The Bizarre Way Pokémon Stops Hackers

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]Have you ever wondered what would happen if you got into a Pokemon battle with no Pokemon in your party? Or tried to encounter a wild Pokemon in an area without any Pokemon to begin with? Or if you temporarily stored your name data in an unused part of the game's memory, then forced it to load that memory as a valid Pokemon using other arbitrary values of the game to determine its stats. I know I have. Here on this channel, I've made a bit of a habit of pushing the games of Pokemon to their absolute limit. I've played them in ways never intended, held them to the strictest scientific scrutiny, but today we are testing the very limits of the code itself. Get ready for a crash course in software engineering because this is a deep dive into the wacky world of glitch Pokemon that arise when you play the games in ways they were never meant to be played and the tricks and fail safes Game Freak implemented to try and stop you. Richard, hit that intro.

[00:01:20]The most famous glitch Pokemon of all time is undoubtedly Missino. If you remember this thing from the original Red and Blue, congratulations. You are old. It's the grandfather of all glitch Pokémon.

[00:01:36]Though admittedly, Missing Note does differ from all the other Pokémon we'll discuss in this video. in one key way.

[00:01:45]It's not a fail safe meant to keep you from breaking the game. It's the reason that all other games needed fail safes to begin with. I think the reason why Missing No is so infamous, even to this day, is because it sounds like some absolute nonsense that a third grader would make up on the playground and try to convince you that their uncle really does work for Nintendo. NO, DUDE. DUDE, I SWEAR. ALL RIGHT. He told me all you have to do is this series of completely arbitrary but very simple tasks to find a rare haunted Pokémon that's higher than level 100 with a new type that you've never seen before. Oh. Oh, and uh yeah. Yeah. It can give you infinite rare candies and master balls. DUDE, I SWEAR. AND yet somehow all of that is completely true. And the reason it works is equal parts very fascinating and very funny. See, most of the bizarre glitches in Pokemon Red and Blue are all due to the same little quirk in their programming, and that is a complete and unquestioning faith in you, the player. These games are held together by the digital equivalent of duct tape and bubble gum. put even an ounce of stress on the system and it'll fold like a stack of cheap laundry. I mean, if you looked up the definition of the words sturdy and reliable in the dictionary, you'd find a big picture of these games with a big old X over them.

[00:03:19]Or maybe you'd find the sponsor of this video, Flexispot, and their new Kama Japanese joinery bed frame. True story.

[00:03:28]I've moved four times in the past three years. And every single time I did, I'd have to totally disassemble my cheap metal bed frame to fit in the truck, which took like an hour and involved trying and failing to keep track of a million different little screws. It was terrible.

[00:03:46]>> That's the half that I didn't lose.

[00:03:49]>> But the good folks at Flexispot dared to ask a bold question. could you make a bed that didn't suck to put together?

[00:03:59]And the result of that dream was the Kana Japanese joinery bed. And hey, I know this is a sponsor segment, but that doesn't mean the engineering lesson has to end. So check this out. This bed is designed using an engineering principle called Poke Yolk, which is Japanese for mistake proofing. Something Pokemon Red and Blue absolutely did not do. It means that each part is specifically designed to slot together in just the correct way, making it incredibly simple and intuitive to put together. And the best part, it does all this with almost no screws.

[00:04:40]Ah, instead the structural support comes from tight tolerances and friction thanks to their precision machined highquality rubber wood parts. I mean, look how cool it just slots right on in there. Like all their products, this bed frame is very customizable with different models and wood types to perfectly match your room. and the cherry on top. The efficient, minimalist design means that it's not going to break the bank like a lot of other high-end bed frames. So, what are you waiting for? If you're looking for a solid and affordable new bed frame backed by the power of engineering, then go to the link in the description down below and use the code JPBF at checkout to save 20 bucks. And you know, your boy gets a little kickback, too, which will go a long way to help supporting some other videos that you might be seeing next week. So, it's a win-win. Thanks again to Flexispot for sponsoring this video.

