Part 4: The Champion's Secret

Welcome back! No, you're not color blind, I've just switched to a different emulator. I'm using TGB-Dual this time, because unlike VBA, TGB-Dual can actually emulate non-GBA Link Cables. That's right, today's madness involves a Cable Club glitch! But first...



You probably never noticed that the fossil you didn't take at Mt. Moon ends up in the Pokémon Zoo. But I never took a fossil, so the sign's blank.



With that out of the way, let's have a look at the worst idea ever conceived in Pokémon history: The Safari Zone. A grassy maze mandatory for your progress in this game...WITH a time limit. I'm sure it'll be good for something, though.



The battle system they made sure isn't though. Instead of combatting anything in here normally, they give you three options: Rocks that double both the catch rate and run rate of the enemy, bait that halves them instead, and what are effectively Ultra Balls. You have no attack options, so capturing like this is both frustrating and pointless, since I'm pretty sure there's nothing here you can't get elsewhere.



Lucky for us, there's a loophole. Let's go for a swim, and let's talk programming: In this game, entering an area makes the game load a list of possible grass, sea, and fishing encounters for that area. If there are none, like in a town, the game loads nothing and keeps what was there before. No biggy, right?



Check this out. It's the shoreline of the Seafoam Island. In the Japanese versions, the lower-right part of any given square determines:

1. Whether or not the square gives encounters
2. What kind of encounter, land or sea?

However, the International versions made a big, gigantic goof. For some crazy reason, they made #2 determined by the lower-LEFT part of the square. That means the shoreline here will give grass encounters. Even though I'm surfing. Because the left part of the square is land, right?

Figured it out yet? The game didn't load any grass encounters for the route because there are none. It has to use what it already had loaded from an earlier area. In other words...



Surprise! Safari Zone encounters outside the Safari Zone. No need to deal with the broken encounter system, just toss Master Balls! But if you know ANYTHING about Generation 1, you know there are bigger exploits to be had.

Well, for that, I need to get poisoned. Those Bikers on the Cycling Road should do nicely for this.



What's that? I didn't exchange the Bike Voucher yet? I need a bike to get past?



HA! No I don't! Just hold left and mash B at the gate and you'll get past eventually.



Even when you get past, though, you get a bike out of thin air. You also can't surf on this route because, and I quote, "Cycling is fun! Forget Surfing!" Goes to show the tastes of the protagonist. This guy would take a bike over surfing on the back of Gamera. Oh, but you'll love this:



The surfboard still works!



And when you get back on land, you're walking again. Anyhow, back to business.



Bingo! Poison, check.



Teleport right back and deposit everything but what you got poisoned.



Now I set up the second Game Boy. I've loaded it with a copy of the save I've been using.



I believe either trading or battling could work. I'm not sure if battling heals your team, which we don't want at this moment.



Dunno why, but this text box amuses me. If you walk through walls and talk to the Pokémon in the zoo, they just have the "!" as text also.



I think you have to enter the trade menu then exit. I do this anyways just in case.



Take note of what the menu looks like. Keep walking around the room as your Pokémon takes poison damage.



Eventually it will faint, and you'll black out. We black out a lot, should probably have that checked out, come to think of it.



Aha! The escape artist at work once again. Now that we're in this state, the menu has a Reset button instead of Save. Past this point, if you want to save, you need to change PC boxes, or attempt to enter the Cable Club again since that saves automatically.

Now let's get back in the water and--



Oh. You can't use items in the Cable Club, and the game thinks we're still there. Huh...guess I am getting Koga's badge after all.



Well, no problem, it's right here and all.



I'm sure Janine had nothing to do with that decision, heh heh.



So we fight this guy and we

wait WHAT



Yes, if you escape the Cable Club, all enemy trainers get replaced by the second player's team. Any AI the enemy trainer had is still there, though.



You know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking I could replace every trainer in the game with a weak team and run them all over even quicker!



Cheapskate.



