclined, SeaFoam Islands) duplication trick. To do this we're gonna need a pokemon that knows surf, now normally the only way we can get surf is by getting to the end of the Safari Zone. That requires EFFORT on my part, that will not do.
To remedy this situation, I have searched out a gameshark code that can let you buy an item that may make some of you guys wet yourselves. For some reason, there's a code that allows you to buy this little item from the pokemart, it's free, and it's special in that it does the job of an HM without the need of wasting a move for any of your pokemon. This is practically a surfboard, and I believe it is the closest we will ever get to a pokemon game having "HM items" which - while being a better idea - will never see the light of day because gamefreak doesn't like messing with traditional gameplay elements. Stupid as they may be.
The item duplication glitch requires that you actually OWN the item you want duplicated. We're gonna do it for rare candy like any other young child would because seriously I'm sick of having Mew carrying all the weight. If you are in lack of rare candy there is one near the entrance of Mt. Moon (If you've never used/found it that is). Move the item you want duplicated to your sixth item slot.
As stated before, the glitch can be done in Cinnabar and Seafoam Islands. However doing it through the islands is really troublesome because you can't fly there, so you'd have to surf there and suffer a constant barrage of tentacool and swimmers. You're better off just surfing south of Pallet to Cinnabar. Simply appearing there is good enough to have it added to your list of flight destinations. NOTE: You don't really need fly, in my experience when I did it with seafoam islands and ran into wild pokemon on the way, I still was able to encounter the glitch pokemon that made the glitch work. However, fly just makes things so much more easier and faster. Why wouldn't you have fly at this point of the game anyway?
Now, fly to Viridian and talk to the old guy that blocked your way for coffee waaaaaay back at the beginning of the game. Say no to his question and you'll get a demonstration on how to catch a weedle, because we all know weedle are fucking hard to catch (well actually they're pretty rare in Blue but that's not the point). Like glitch city this all sounds really weird and stupid complicated, but bear with me here. When the OLD MAN is done with his demonstration fly back to Cinnabar.
Now just surf along the coast of Cinnabar. Try not to get off the coast because you may have a chance to stop the glitch from working. I mean, I'm probably wrong but you don't want to take any unnecessary risks. Eventually you'll find one of two things. The first one is this:
Depending on your name you will most likely encounter some wild pokemon that you normally can't catch in the wild with an abysmally high level. In my case I get Haunters at a level of motherfucking 132. These levels are the real deal too, the stats WILL go up with the level, so this thing can really wreck my shit if I'm not careful. Good thing I have master balls!
A show off of the haunter's stats that you just saw. As you can see, its special (attack and defense) is the highest probably seen in this LP so far. It is completely safe to catch the overlevelled pokemon, you can use them to your heart's desire in-game, and they can be a fun nasty surprise for any kid friends if you ever time travel back to the 90s. However, using them in-game any experience you get will revert you back to level 100, which is kinda lame but hey, level 100 Haunter!
Now remember I said this is one of two things you can encounter surfing along the coast. The powerful pokemon don't make the item duplication glitch occur. However, these guys, do:
I humbly present MISSINGNO. or in this case, it's "sibling" M. They're pretty much similar except for some things (hint: M is really stupid to use in battle). These guys are like the cornerstones of pokemon glitches. Their foundation brought the research nerds have undertaken to discover the pokegods and glitch items and cities of old. They are THE original glitch, and are the most well known. I am going to catch them both.
Catching M off the bat gives you a blank pokedex entry... Then it turns into a rhydon. Rhydon they are all I fucking see I swear.
Ah but what's this? Even after capturing M it still fights! Unlike Missingno. M has the unique property in that to own it you have to catch it in its sprite form twice. Why the sprite form and not the one we're fighting now?
It turns into a Ditto (Also notice Mew's back sprite is gone for some reason, weird). Now I have a useless Rhydon and Ditto taking up space in my party, making that six pokemon, and I have to go and deposit them. Don't worry about leaving the coast though, as long as you don't occupy a wild pokemon area and stay in Cinnabar there should be no chance of the glitch to stop working. Most importantly...
Encountering M has given us a bucketload of our sixth item, 255 copies exact! Not infinite, I don't know where people got that idea, but you will run out of rare candies eventually, so you have to redo the glitch if you want more... So why do the items duplicate?