[00:05:39]So, how the heck does Missing No work?

[00:05:43]Like I mentioned before, while it may seem completely arbitrary and random, it's actually the result of forcing the game to read its memory in very specific and unintentional ways. And it all starts with a drunk old man. If you talk to this guy in Vidian City, he will take you into a mock battle to teach you how to catch Pokémon. This battle is important for our glitch because it does something that no other battle in the game does. In order to sell the fact that this man is battling, not you, the game swaps out our sprite and name for that of the old man. In order to make sure it can put everything back to normal when the battle is done, the game has to store your name somewhere else in its memory. Problem is, Game Boy games don't have a ton of memory space to work with and oftentimes have to use the same strings of data for multiple purposes.

[00:06:45]Case in point, the section of the memory where the game stores your name also happens to be the same bit of data that defines the wild Pokemon encounters on the east coast of Cineabar Island. At first, this seems like a pretty clever idea. After all, there are normally no wild encounters in this area anyway. So, that section of memory wasn't being used for anything. And since the game clears out the placeholder name anytime you enter a new area, it'll be long gone before you get there.

[00:07:23]The problem is that flying to a new area as opposed to walking bypasses this check to clear out the name. So if you talk to the old man and sit through his battle, then immediately fly to Cineabar and surf along the east coast, you can encounter that stored name data as a wild Pokemon. And like I mentioned, Pokemon Red and Blue are not programmed to question anything you tell it to do.

[00:07:56]Doesn't matter that the Pokemon data you're asking to pull isn't actually a Pokemon at all and doesn't have most of the required data. Yes, sir. Right away.

[00:08:04]Here you go. And all the seemingly random things this Pokémon can do are actually the result of the game pulling in more non-PO data to fill in what should be there. For example, have you ever wondered why Missing No.

[00:08:23]Well, if you've seen my recent video on shiny Pokemon, you'll know that Pokemon sprite data is actually stored as a set of instructions on how to assemble colors from the game's base palette.

[00:08:36]Because the Pokemon you're trying to load isn't actually a Pokemon and therefore doesn't have a set of instructions, what you get is a raw color palette data. However, there is technically a way to assign your missing no proper sprite data. Remember, this glitch was the result of accessing a Pokémon based on your name. That means that the characters of your name can influence the eventual Pokemon the game spits out at you. Specifically, the third, fifth, or seventh character slots can assign Missing No sprite data from three nonp in the game. If one of those is a W or an X, it will have the sprites of the Kabutoops or Aerodactyl fossils from the Pewer City Museum, respectively. And if it's a Y, it'll be the ghost Pokemon from Lavender Tower. likely because all of these nonp sprites are stored in a different part of the game's memory.

[00:09:46]Your name can also give it a bunch of different cries, determine its level up to a maximum of 255, and sometimes just give you a totally normal rideon. And the weirdness doesn't stop there. See, most Pokemon have a chunk of memory dedicated to defining all of its stats, moves, Pokédex entries, stuff like that.

[00:10:09]And the game knows that when it finds a Pokemon defined in the memory, that whole next bit is reserved for that Pokemon. In this case, you're treating your name as a Pokemon, and the game incorrectly assumes that all the memory space directly after that is defining that Pokemon. This leads Missing Note to being a normal and bird type, which is apparently a precursor to flying that was never removed from the code, and has no weaknesses, resistances, or type effectiveness. It also has the absolutely incredible move set of sky attack, water gun, and water gun. And Missing No's most famous property, its ability to duplicate items in your bag, is once again due to a happy accident, as the game incorrectly attributes data.

[00:11:06]Normally, the game uses one bit of memory in a Pokemon's data to determine if it has been seen in your Pokédex, zero if it hasn't, one if it has. For missing though, that one bit just so happens to also be the first in the string that defines the quantity of the sixth item in your bag. In binary, changing this first digit from a zero to a one adds 128 of that item to your bag. So, with the proper planning, that means more rare candies and Master Balls than you could ever want, unless you want more than 128. As you can see, loading nonP Pokemon data as Pokemon can get pretty insane pretty fast, especially when you start changing that data and rewriting other parts of the game's code. Honestly, it's super lucky that this just changed your bag and not like if the game works or not.

