The Let's Play Archive

Pokemon Blue

by Metroixer

Part 11: Nightmares




Let it be known that all of the craziness in this update was done in GameShark. But the unique pokemon we see here can also be encountered through the Mew glitch.

09: Nightmares

Welcome back to our MIND BENDING ADVENTURE. Today we will be attacking Giovanni, the last gym leader.



Err wait. First of all my name is still Joshies, I can fix that but it takes effort, I'll do it later. Secondly, we completely missed Sabrina! That can't do, so we're gonna have to go fight her next. Unfortunately going to her is going to be pretty boring, then again I guess I do need a break after all that we've been thr










































Ah Game Freak, your strange ear icon will never cease to confuse me. As it has nothing to do with games or freaks. (That is an ear right?)



And lo, a shadow sprints towards me. I have enslaved their kind and now they seek revenge. I could see this coming, ever since the inevitable resistance of Lord Fatty of the Cerulean Region I began to feel the pinch of failure. It grew as our adventures continued, and now it comes to this. I stand my ground with sword ready, prepared to fight any horrible creature that awaits me.



Oh! It's just a pikachu



OH IT'S A PIKACHU!



Welcome to Let's horribly break Pokemon Blue: Special pikachu edition! When gamefreak decided to make a third (Technically fourth) 1st gen game, there was no doubt that they knew of the various glitches and quirks that were discovered by the players. Most notably the Missingno. glitch, they were able to fix it in this game by finally fixing those little strips of land by Cinnabar and Seafoam. That is not to say however, that some things were still left uncalled for. Such as the Mew glitch, which still worked, and still allowed you to encounter a "missingno." not only that, but Special Pikachu edition has it's whole new cast of pokegods. However they are admittedly... Different. Gamefreak made sure to make pokegods and glitch pokemon such as missingno. harder to obtain, and the whole "game crash among encounter" thing is a lot more strict, making them not as plenty to get. However, this has created side effects, and we're going to explore some of that in this update.



It's nice to finally have some color, even if it's going to be for a little bit. Black and white can be a bit jarring after a while.



However, the addition of pretty colors comes with a strange price. For example, this is what happens in Yellow if you encounter pokemon with none of your own. To be honest, pretty much the same thing happens like in Red and Blue. Except the colors get a bit funky throughout the fight. Not only that, but any pokemon you encounter just turns red. Like this ratatta. Otherwise, it's still the same old nameless glitch pokemon that only knows the cooltrainer move with the game freezing after winning the battle or being in it for too long. If you try to fight a trainer with no pokemon the game just downright freezes, in my experience it hasn't even given me a chance to send out a pokemon.



With that disappointing truth out of the way (for some reason I really expected something different) let's get Oak to give us a pokemon. Now the intro to Yellow works a little differently than Red and Blue. In R/B as soon as you step into the grass patch Oak tells you to get out and into his Lab. In Yellow, you actually have to move another step north, so Oak can walk into the grass with you.



Oak still tells you the same thing yadda yadda. Except since both of you are in the grass, a wild pokemon just happens to appear!



Err... Wait that's not supposed to appear there. Oak! Run you old fool!



It's impossible for Oak to NOT catch whatever pokemon runs into you here. Whether it be intended or glitchy, it will be caught. This may work for our advantage, except...



Oak? Gary? Old man? What's going on, WHAT HAPPENED.



Damn the lesson do you not see that there are clones of me marching past us and through every physical barrier. This is a glitch that for some reason is unique to yellow, if you can successfully exit a fight from certain pokegods, a march of the clones will occur. I can only assume this happens because of how a pikachu follows you around in the game and the data from that somehow gets mixed up. It's my best guess anyway. Also Oak's sprite turns into the Old Man, there are just some traditions that will never change I guess.



Somehow the game keeps trucking along and Oak tries to take me to the Lab while all these clones are walking around. I should mention that Oak and I are also flickering in and out of existence while walking through houses.



Not surprisingly, I get stuck while the escort music is still playing. Not even the walk through walls code could even get me out of this, so I'm forced to restart.



Fine, let's do things normally. So if you're not using a gameshark like I did to force the game to have a glitch or other pokemon appear for Oak to catch, you'll find the anime's pikachu. I like the fat ones in R/B better. So Oak catches it, Gary steals the Eevee that was supposed to be yours, and you're stuck with the rodent as Oak gives you this message.



After we're through what I'm planning to do he's not going to want to get OUT of his pokeball. Tell me pikachu, what do you think about glitches?



What? No interest? Man what a letdown No matter, I'm sure opinions will change after we go through some of them. So let's get right to it, how about we try to fight the Yellow version Missingno. ourselves? We'll be using the grass patch just right above Pallet Town, how does that sound pikachu?



