MissingNo.'s Glitchy Appearance Explained

How does MissingNo. end up looking like the way it does? And how exactly are Pokémon sprites displayed on the screen? It's all explained right here.

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[gretarreynisson]

13:25 Ah yes my favorite Pokémon, A Pair of Rocks. Very useful against Scissors, not so much against Papers.

[danielstephenson]

I'm guessing everyone else was playing Who's That Pokémon as the decompression algorithm was animating, yeah?

[computer-love]

*memory: unprotected*
*buffer: overflown*
*hall of fame: corrupted*
*yep.. it's segfault time 😎*

[SethEverman]

jesus this is an incredibly well made video

[ktvx.]

The whole not shifting pokemon and just slapping missingno whenever a pokemon was removed is the classic "I shouldn't do this, but it'll do for now" programmer move.

Also I'm so amused by how the game didn't crash with all those indexes going out of range. Unreal Engine take note!

[DragonDePlatino]

I like how Magnemite's sprite is hanging out in the middle of that eldritch garbage like "sup"

[mna]

I love how MISSINGNO's sprite, even if it's just random data, still has something that looks like an eye.

[JJASalazar]

My favorite thing about your videos is the fact that I can understand them, despite the fact I have never done anything with assembly language. You do a great job keeping it understandable while still diving *way* deeper than any other channel I've seen.

[ReySilverskin]

14:40
So what you're saying is, in-universe, Missingno's appearance is that of an eldritch data construct representing the very concepts of human speech and writing, and that's why its true form is indecipherable to mortal eyes.

That's fucking awesome.

[themetalone]

Back in the red/blue days, 10-year-old me was briefly obsessed with Missing Number. I noticed, after catching one just to see what would happen, that beating the Elite 4 afterward caused my winning pokemon images to glitch...one of them glitched into a sprite of Mew. After I realized Missing Number can evolve, I experimented for a pretty long time; convinced that there was some sort of massive secret locked within this glitched mess of pixels.
As with almost all the "secrets" (more like child folk-lore) from those games, there really was nothing to find.

[kbhasi]

13:24 I like that you even edited the display output as well! 🤣🤣🤣
"A pair of ROCKS appeared!"

[lakelimbo]

I remember people at the time saying that Missingno.'s sprite was actually a corrupted Yoshi sprite, lol

[Liravin]

now I'm wondering why this is the only time I've seen a YouTuber simply use avatars instead of usernames when listing all of their patrons. so elegant.

[Mswordx]

It's funny how I think I'm going to understand this.

[iMac]

for a game that is "held together by scotch tape" this sure is complex

[ImShep]

Me at age 10: “who’s that Pokémon?!” Me at age 30: “WHYs that Pokémon?!”

[ImSquiggs]

This is the single glitch that started my love back in the day for investigating weird game mechanics... it was my first glimpse into the ability to manipulate someone's programming in a weird but fun way

[darkfent]

As a kid this felt so magical and mysterious...as an adult it is fascinating due to how the glitch becomes that way

[MathematicPony]

Recently graduated with my bachelor's in computer science – you definitely earned a sub from me with this video!! Messing around with Pokemon glitches and roms as a child was one of my very first introductions to certain computer science concepts. I remember my dad teaching me hex conversions so I could work with action replay codes easier. But beyond that, I always felt a great deal of affection for the first gen pokemon glitches. When I was a kid, I used to do Red/Blue glitch runs where I would demonstrate to my brother as many Red/Blue glitches as I could in a single run over a couple of hours. Great fun.


Thank you for this video. It feels so nice to understand more about something that ended up pointing (haha) me in this direction in life. 'M having part of its sprite data in its name is poetic justice, and finally understanding why the Hall of Fame data gets completely chewed up is really cathartic. Seriously, thanks so much.

[gamesux]

Ok but, am i the only one that would be incredibly hyped to see missingno as an actual pokemon? It doesnt even sound too absurd when you realize theres already Porygon and its evolutions, which are basically not glitched MissingNo.

Imagine seeing a Nintendo direct and theyre like "let us introduce a new pokemon" and its MissingNo
I'D SCREAM