[00:12:10]Now, you could argue that playground rumors like this were a major reason why Pokemon became so popular to begin with, but Game Freak decided that letting players completely break the games they paid for, potentially beyond repair, wasn't the best idea. So, in all future games, they included fail safes, things the game will throw at you anytime you try and load some data that doesn't exist or seem quite right. Think of them like the little Nedry guy from Jurassic Park.

[00:12:46]Ah, what's the magic word? These Pokémon are admittedly much trickier to encounter since all the games on the GBA onward had a lot more space to work with and didn't need to constantly double dip their data like Red and Blue. As such, the easiest way to encounter these failsafe Pokémon are by using glitches or cheats to encounter a Pokemon without having anything in your party. So, what happens when you try to send out a Pokemon but have nothing to send out?

[00:13:20]Well, Gen 2 has probably the simplest solution. The battle just ends, which yes, does mean that you can easily beat the whole game with no Pokemon in your party. I guess they decided that was a little unfair to reward cheaters like this, though. So, it was Ruby and Sapphire that gave us our first true failafe Pokémon. This guy right here.

[00:13:47]Its name is just 10 question marks leading to the fan name Deca Mark.

[00:13:53]Unlike Missing No, this thing was purposefully programmed into the game and made to be as useless as possible.

[00:14:01]It uses the sprite for a Pokemon that has not yet been seen in your Pokedex.

[00:14:06]It's a normal type, has no moves or ability, and has a zero in all of its stats. It's also level zero and requires 1 million experience to reach level one, at which point nothing really changes.

[00:14:21]As I said before, the easiest way to find Decamark is by using cheats to walk through walls and go into the grass with no Pokémon in your party. When the game realizes you have nothing to send out, instead of just chucking out whatever random bit of memory it feels like, it'll instead throw out this guy. If you try to attack, the game will let you know that you have no moves and you can't even use struggle. And then because you have zero HP, the game will assume that you fainted. You immediately lose the battle and Decamar will be removed from your party, which is admittedly far less interesting than missing them.

[00:15:03]The only cool thing you can do with this one is take it to the Pokemon center where the game will see that you have zero Pokemon in your party and assume that you actually had 65,536, the highest number the game can understand before rolling over to zero and fill the screen with Pokeballs.

[00:15:24]So, I guess that's kind of fun. And every future game uses some variation of this same system. Gen four and five use a super cool Pokemon called which is pretty similar to Decamark in terms of its stats or lack of stats I guess and how it immediately ends the battle in Gen 4. It doesn't have any associated sprite data and just looks like a white square and it doesn't even appear on your party screen so you can't look at it to see if it's got any moves or abilities or anything. But hey, in Gen 4, it's also always shiny, which is kind of cool. And in Gen 5, it immediately crashes your game, which is less cool. Gen 6 and 7 seem like they're totally different on the surface, but they're actually basically exactly the same. This blank Pokemon is given the appearance of a shiny Bulbasaur.

[00:16:23]Probably because Bulbasaur is just the first Pokemon of the decks, but it's got the same normal typing and lack of stats as the previous placeholder Pokemon. And following the trend of things becoming less and less interesting as time goes on, in the Switch era, trying to encounter a Pokemon with nothing in your party just crashes your game. which admittedly, yes, is probably the most reliable way to stop any crazy glitches in their tracks. But then again, this is also Scarlet and Violet we're talking about. So, hey, jury still out on whether or not this was intentional or not. These things are like if Red and Blue ran out of duct tape. So, over the years, Glitch Pokemon have gone from mythic, unknowable gods that mess with the very fabric of your game in incomprehensible ways to a slap on the wrist to literally crashing out. But there's still one more form of failafe Pokémon that we need to talk about. What happens if instead of trying to load a Pokemon that doesn't exist, you corrupt one that already does and force the game to load that? Will you be able to bypass all their defenses, spreading your corruption like a virus through their systems until THERE'S NOTHING LEFT BUT CHAOS and fury? No. Unfortunately, they thought about that, too. and they're gonna spread that virus for you. Ever since the GBA, Pokemon games have used a form of encryption to store information on individual Pokémon when they're not being used. Think of it like the game putting your bidof in a box on the shelf. On the very off chance that you decide to use that bof again, the game will need to be able to unpack that box.

