Current Events > Wait Missingno was actually a glitch?

(+) Yeah! (+)

Nintendo's official statement on MissingNo confirms that the glitch was not intentional and seeks to discourage players from exploiting it: "MissingNo is a programming quirk, and not a real part of the game.

I always thought it was an intentional Item Dupe Easter Egg.

"Gives you 128 of your 6th item." seems way too odd and specific for a legit glitch.

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Of course it was a glitch. It fucks your game up if you catch it

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Yeah, it was pretty a pretty obvious glitch

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You thought a fucked up piece of code that messes up your inventory was an Easter egg?

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AlCalavicci posted...

Of course it was a glitch. It fucks your game up if you catch it

I caught it plenty.

Sometimes it even turned into another pokemon.

I'm not up on gameboy programming but how the hell does a glitched pokemon always turn up in the same place with the same name give you 128 of whatever Item 6 is?

How does that code work if unintentional?

I thought it was like a secret.

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This is why we have warning labels on everything

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Guns_of_Verdun posted...

I caught it plenty.

Sometimes it even turned into another pokemon.

I'm not up on gameboy programming but how the hell does a glitched pokemon always turn up in the same place with the same name give you 128 of whatever Item 6 is?

How does that code work if unintentional?

I thought it was like a secret.

Because you have to perform a specific combination of inputs to access that part of the code. It's not like Missingno is always there, you gotta talk to coffee guy first.

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Actually there isn't just one Missing Number but many. They correlate with values in the game's memory.

They were likely poke'mon that were either removed for balancing issues or other reasons.

There was actual pixel art as well as concept art that was leaked online a few years back and it lines up with the removed poke'mon theory.

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Wii_Shaker posted...

Actually there isn't just one Missing Number but many. They correlate with values in the game's memory.

They were likely poke'mon that were either removed for balancing issues or other reasons.

There was actual pixel art as well as concept art that was leaked online a few years back and it lines up with the removed poke'mon theory.

Yeah I was reading up that one of the original devs said there were intended to be 190 Pokemon and that contributes a lot to this madness.

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Guns_of_Verdun posted...

Yeah I was reading up that one of the original devs said there were intended to be 190 Pokemon and that contributes a lot to this madness.

The way I thought about it was like removing jenga blocks and it left a void in the game's memory where there used to be a value and it shifted the memory around when accessed.

Speedrunners take advantage of this extra space in the memory and manipulate events that shuffle the game's memory around to exploit the game.

There's a YouTuber I follow that mainly highlights how broken the Gen 1 games are. Particularly the Japanese Red and Green versions.

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Bruh

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mattymad posted...

Pokmon is known for a being a bit of a technical masterpiece

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

<_<

>_>

128 is 2^7, so a perfectly valid binary number (half an unsigned byte to be precise, or the positive values of a signed byte).

Okay but why randomly the 6th item?

Why does fighting it make the code decide this random specific item should become 128? Even if 128 is a valid binary number?

It's not like you have to set it up or use it in the battle. Like FF7's W-Item Dupe.

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Missingno is why I believed all the bullshit on the internet about other games, like in FFVII ways to revive Aeris.

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WeeWeiWiiWie posted...

Missingno is why I believed all the bullshit on the internet about other games, like in FFVII ways to revive Aeris.

never caught that damn elusive pikablu

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M_Live posted...

Both of those statements somehow apply lol

It's a perfect balance of quality and jank.

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I still want to know how the fuck anyone discovered the Mew Glitch

it has so many specific steps that it sounds like one of the bullshit elementary school playground rumors only its actually real

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littlebro07 posted...

I still want to know how the fuck anyone discovered the Mew Glitch

it has so many specific steps that it sounds like one of the bullshit elementary school playground rumors only its actually real

Same way they discovered how to credits warp in Mario world by doing a very specific set of actions probably.

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mattymad posted...

It has lots of good ideas with a flawed execution I guess is a fairer way to say it. The ideas are clever, make sense and required some decent thought/planning... But the code has holes in.

It's like a complicated system of pipes that's a technical marvel, only some of the joins drip a bit.

No clue. I can only assume something overflows somewhere that ends up overwriting the item count at a given address for whatever reason due to the offset and memory packing.

"Every Pokmon has two separate bit lists that tells the game whether it has been seen or caught. If the bit is off, that means it hasn't been caught or seen.