In Gen 1, each pokemon has a so-called "Pokedex byte", this tells the game whether the pokemon has been seen or captured. 0 = Neither seen nor caught, 128 = seen, and 255 = caught. The pokedex byte of Missingno. and M is programmed in the same area as the byte that stores how many of the 6th item you have in your bad at the moment. So, when you encounter Missingno or M a byte of 128 is input not only to the pokedex but to your item numbers as well, and a byte of 255 is added if you actually catch the glitches. I may as well explain that the glitch boxes that appear before the regular number are the game's attempt to display a number over 99, which obviously it wasn't programmed to do. The glitch box/tile will change as you move from location to location, sometimes it'll even animate! Thanks to this oversight, we can now do something that I've personally been wanting to do for a while now, power levelling the fuck out of the pokegods.
Well in this update I actually really bothered to level up .4 all the way up (and some of H poke). I'll post the moveset I got for it soon, but before I do I believe it's worth noting that having .4 learn the move that destroyed the game so badly back when I first got him seems to be fine outside of battle. Delete superglitch, and everything will be okay again and .4 will actually be pretty safe.
Another cool thing about .4, it learns HM moves naturally! I'm pretty sure other glitch pokemon do it to but .4 learns the most out of all the rest. I stuck surf on it because surf is pretty much the best move ever for any pokemon that can learn it, I think.
Be warned that when powerlevelling .4 and pretty much any other pokegod (not glitch, that's Missingno. and M) that it will try to relearn the superglitch move at least once. Unless you want to put the game at risk/see more crazy shit I would advise against doing so.
In the end, we got a bitching level 100 pokemon with some bitching defense and 3 glitch moves. Here's a brief overview on them:
TM05
type: Glitch
power: 0
Acc: 0
PP: 33
Effect: Increases user's evasiveness by 3 stages (you thought double team was bad)
TM09
Type: IIIItoto
Power: 255 (The highest power you can get in this game I believe)
Accuracy: 33%
PP: 16
Effect: User faints after using the attack (So it's pretty much explosion)
TM28
Type: (Name of last trainer fought)
Power: 85
Accuracy: 46%
PP: 54 (wow)
Effect: Has a 30% chance of lowering the target's special stat
Hopefully I don't have to explain surf to you guys, if I get annoyed enough with the bad accuracy of .4's attacks I'll just stick with surf. With how much PP some of these moves have though, and with .4's super high defense, I don't think I should have much to worry about. Unless it goes to sleep, which happened a lot when I tried using some of the moves. They work but damn .4 falls asleep a lot.
Finally, with one of our pokegods powerlevelled (and then falling asleep to a haunter) we can catch M for real this time. Since we already "Caught" it earlier this time it shouldn't turn into a Rhydon or Ditto or anything stupid like that. Again there'll be a sort of "ghost" M that'll keep fighting you but you may as well just run away because hey we got what we came for.
Here are the stats of our newly obtained M. Holy glasscannons batman, this thing has a good enough attack but good luck having it actually touch anything. M and Missingo. are both caught with their "Signature" attacks, two water guns and a sky attack. Can they learn anything else? Let's check out the glitchdex entry! (provided by trsrockin.com as usual)
'M
AKA: M Block, Mysterio, Missinglingo
Pokemon #000
Type 1/Normal, Type 2/Bird
Hex Value: 00
Starting Moves: Water Gun, Water Gun, Sky Attack
Yellow Equivalent: 3TrainerPoke
TM Moves: Cut, Fly, Mega Punch, Razor Wind, Swords Dance, Mega Kick, Toxic, Take Down, Double-Edge, Bubblebeam, Submission, Seismic Toss, Thunder, Fissure, Teleport, Rest, Thunder Wave, Tri Attack, Substitute
M is encountered using the Cinnabar Island duplication trick with specific characters applied to your character's name. It can be caught twice, but the M caught the second time will turn into a level 0 or 80 ditto. When M gains a level, it will evolve into Kanghaskan. The moves it knew before will carry over, so you can have a kanghaskan that knows sky attack and fly. Storing M into the PC will cause the game to freeze when you try to withdraw any store pokemon, but for some reason this can be bypassed when playing the game through the stadium emulators. M will appear as a Rhydo Substitude doll in Stadium, and will not be able to fight in any battles. In Stadium 2, it will appear as a ditto knowing only transform. M causes much more damage to Hall of Fame records than Missingno. Encountering one will make your game save automatically, and catching one will give the most interesting hall of fame glitches. Contrary to popular belief, M is NOT a remnant of Mew, however there are thoughts on M being a remnant of Missingno. due to similarities.