I am a descendant of the static abyss! Chaos itself is my ancestor!



Er...that looks bad.



...uh...I guess the game only refreshes the enemy team if you went to the Colosseum?



Sheesh look at that life bar!



Yes, those are three status effects at once. He's frozen so he can't do anything and taking down that health bar would take ages, so forget this.



To fix this mess, go back to the Cable Club. You'll be rejected due to inactivity, but this will put the game back into a normal state.



OR NOT. Arrrgh. Okay, save, reset, reload.



Fortunately, that wasn't all for nothing. The Cable Club does something very, very funny.

It stores the other player's name...in the RAM space reserved for grass encounters.

Uh-oh. UH-OH.



BEHOLD. No Generation 1 player doesn't know about the Old Man glitch, where you view the capture tutorial then surf along the shoreline to get encounters based on your own name. I've done the same thing, only I've used the other player's name by going in the Cable Club and escaping with a black out. It works like so: the third, fifth, and seventh letters of your name determine the species of what you'll find. The second, fourth and sixth characters determine the levels. Remember this list?



This, however, I have no explanation for. I mean. 253 is 0xFD in hex, and you can't get that in your name...

Why is it based on the players' names? Well, the Old Man tutorial temporarily changes your name and inventory. The game has to store your name someplace else so it can copy it back after the tutorial is done, and they just so happened to put it where the grass encounters were.

This is, in fact, how Missingno. was initially discovered, though I imagine they must have gotten it by trading with an NPC on Cinnabar Island and then surfing on the shoreline. Trading with an NPC causes nothing but Level 80 Missingno. to appear here, because the NPC's name gets used for the trick, but that name is always an 0x5D byte (which makes the game print "TRAINER") and then nothing but 0x50 End-of-string bytes.

It's so famous a glitch that it's the only glitch to get an official statement from Nintendo, where they wussed out and tried their very best to get people to obey the rules of the game and not have fun exploring it. Hence, some European versions of the game desperately tried to patch it out.

The glitch works just fine in the French versions. In the Spanish and Italian versions, the relevant tiles give out surf encounters like they were supposed to - unless you're walking through walls, in which case it still works.

In the German versions, the glitch still works, but the Germans have a new trick up their sleeves. These versions let you put Ä, Ö, Ü, ä, ö, and ü in your name. This allows German players to find certain glitch Pokémon through this trick. I mean, you could just use the Mew Glitch, but this trick is so much funnier. Think about it. This trick was inadvertantly added in the International releases. Great to see Nintendo localization was as great back then as it is today.

Now that the painfully long explanation is out of the way, what else can we find at this point?



This is 'M, or M-block. Its ID is 000, and you might wonder how this is showing up, since obviously 0x00 isn't in my name. Well, it is - it's in the ninth, tenth and eleventh characters. You can only input seven letters for your name, but there's space for eleven. That also means that if you pick a preset name (Ash, Jack, etc.) you can't encounter 'M this way at all, because it copies 11 letters into your name if you pick a preset name. Anyways, 'M has all the properties of Missingno. including item duplication and moveset. He has some interesting qualities of his own, however.



For one, because his ID is 000, he can't be captured using the Mew Glitch. Oh sure, if the special stat you're using goes over 256 it loops back to 0, but for some reason, a special of 0 or 256 results in a blank text box with no encounter. Only the Old Man glitch (and some trickier methods) lets you see him.



Also, even after capture, he still attacks. This is VERY odd. After capturing, even if you steal from an enemy trainer, the battle is supposed to end, but this ONE glitch Pokémon continues attacking after the fact. So let's capture it again!



I'm...I'm not even going to ask how.



Now remember, Level 0 Pokémon are hard to get out of the PC because the game will probably crash upon their withdrawal, so be careful about sending them there.



The stats calculate correctly if you go over level 100, though. Look at how beautiful this is.



This, on the other hand, is just sad. Time for Rare Candies!