MissingNo.'s Pokdex seen bit is in the same location as the bit that stores how many of the 6th item is in the Bag, as well as 'M (00)'s. This is why, when MissingNo. or 'M (00) is encountered, the sixth item slot is increased by 128 if the quantity of the item is less than 128. The glitchy box symbol is a result of the game attempting to display a number greater than 99, which causes it to grab sprites from beyond the number sprites. Sometimes it can appear to be a blank tile, but if one goes somewhere else or out of battle it will revert to an unusual tile."

https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Item_duplication_glitch

So yeah, somewhat as I thought. MissingNo isn't a standard Pokmon, therefore his addresses for certain flags push outside the bounds of the usual Pokmon management memory and end up in the inventory memory blocks (they just happen to be next to each other I guess). The offset just so happens to leave that smack bang on the memory for "Item 6's item count". The game then sets the flag for "I've seen a MissingNo" which happens to be "Set that address to 128", which gives you 128 of that item.

That's just so crazy

It feels like a feature to me. It's hard to believe it was an accident.

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Guns_of_Verdun posted...

That's just so crazy

It feels like a feature to me. It's hard to believe it was an accident.

I understand what you mean.

Makes you wonder if there's cracks in our universe.

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Wii_Shaker posted...

I understand what you mean.

Makes you wonder if there's cracks in our universe.

Just wait until the guy you thought was methed out who was walking into the wall for the last 2 hours was actually building speed to clip through it.

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xXfireglzXx posted...

Just wait until the guy you thought was methed out who was walking into the wall for the last 2 hours was actually building speed to clip through it.

Skoom zoom.

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WeeWeiWiiWie posted...

Missingno is why I believed all the bullshit on the internet about other games, like in FFVII ways to revive Aeris.

Missingno + the SS Anne truck was the perfect amount of fuckery to screw with a bunch of children.

The steps to get Missingno, which were largely spread word of mouth among friends and classmates, were absolutely absurd and unbelievable. But dammit, it ended up working. So then you here about Mew under the truck. While it was wonky, it was nowhere near as crazy as Missingno, which worked, so it seemed totally viable. And sure enough you surf around there and there is a truck. But you can't move it. And you just assume your friends missed a step in telling you how to get it or you did something wrong. Nevermind the fact that nobody you actually knew got a Mew this way. But all the steps up to this point have panned out, it must be true. And John showed everyone his Mew at recess (which looking back he absolutely GameSharked in) so clearly it was possible to get Mew.

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It is very clearly a glitch. Programming missingno (and pretty much all of the gen 1 glitches) would have been much more difficult than people discovering holes in the coding of a game from '96 that can't get any updates.

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Anytime something in computing results in a number that is an exponential value of 2, there's a good chance it wasn't intended because usually that comes as the the result of an interger error.

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Guns_of_Verdun posted...

I'm not up on gameboy programming but how the hell does a glitched pokemon always turn up in the same place with the same name give you 128 of whatever Item 6 is?

You end up in a place in the memory that isn't supposed to be pokemon data and executable code, but the game thinks it is anyway.

Questionmarktarius posted...

You end up in a place in the memory that isn't supposed to be pokemon data and executable code, but the game thinks it is anyway.

Sure I get that but how would you unintentionally program a game that confuses meeting an enemy with a random inventory slot AND THEN also confuses the binary code to increase the value of said item to 128?

People are explaining that it's a code issue but the just go "Somehow just happens to move it to the memory count of the inventory."

It's not like it's inconsistent either. Always Slot 6, always 128, glitch always happens the same way.

There's nothing else like it in the entire game.

It just seems so planned. To me anyway

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Guns_of_Verdun posted...

Sure I get that but how would you unintentionally program a game that confuses meeting an enemy with a random inventory slot AND THEN also confuses the binary code to increase the value of said item to 128?

People are explaining that it's a code issue but the just go "Somehow just happens to move it to the memory count of the inventory."

It's not like it's inconsistent either. Always Slot 6, always 128, glitch always happens the same way.

There's nothing else like it in the entire game.

It just seems so planned. To me anyway

some users have already explained it bro

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What glitches actually feel like glitches to you then?

Because pretty much all item duplication glitches kind of look like this.

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I don't think I'm explaining myself well.

They're explaining that it's a code fuck up. But how the game confuses the code in this specific way, moving memory of meeting a pokemon to memory of Item 6 for absolutely no reason, Item 6 is turned to 128 due to a binary code fuck up, Item is not replaced only duplicated, is just answered with "I dunno I guess it just does somehow" which is weird.

That's not something you ever tend to see with glitches in games.

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Guns_of_Verdun posted...

It's not like it's inconsistent either. Always Slot 6, always 128, glitch always happens the same way.