So in case you didn't read that, levelling up M cause something very annoying to happen, at least it's annoying in my opinion...
Yep. When M levels up, it evolves into Kangaskhan (losing its glitchy name in the process). As you can see, Kangaskhan retains the moves it learns, so if you wanna freak some old players out go ahead. A shame there was no trade connection between gen 2 and 3 but it's understandable as to why. Regardless I'm stuffing this guy in the box, he's boring, and we're about to get something that is just like him without being boring.
I am, of course, talking about Missingno. Now you may ask, I only encounter Haunter and M along the cost, how can I encounter Missingno.? simple, with a name changing cheat. Yet, what DOES my player name have to do with the glitch at all? Here, is where I explain why the Missingno./item duplication trick happens.
When making the maps for areas where pokemon would appear GameFreak had a bit of a slip up. The strips of water east of Cinnabar and Seafoam were programmed to have pokemon appear in them, the issue is Gamefreak forgot to define exactly WHAT pokemon would appear. Normally this isn't a huge issue, only that the previous setting for what pokemon appear still remains if you surf there. For example, say you were on route 2 with pidgey's and rattata's, if you went to Cinnabar and surfed alongside the coast, you would encounter those same pokemon (not at godly levels though). This brings me to my next point, when you talk to the Old Man to catch Weedle GameFreak changes the variables that are assigned to your name to "OLD MAN". This way, the game can show the player things like "OLD MAN threw the poke ball". To do that, the game overwrites the variable you input to your name, while the OLD MAN is on screen, the game needs to store the variables to make up your name to another place to be used again later. What the programmers did, was stick the variables of your name with the slots of what pokemon you can run into and what level. Then, when the player enters a defined area where the player can encounter pokemon, all the variables are put back into the respectable areas. However, as a result of the overlook at the Cinnabar and Seafoam coasts, the game DOESN'T put everything back to place, and as a result you fight pokemon based on the variables used to define the player's name.
Now, how are levels and pokemon determined? For levels, the 2nd, 4th, and 6th letters of the Player's name determine the levels of the Pokemon you can run into. It's simple, take the numerical equivalent of the letters (A = 1, D = 4) and add 127 for uppercase letter or 159 for lowercase letter. Symbols can also be used into play here:
( 154
) 155
: 156
; 157
[ 158
] 159
PK 209
MN 210
? 239
P(monetary symbol) 240
x(times sign) 241
. 242
? 245
So, if you have symbols in your name in specific positions, you can encounter some pretty powerful pokemon.
Now, if you want to catch a specific pokemon, this is where letters 3, 5, and 7 come into play. Having any of the letters (Note: Uppercase and lowercase produce different results) listed below in those spaces will make those pokemon appear on the coast. Ironically, you can't catch Mew with this glitch because its HEX is to low
A: Golduck
B: Hypno
C: Golbat
D: Mewtwo
E: Snorlax
F: Magikarp
G: Missingno.
H: Missingno.
I: Muk
J: Missingno.
K: Kingler
L: Cloyster
M: Missingno.
N: Electrode
O: Clefable
P: Weezing
Q: Persian
R: Marowak
S: Missingno.
T: Haunter
U: Abra
V: Alakazam
W: Pidgeotto
X: Pidgeot
Y: Starmie
Z: Bulbasaur
a: Missingno.
b: Missingno.
c: Missingno.
d: Ponyta
e: Rapidash
f: Rattata
g: Raticate
h: Nidorino
i: Nidorina
j: Geodude
k: Porygon
l: Aerodactyl
m: Missingno.
n: Magnemite
o: Missingno.
p: Missingno.
q: Charmander
r: Squirtle
s: Charmeleon
t: Wartortle
u: Charizard
v: Missingno.
w: Missingno. (KABUTOPS FOSSIL)
x: Missingno. (AERODACTYL FOSSIL)
y: Missingno. (GHOST)
z: Oddish
Notice how there are no special characters listed, those produce... Different results. We'll save them for later.
Now, with that in mind we can change our name via gameshark (how convenient) and encounter other pokemon, like Missingno.!
