Did you ever wonder what it’d be like to be able to skip the initial Professor Oak cutscene in Pokémon Red/Blue/Green/Yellow where he tells you it’s dangerous to walk into tall grass without a Pokémon companion? You may regret wondering that after watching this.
Joystiq featured YouTuber AndrewFMs’ “Pokemon… with no Pokemon?” video on its site, in which Andrew uses a hacked version of a Game Boy Gen I Pokémon game on his computer via a ROM. Andrew runs through many fun scenarios of how the game reacts when there aren’t any Pokémon in your team.
The first encounter Andrew uncovered in the hacked game was that of fighting a Tentacool (after walking, not surfing, on the water in Route 21, below Pallet Town). Andrew’s character Blue sends out a Missingno. against the glitchingly nameless Tentacool, with the Pokémon on both sides having what appear to be infinite health bars.
And then, as is status quo for the rest of the video, the screen eventually glitches itself into an odd pattern, freezing the game.
The reason that Blue was able to send out a Pokémon at all, and in the form of Missingno., is because that ‘Pokémon’ is Gen I’s reaction to all types of glitchy battles. Quite literally, Missingno. is just the words “missing” and “number” abbreviated and shoved together.
Missingno. in all its glitchy glory.
A fun classic glitch that introduced the world to Missingno. is outlined in this Bulbpapedia.net article. Bulbapedia’s explanation of the glitch includes talking to the old man in Viridian City and allowing him to demonstrate how to catch a Pokémon, Flying to Cinnabar Island, and then finally surfing up and down along the eastern coast of the island. Missingno. will soon appear.
In response to the popularity of the Missingno. glitch, Nintendo released the following statement on its Customer Service troubleshooting section:
“MissingNO is a programming quirk, and not a real part of the game. When you get this, your game can perform strangely, and the graphics will often become scrambled. To fix the scrambled graphics, try releasing the MissingNo Pokémon. If the problem persists, the only solution is to re-start your game. This means erasing your current game and starting a brand new one.”
It’s always fun to test out the limits of the older Game Boy games, in that they most likely weren’t created with longevity in mind. Little did Nintendo know, hackers would one day exploit every facet of its Pocket Monster games.
What’s your favorite classic video game glitch?
Featured image credit: AndrewFMs’ “Pokemon… with no Pokemon?” video (YouTube)
Image credit: MissingnoXpert’s “Let’s Glitch Pokemon Yellow Part 5: Missingno.” (YouTube)