You're as bad as that dumb water otter that just got revealed for gen 5 (smug snake lizard all the way). Anyway, there's something important I should probably say about the Missingno. of yellow version. Yellow Version Missingno. and R/B Missingno. only share one thing in common, and that's the name. Where R/B Missingno. is helpful, usable, and safe; the yellow Missingno. is... Well this is probably the best way to put it.



IT CRIES FOR BLOOD

So as you can see, Missingno. is a TAD BIT more dangerous in yellow. It is possible to fight it, and I was able to do it once, but accidentally closed the window from pressing the wrong button to capture screenshots. That was a bummer. In regards to what Missingno. in yellow can actually do in your game, most say that it has similar affects as 'M in R/B except worse. So if you want my opinion, if you want to keep your save file try to NOT encounter this thing. You can also see that this game has locked up faster than R/B normally would when encountering a new pokemon. As I said before it seems that Gamefreak was a bit more on the ball here for stopping adventurers from fighting some glitch pokemon, although you can still fight most. Still, there's more than Missingno. that freezes upon encounter.



This is female symbol, probably one of the better known Pokegods in Yellow. She can be fought and maybe even captured, but I have not had such luck. Her most notable trait is her cry, as it is the longest cry of any pokemon in any game. Some believe that the cry loops, since it has a resemblance to music of a particular area.

Oh but what a terrifying cry it is.

First two glitch pokemon encountered, and both are horrible screaming nightmares, how about we check out the ones that are somewhat stable? What do you think Pikachu?



You are hard to impress.



Let me introduce you to 3TrainerPoke, a stable glitch fortunately. It's got a neat color to it, and in terms of effectiveness, I think I would say it's yellow's version of H Poke. It's also level 5, a level 5 pokemon in grass patches before Viridian. I guess gamefreak decided to up the levels here a bit?



Oh by the way it knows ridiculous moves like Comet Punch which one-hit KO'd my pikachu. (Pikachu's fainting cry is hilarious in yellow. You have not lived until you hear it)



Oh come on you know I didn't mean it. So, why don't we try to catch 3TrainerPoke? To do so we're pretty much gonna have to do the stuff with Oak's Parcel again, but that's no big deal. Get some gameshark codes, buy a couple of master balls, and before you know it,



Without the Pokedex crashing, we have successfully caught our first Pokegod in yellow!



Which turns into a FUCKING RHYDON.



Which also continues to fight us? 3TrainerPoke does an 'M like a thing in where if you catch it, it will still fight. However in 'M's case you only have to catch it twice to end the battle. For this Pokegod, you can catch it 100 times and it will still end up fighting you.



On a positive note, this just cuts out the middle man in having to encounter another one in the grass. Do try to be careful though.



It can use a nameless move, and normally that means Superglitch. Although nothing really happened in my game. The move was just shown as Pay Day (note: You don't get any money from this attack, the glitchy Pay Day I mean).



It also reduced my Master Ball count from 99 to 5. It's like, the opposite of Missingno. in terms of item duplication.



Yeah okay I think we're done here. We got the Pokegod, shown off what weird stuff it did, and now it's poisoned pikachu. We're gonna run, you ok pikachu?



I'll take that as a "No". The whole "Scrambled Graphics" effect is still present in Yellow, and it seems to affect more than just battle sprites, as you can clearly see.



On the way to the Pokemon Center, I check out 3TrainerPoke's stats. Pretty fucking good for a level 4 pokemon, except for the speed, I guess it's a tank glitch. Again you'll notice the blank move at the bottom of the screen, we're gonna test that out soon enough, like now.



Fighting with 3TrainerPoke (man that is an annoying name to type) is pretty sane. His name is so long that it cuts into his sprite, but it's not like we could tell what it is anyway. The blank Pay Day glitch attack just doesn't seem to do anything. I guess some glitch moves are just blank now for no apparent reason, as I know SuperGlitch moves in yellow are very present and in the form of blank names.

Finally, a glitch dex entry:

3Trainer Poke
Pokemon #176
Type 1/(blank), Type 2/Normal
Hex Value: 00
Starting Moves: Water Gun, Water Gun, Sky Attack (if traded from R/B)
R/B Equivalent: 'M

Stats Lv.100: Atk 497, Def 417, Spd 47, Spc. 4


The glitch dex description of 3TrainerPoke is really shoddy. APPARENTLY when you encounter it in the wild, it will be poisoned. I have not had this happen. Also when catching it once it's sprite will change to two vertical lines, again, this has never happened to me. Also it's back sprite can be that of a tentacool and it will evolve into kanghaskan when gaining experience. Nope, never happened to me. This is either me having a really weird ROM or a great demonstration of how diverse some similar looking pokemon games are in terms of glitches. Other reports state that its HP bar can stretch across the screen and even freeze the game, so I guess you SHOULD be careful when using it, but I would question the validity of some of these reports.