We'll be sporting the name "JOSHIEs" for a bit. The S is in the third and seventh slot and it is one of the many variables that can make Missingno. appear.
For reference:
Letter 3 S: Missingno.
Letter 5 I: Muk
Letter 7 s: Missingno.
As you can see, we are now encountering different pokemon! As a quick note, when changing your name you have to talk to the OLD MAN again so the game can store the new variables. I don't catch Muk because, uh, I wouldn't use him.
Finally, here it is. The real deal, Missingno. (Abbreviated for the phrase Missing Number) was the first glitch pokemon discovered and made popular by word of mouth. So popular in fact, in that people thought M and Missingno. were the same thing.
Luckily it's not, so catching it is as easy as any other pokemon. Now before I go any farther let me iterate this as clearly as I can: Missingno. is safe. It will not erase your game. As a matter of fact, it is one of the most beneficial glitches in the game. If anyone told you that Missingno. crashed their game, do not believe them. Either they are Bullshitting you or they are thinking of a pokegod or something.
Also I may as well say that Missingno. does NOT turn into Yoshi. I've heard some bullshit rumors about this and for some reason they got reasonably popular, Missingno. is not some sort of pre-evolution of Yoshi. That is stupid, you are stupid for thinking that
.
What I CAN confirm about Missingno. is that it does not evolve while levelling up, and it can level up past level 100 if you catch it at such a level. It can go all the way up to level 255 through the use of rare candies, after that...
Back to level 0, with 5's across all the stats. No matter how many times you level it up, Missingno. will not learn a move. Like M it will be stuck with Sky Attack and two water guns until given a TM to learn otherwise, as a matter of fact...
MissingNo.
Pokemon #000
Type 1/Normal, Type 2/Bird
Hex Value: Various
Starting Moves: Water Gun, Water Gun, Sky Attack
TM Moves: Cut, Fly, Mega Punch, Razor Wind, Swords Dance, Mega Kick, Toxic, Take Down, Double-Edge, Bubblebeam, Submission, Seismic Toss, Thunder, Fissure, Teleport, Rest, Thunder Wave, Tri Attack, Substitute
I can't really say much about Missingno. since it's pretty much a safer M. What I can say is that it is a placeholder pokemon, filling up unused slots in the Hex list (speaking of I have to edit the update where I say pokegods are placeholders. They're not, they're just there as a kind goon was able to inform me.) Obviously you can't catch Missingno. through normal means, so GameFreak thought it would be safe to just leave it there. It is theorized that Missingno. is a replacement for pokemon that weren't able to make it into the game.
With that all done, I should probably tell you there's ANOTHER use for the Cinnabar coast. We're gonna take a visit back to Fuscia and find out what it is.
Of course the safari zone is involved! In fact we're gonna do the Glitch City trick again where we'll encounter probably the best known glitch city. We'll also have a little reward on the side.
To pass the step time while waiting to be Ding-dong'd, just surf along the coast. Remember how I said the coast had no defined pokemon area programmed into it? Well, that gives us a very helpful result.
Thanks to Gamefreak's mistake, you can encounter and battle safari zone pokemon along the coast. You don't HAVE to do the glitch city trick to make them appear, so you can surf all you want until a kanghaskan or chansey pops up for your master balling needs. As a side note, you guys are liars I did that whole "tap lightly to walk in place" thing to get pokemon appear and it didn't work. I stand by statement.
Get the PA to kick you out, and you are sent to...
A new part of Glitch City! Also the most well known, because you go to it the same way you encounter Missingno. and M. Just to clarify here, there is no connection between Missingno. and Glitch city.
Despite the popularity, glitch City here is kinda lame. If you don't have gameshark to use Walk Through Walls you'll get stuck a lot. Here you see my character being stuck inside a cave opening of all places.
However if you do have WTW on you can do the usual with walking along broken rooftops. You can surf along some of them too! That is, supposedly one of the more unique things about this particular glitch city in that you can surf in areas where you shouldn't be able to.
Alas, just like in cycling road, the water will eventually flood the area. Only this time you will be able to surf, without freezing to boot!
Sometimes you can even find pokemon among the waters!
Some very interesting pokemon
NOTE: You may notice that there's a new friend in the party I have not mentioned yet, don't worry he'll be covered in a mini update soon