Oh man. 'M evolves to Kangaskhan at Level 1, did I forget to mention? This led to the insane theory that 'M is Kangaskhan's baby, which makes no sense, its ID is 000. In fact, have you ever used a Gameshark to battle while having zero Pokémon? 'M is what you send out if this happens.

On the other hand, 'M has the same TMs and learnset as Missingno., so really, Kangaskhan just gained access to Fly and Sky Attack. Ever ridden in the pouch of a giant flying kangaroo as it soars at the speed of sound? You'd use Water Sport in an instant if you did!



Oh yeah, you can use Rare Candies to send the limit-broken Pokémon to Level 255, but one more Rare Candy after that drops them to Level 0. So don't do that.



Next, we visit an old friend. This is Ghost Missingno.. Three of the 39 Missingno. have actual sprites, those being the Lavender Ghost, and the two skeletons of Kabutops and Aerodactyl from the Pewter Museum. Ever been walking along the beach and had a giant skeleton dig its way out of the sands, screaming at you for blood? You'd drop your Balls right there if you did!

These Missingno. have the item duplication ability as usual, and because the sprites are valid, encountering them won't corrupt the Hall of Fame unless they're captured and sent out in battle - and even then it might be okay, as they will attempt to copy either the enemy's sprite or the sprite of the last Pokémon in your party. I say "attempt" because if the sprite they're copying isn't in the same data bank as their own sprite, then you get a glitch block. They also have a unique property: Their stats and learnset are that of the most recent Pokémon to get loaded into the game's memory, whether viewed in the PokéDex, encountered, or viewed on the title screen. In other words, this Missingno. can have the stats of any Pokémon you want and any move you want.

There's one other thing I can show at the moment...



Yes, I shit you not, I found the RIVAL on the shoreline. It's that backslash in my name. It would have generated a Pokémon with an ID above 200, but anytime that happens, the game thinks, "Oh there's no way that's a legal Pokémon so it must be a trainer."

Now, that begs the question: What will his team be? Funny story. If you generate a trainer with the Mew Glitch, the attack modifier determines the team instead of the level of the Pokémon. Now not all trainer classes have 7 teams defined, so the game interprets junk data as their team and you might run into glitch Pokémon, and if their ID is over 200 then they'll appear just fine then.

But that's just the Mew Glitch. For whatever reason, trainers encountered with the Old Man glitch derive their team from someplace completely different, and the number of the team is determined by your most recent trainer battle elsewhere. Very, very odd. It's the same for every class, though. So what's our Rival got for us as he secretly trains on the Seaform shores?



There were two of these. Fittingly, their cry is a slowed down version of the Champion theme.



This one is nicknamed "Glitcherino" for obvious reason.



By the way, if your Pokémon is over level 100 it gets sent back to Level 100 anytime it earns EXP. Also, don't level up in a glitch battle like this or it'll have this loud BEEP noise the entire fight.



He also had a regular Missingno. in addition to this.



Finally, we have a surprisingly normal Flareon.



He says nothing when beaten, and we move on with no other issues. Trainers appearing in the wild...that is scary. Game Freak's not watching, are they?

BUT, the Champion Rival has one unique property. Beating him causes the victory music to not stop when you get back to the map, and the music will also not change from whatever's playing unless you change maps or enter battle. It's pretty amusing to have the Title theme playing on the overworld, but it can get annoying. The only way to fix it, as far as I know, is to beat the Elite Four for real, so I'm stuck with this for awhile, haha.

There are also trainers that can only be encountered with glitches. I couldn't screenshot it but I found a glitch trainer that just freezes when encountered. There is also the unused "Silph Chief" who just looks like a Scientist and has no real teams. There is also an unused trainer class WITH real teams...

PROFESSOR OAK HIMSELF. (Not my video)

Yes, apparently they wanted you to battle him at some point, and he has three teams, one for each starter, suggesting that last starter was going to go somewhere after all. What a great idea. Of all the things to take out...sigh.