Hey pikachu how you holding up



Guess you're still feeling some of the side effects, don't worry you'll be completely fine! Now I've heard of this one interesting glitch, if we can encounter it I'm sure we can find some neat things to do.



Well I guess the game doesn't want us catching it. How do people get this stuff to work?

Another example of a glitch pokemon that just won't show itself. This one in particular was "4 4". A glitch pokemon that refuses to be encountered normally in Yellow, however there is still a way to obtain it.

See, every Pokegod in yellow has it's own "Sibling" of sorts in Red and Blue. For example, 4 4 is related to "A" in that they share the same hexadecimal identifier. This means that, if you were to trade A over from Blue to Yellow, then you will have 4 4, effectively owning one. Of course, I can't trade or anything on the emulator, so that point is kinda moot. Yet it's kinda cool how the related pokegods can be so vastly different from each other (4 4 is a monster compared to A, as you can clearly see).



A black box approaches? Actually it's "pPkmnp", the sibling of .4! Unlike .4, it's pretty safe to encounter and catch from the get-go, no superglitch risks or anything (Actually it learns Superglitch at level 100 but we're not doing any power-levelling in this game so it doesn't matter). You may notice pPkmnp has a black box surrounding it (yes there is actually a glitch blob in there), just like female symbol! Again, it's a consequence from Yellow having color, is it a bad one though?



Well yeah, if you want to see how many Master Balls you have it is. These color glitches are kinda annoying in that they'll cover any text that stands in their way in any screen the pokegod appears in, like the pokedex.



This goes without saying that I caught it twice (rhydon).



Number 230, that's a kingdra! Sadly it doesn't have the moves or typing to represent it. I find the game's choice for it's sprite strange, since I can't think of any flying pokemon that are a poison type, and I don't think the mess in Type 1 is "flying" anyway. Also loving the stats, it's like the exact opposite of 3trainerPoke where it has stats of a level 1 pokemon across the board except for Defense.

pPkMnp
Pokemon #230
Type 1/(glitch), Type 2/Poison
Hex Value: C2
Starting Moves: Leer, Comet Punch, Doubleslap, Thunder
R/B Equivalent: .4

Stats Lv.5: Atk 6, Def 15, Spd 6, Spc 6
Stats Lv.100: Atk 31, Def 213, Spd 33, Spc 27

Learned Moves: Pay Day (Lv.6), TM07 (Lv.16), Psychic (Lv.17), Pin Missile (Lv.25), TM34 (Lv.33), Mimic (Lv.34), TM25 (Lv.48), TM18 (Lv.56), TM41 (Lv.61), TM50 (Lv.62), Night Shade (Lv.76), TM04 (Lv.88), Tackle (Lv.95), Nameless Glitch Move (Lv.100)


pPkmnp behaves like pretty much a normal pokemon would, except it has a giant fuck off black box that covers text and it learns the usual TM/HM/Superglitch moves. Go nuts with it. Can be obtained via Mew trick with a pokemon that has a special stat of 194.

I do have screenshots of using this guy in battle, and that will be shown shortly, but first I want to direct your attention to this



This is X - x. It is unique in that it is purple, like the color purple.



Oh it also knows Flash as an HM move which is okay I guess but PURPLE. I don't know why I like it so much but it's such a nice purple. I want that purple. We're gonna catch that purple, I'm gonna name this dude purple.



The purple doesn't show up on the stat screen, bummer. X - x has incredible stats, as it has very high base stats compared to other pokemon. For example, take the stats of that level 3 pokegod to the level 6 pikachu



As you can see, X - x has a higher attack and special stat despite it being three levels lower than pikachu. When this dude reaches level 100, it'll have health of around 400 with attack, defense, speed, and special stats of around 300. That's pretty good.



Now this guy I ran into by accident because I typo'd a gameshark code. It's just a slowpoke with a garbled name, but you also see how it looks like when you're using pPkmnp to fight. Yes, it blocks off all fight commands, yes it is annoying to fight with. Try playing through the whole game with it, I'm sure something fun will happen.



When glitchpoke (tm by me) is caught the sprite turns into this pukish green block. It has the normal stats your basic slowpoke with have as well as attacks (it only knows confusion at this level). However when you have it do it's cry in battle or in the overworld, the tune changes, just like when we catch 8!

Slowed down Cerulean city music. I actually think it sounds nice



Now this is what I wanted to appear! This is Glitchy Charizard, it is not the only glitch charizard we will encounter during this LP. I dunno why, but for some reason certain game glitches have a thing for using charizard as a sprite. It has the same effect as "a" in which whenever the name appears you have to press the A button multiple times to get pretty much anywhere in the menu.