[00:18:18]And to make sure that it does that correctly, it uses something called a check. So, think of this like a label on the box. It doesn't tell the game exactly what's in there, but it does tell it how much stuff is in there. Now, if the game opens that box and finds that the contents match what's on the label, then we're good. No problem.

[00:18:40]Proceed as normal. However, if the label and the box don't match, then something has gone wrong. A corruption has occurred. In order to stop this corrupt data from spreading or causing other problems like a rampant missing no, the game will essentially scrap it and replace it with this, a bad egg. This is another intentional fail safe included in the game. Because it's an egg, it can't be interacted with in any meaningful way. And unlike normal eggs, they cannot be hatched, traded, or released, which yes means there's no way to get rid of it. It's basically the game's way of just sealing off that corrupt data like they're a serial killer fused with a rabbit in Five Nights at Freddy's. But it won't work.

[00:19:36]it always comes back. Overall, this system actually does work pretty well and has remained mostly unchanged all the way from Gen 3 through Scarlet and Violet.

[00:19:48]There's just one problem. Sometimes it doesn't work at all. A bad egg is created when a Pokemon's data becomes corrupted. Most often this happens when you try to manipulate a Pokemon's data with an external hack client to give it illegal moves or something like that, but can also be caused by a number of in-game glitches. Best case scenario, this corruption is limited to just one Pokemon, gets locked down as a bad egg, and you're good to carry on your merry way until you come back to your PC and find that suddenly you have two bad eggs. Then four, then eight, 16, as the infection slowly spreads throughout your box, consuming your Pokémon one by one and turning them into empty husks. A fate worse than death. A lifeless shell that will never be born. Is this the game's way of punishing you for your hubris, consuming your friends and compatriots that you so shamelessly played God with? You wanted corruption, I'll show you corruption. Well, not exactly. Many people have noticed the bad egg infection over the years, warning that if you find yourself with one, it's only a matter of time before you get more.

[00:21:10]But that's not exactly what's happening here. Remember, a bad egg is meant to contain corruption before it spreads.

[00:21:19]But it can only detect that corruption when the game decrypts a Pokémon's data and runs a checkum. That means that a piece of corrupted data could lay dormant and undetected for a long time.

[00:21:35]The problem is that anytime you interact with your box and move Pokémon around, there's a chance that the game will accidentally copy that corrupt data onto another Pokemon. So, when you see a bad egg spread, you're not watching that corruption spread in real time. You're watching the game catch more instances of Pokemon that were already doomed from the start. As you can see, the war between game developers trying to protect their code and players hellbent on destroying it has been raging for decades. And while things may not be as cosmically horrifying as they once were, when you're dealing with glitches and unintended interactions, you're bound to find something crazy.

[00:22:25]And hey, if you want to learn more about what's happening under the hood of these games, then check out the video on the end card about how shiny Pokémon are made and why some of them suck. Or this video about the time that I tried to beat Pokemon without ever encountering a single wild Pokemon, glitched or otherwise.

[00:22:46]Oh. Oh. Who talked to the old man? Was it you, Richard? No. Don't try to hide.

[00:22:51]All right. What other dumb name could have caused this? All right. Don't play D. Look, look. You're telling me it wasn't you? You're telling me. And a massive thank you to all my supporters on Patreon, including Alakazam, Aspa102, Big Dog, Ty for to win, Cydian, Sherry and Mark, the boss killer 94, Moyubu, Stylish, Alex, Richard Devote III, Comfy Cat, and Dne Bramage.