You get an address that's supposed to be "roof tile #3" or something, when the game is looking for graphics data (or something like that). It's just a strange coincidence that the same data is a "set item slot #6 to 128 quantity" instruction set when the game somehow thinks it should be code.

NightRender posted...

What glitches actually feel like glitches to you then?

Because pretty much all item duplication glitches kind of look like this.

Not really?

As I said look at FFVII. You have to plan and input the items yourself.
Or Dragon Age where you have to take advantage of the Sell and Sell All mechanics having different inputs.

Or like the Don Tonberry EX exploit in FFX, which is hidden but blatantly intentional.

If you follow Speed-runs and challenge communities. Glitches are weird and inconsistent. Meanwhile Easter Eggs and Secrets are not. World 0 in ToeJam and Earl wasn't a glitch.

That's why I always assumed this was a secret from the devs to sneak in a fun item dupe for the super fans.

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littlebro07 posted...

I still want to know how the fuck anyone discovered the Mew Glitch

it has so many specific steps that it sounds like one of the bullshit elementary school playground rumors only its actually real

They definitely discovered it with other Pokemon, since you can make a few Pokemon appear with this glitch. Trial and Error once the glitch was discovered probably lead it to being able to find Mew as early as Cerulean.

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Guns_of_Verdun posted...

That's not something you ever tend to see with glitches in games.

Uhhh, yes it is

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ApherosyLove posted...

Uhhh, yes it is

Can you name some?

I've never heard of it

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Guns_of_Verdun posted...

Can you name some?

I've never heard of it

FFVII has an easy to do item dupe glitch as well as Yuffie warping.

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https://youtu.be/kpk2tdsPh0A

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Numbers like 128 and 256 are some of the most common numbers you see in programming because they are powers of 2 (important for binary).

That it's 128 items supports the idea that it was a glitch and not intentional.

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Okay jokes aside:

Cause
Every Pokmon has two separate bit lists that tells the game whether it has been seen or caught. If the bit is off, that means it hasn't been caught or seen.
MissingNo.'s Pokdex seen bit is in the same location as the bit that stores how many of the 6th item is in the Bag, as well as 'M (00)'s. This is why, when MissingNo. or 'M (00) is encountered, the sixth item slot is increased by 128 if the quantity of the item is less than 128.

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spikethedevil posted...

FFVII has an easy to do item dupe glitch as well as Yuffie warping.

Remember that Red/Blue/Green are held together by sticky tape and hope.

Sure but in FFVII you input the items. You just trick the game into creating more of them.

MissingNo has no connection to the inventory, no knowledge of what Item 6 is even is, you don't even need to catch it, it doesn't replace whatever Item 6 was or delete it and it just duplicates it.

And the glitch is fully consistent and can be repeated every time

If you had to use the item in battle or if you had to catch it or if item 6 was always replaced by a Potion or something, It would be less odd.

I really haven't seen stuff like that as glitch. I have seen stuff like that over and over as intentional secrets.

Why I always thought it was intentional as a kid.

Like in Baldur's Gate where you can steal random NPC's underpants and they have no use. But if you keep them and steal all the underpants across all the games, exporting the same character over and over. You can combine them into a super armor set.

If you told me that was a glitch I would be suprised too.

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Memory manipulation is actually one of the more common tricks you see in glitched speedrunning on classic consoles, especially Nintendo consoles. The reason that the current super Mario world speedrunning record is like 3 minutes is because you spend the entire time manipulating item positions and inventory to create the perfect conditions to trick the game into warping you directly to the end credits.

There's some crazy bullshit out there in the speed running community that all works on the same principle is missingno.

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mattymad posted...

Imagine I have two columns of things Infront of me.

One column is different items, a circle, a cube, a pen, etc.

The other column is rows of numbers.

We then make the assertion that, the number in the corresponding row of the item, is how many of that item we have.

Missingno is like some random guy coming over, going to row 6 and changing the quantity column to 128.

It doesn't need to know anything about the item because it's not touching the item itself.

Yeah I get it.

but it's weird.

I think I'm not explaining what I'm trying to say very well. I'm not saying no one has said how bad coding works. Just how weird and unexplained this example is.

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Guns_of_Verdun posted...

Just how weird and unexplained this example is.

it's not unexplained, it's been explained like 5+ times in this topic alone <_<

for what it's worth, there are many other bizarre bugs that happen on catching/viewing/etc glitched pokemon or moves. just that most of them aren't particularly useful and so they're a lot less well known. missingno. doing something actually visibly useful isn't because it was made that way, it's because people have filtered out all the ones that just crash your game on encounter or transform into rhyhorn when caught or evolve into mankey four times in a row and then delete your save file

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UUA
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