As a side note, this is what X - x looks like when used in battle. It doesn't block out the text or anything, just gives everything a nice purple tint, personally I think it's neat.



Just like in R/B's a, nicknaming Glitchy Charizard will get rid of the annoying long name affect. I wanted to name it "Glitchizard" but there wasn't enough room



Oh hey, it's shiny! Well not really, shinies didn't exist until 2nd gen, this is just the game's colors screwing up again. You may notice that the attacks are quite blank. This thing pretty much has all the glitchy qualities a has, but it is not a's sibling! It shares a hex value of a pokegod we haven't encountered yet.



In battle, Glitchizard (also tm by me) has the same attacks any level 3 Charizard would. The moves aren't too interesting, what's notable is that on some occassions, entering a battle with Glitchizard will make the game slow down. Not only that, but it is one of the glitches in pokemon yellow that have... an interesting evolution table.

See, this pokegod is part of a 4 stage evolutionary line. You may be asking, well what does that mean? Let's imagine that you caught glitchizard over level 100 (which is only possible through gameshark due to the missingno. glitch being taken out). If you were to level up Glitchizard to level 255 it will evolve into either a Magnemite or a Geodude. What determines this, no one seems to know, but these pokemon then evolve into their own respective evolutions ie Magneton and Graveler. Technically, Graveler could then evolve into a Golem, so you could end up with a Golem that knows moves normally only fire types would know. It's a bit too much trouble, but if you're looking for something special, there ya go.

ISN'T THAT INTERESTING PIKACHU?



God fuck you



Here's another pokemon that freezes upon encountering, it is dubbed as "Q". Q is a sibling of "Charizard 'M" who we will encounter soon enough in Blue. There are two ways to get Q safely, one is by trading Charizard 'M over to yellow, the other way is evolution.



This innocent little guy is 44hy. There is really nothing special about it, only that it has the same stats and moves as a slowpoke, and it evolves into Q at level 6, probably the lowest evolution in the series that doesn't involve happiness.



Evolving 44Hy is easy enough in yellow since the pokemon are higher leveled in the starter areas compared to R/B, and are easy to kill thanks to stuff like Confusion.



Rare video footage of a glitch evolving found here



Okay so before you get confused, Q and TM55 are the same glitches, just different names. Don't ask me why, they just ARE. So Q is a pretty unique glitch among other pokegods, one thing you may immediately notice is this:



When Q is above Pikachu in your party configuration, pikachu just disappears. It's not invisible or anything, it's just not there. Pretty handy if you don't want it to keep following you (or just take the easier route of stuffing it in a box).



If you move Q to the top of your party this graphical mess occurs, the pokemon are still there and usable, but the sprites and info slowly deteriorate into whiteness. It's not permanent though.



Moving Q to the bottom of your party negates all the graphical effects. Q itself will be invisible but still selectable, and it'll be invisible no matter where you put it anyway.



It doesn't end there though, Q has a terrible curse of not being able to be healed at the pokemon center. This battle occurred after taking a quick visit and Q was not healed at all. If Q faints, you are forced to use a revive.

Finally, there is a very hilarious trick involving Q in the pokemon box. Basically, if you put Q in the same box as other pokemon and put them in a certain order, the stats will switch up. This means that you can have a caterpie with the stats of a mewtwo while the mewtwo gets the Caterpie stats. It doesn't work for moves unfortunately.

After depositing some Rhydons into the PC (you have no idea how many glitches turn into rhydons in this game I swear to god) I run into a strange sight.



Spot the strange object in this picture! I'll give you a hint, it's next to the Chansey. Besides the pokegod codes there are some fun Gameshark codes that involve turning certain NPCs into pikachus. The code I have on, for example, turns Nurse Joy, all gym leaders, as well as some other NPCs, into a rat.



Using the WTW code, you can even talk to chansey when you're standing next to it. Now, you can talk to it from behind the counter, but the fact they programmed in side and back sprites to the Poke center chansey is pretty neat (unless you can talk to a chansey in another place?).



There are even codes to turn your character into a Pikachu! Well kinda, it's more of a still image moving around. That sprite that's staring at you there? It's the only thing you see, no moving animation or anything. My dream of a duo pikachu party is crushed.



As always, pikachu is not impressed. Especially since your sprite is now covering up his little expression box (note: If you've never played yellow, Pikachu is only really a bitch in the beginning. I just never used him for fighting so it's going to be all "Meh" until new levels are gained).




Not even pikachu's own sprite is immune however. There are codes that could make it disappear and reappear and run all over the place and then morph into you before going back to normal. It's really quite unreal. Still, I think I like it. With this pikachu and a whole new game with all new pokegods, we can really do something interesting. I hope you enjoy this new LP, as we go through the depths of pokemon ye




































And that's what I think about the healthcare plan.