Top 10 Interesting Glitches in Pokemon Red/Blue

Came up with this idea while I was making the Magikarp videos. So many cool glitches in Red and Blue, and a lot of them are really fascinating! Let me know if you learned about any glitches you didn't know about already.

Note: some of these glitches are only in the NTSC versions of the game and many are Red/Blue only.

[spacetme]

Cheating and hacking in Pokemon Red was what got me into the IT field today and why I work in cybersecurity. The thrill of that kinda catapulted my passion and motivation towards the future as tech matured and grew. The only one I specifically remember is the MissingNo going up and down the shore line glitch / item duplication. I remember a friend taught me on the bus ride to summer camp during one summer when I was like 9yrs old lol. Loved the vid, some of the glitches were eh, but yea the top ones were awesome.

[Banzybanz]

5:25 An easy way to explain and understand this is by a mechanical odometer. If you roll back from you get to because there are no negative numbers on the odometer. It's the same with XP. XP is supposed to be a positive number only. When the formula gives out a negative number, the game interprets it as a very large positive number.

[PokeCoder]

Inputting cheats are fun but these natural glitches in game are interesting

[PaulFarrerMusic]

Love how this game seems held together by glue and straw yet it remains one of the most influential games ever made!

[jfb-]

How the Brock Through Walls glitch works, is that when you talk to that trainer, the game searches for your coordinates to see what path you have to take. But as you're not supposed to be able to talk to him from the right, your coordinates won't be where the game was expecting the coordinates to be, so it will just keep looking. Normally, it keeps looking forever which is why it soft locks. But if you have moves with the right PP, the PP values will actually be the coordinates the game is looking for, so the data after that will be interpreted as a path you're supposed to follow. But its a glitched path that happens to let you walk through walls.

[cmstair]

"BEATING OFF WITH NUMBER 10"

[soleilchevalier]

I came from the Future to say that I think Jrose1's favorite Red and Blue glitch is now the Badge Boost glitch

[parasitecat]

to anyone wondering about Trainer Fly, here's a chart that says the values you'll need.

List of Pokemon Special Numbers
Pokemon / No.
Rhydon 1
Kangaskhan 2
Nidoran{male} 3
Clefairy 4
Spearow 5
Voltorb 6
Nidoking 7
Slowbro 8
Ivysaur 9
Exeggutor 10
Lickitung 11
Exeggcute 12
Grimer 13
Gengar 14
Nidoran{female} 15
Nidoqueen 16
Cubone 17
Rhyhorn 18
Lapras 19
Arcanine 20
Mew 21
Gyarados 22
Shellder 23
Tentacool 24
Gastly 25
Scyther 26
Staryu 27
Blastoise 28
Pinsir 29
Tangela 30
Growlithe 33
Onix 34
Fearow 35
Pidgey 36
Slowpoke 37
Kadabra 38
Graveler 39
Chansey 40
Machoke 41
Mr. Mime 42
Hitmonlee 43
Hitmonchan 44
Arbok 45
Parasect 46
Psyduck 47
Drowzee 48
Golem 49
Missingno. 50
Magmar 51
Missingno. 52
Electabuzz 53
Magneton 54
Koffing 55
Missingno. 56
Mankey 57
Seel 58
Diglett 59
Tauros 60
Farfetch'd 64
Venonat 65
Dragonite 66
Doduo 70
Poliwag 71
Jynx 72
Moltres 73
Articuno 74
Zapdos 75
Ditto 76
Meowth 77
Krabby 78
Vulpix 82
Ninetales 83
Pikachu 84
Raichu 85
Dratini 88
Dragonair 89
Kabuto 90
Kabutops 91
Horsea 92
Seadra 93
Sandshrew 96
Sandslash 97
Omanyte 98
Omastar 99
Jigglypuff 100
Wigglytuff 101
Eevee 102
Flareon 103
Jolteon 104
Vaporeon 105
Machop 106
Zubat 107
Ekans 108
Paras 109
Poliwhirl 110
Poliwrath 111
Weedle 112
Kakuna 113
Beedrill 114
Dodrio 116
Primeape 117
Dugtrio 118
Venomoth 119
Dewgong 120
Caterpie 123
Metapod 124
Butterfree 125
Machamp 126
Golduck 128
Hypno 129
Golbat 130
Mewtwo 131
Snorlax 132
Magikarp 133
Muk 136
Kingler 138
Cloyster 139
Electrode 141
Clefable 142
Weezing 143
Persian 144
Marowak 145
Haunter 147
Abra 148
Alakazam 149
Pidgeotto 150
Pidgeot 151
Starmie 152
Bulbasaur 153
Venusaur 154
Tentacruel 155
Goldeen 157
Seaking 158
Ponyta 163
Rapidash 164
Rattata 165
Raticate 166
Nidorino 167
Nidorina 168
Geodude 169
Porygon 170
Aerodactyl 171
Charmander 176
Squirtle 177
Charmeleon 178
Wartortle 179
Charizard 180
Oddish 185
Gloom 186
Vileplume 187
Bellsprout 188
Weepinbell 189
Victreebel 190

Hope i helped.

[WillsMyth]

There is a glitch in which you don't have to set something up.
Basically, if you go to any gym and try to fish or surf on the statues inside of any gym. It will just let you do that for no reason at all.

[tusk]

I was waiting for you to mention the Mew glitch, and ofc it comes last lol. I was actually so lucky because I thought I had beaten every trainer but it turned out the one trainer I needed to fight in order to capture Mew was still uncontested. My excitement when I went and actually fought the trainer, then followed the steps exactly to where i needed to go to start fighting Mew, and the battle screen started.... Oh my god that feeling was so good.

[sahajsinghal]

Someone watching In 2020 where badge boost glitch is the big thing

[shrimpbisque]

I actually use the invisible PC at the Celadon City hotel all the time. I never liked the Poké Center music, but I love the Celadon City music, so I use the hotel PC so I can listen to the music I like.

[PokeMaster]

The reason why the SS Anne's still there is because it's a fundamental part of the Vermilion Dock map, and they likely didn't include a version without the ship (because it'd be pointless and take up valuable memory). As a result, should you manage to re-enter the map despite the invisible flag wall, the boat will always be there.

Also, my favourite glitch? Transform + Mirror Move - should you use Mirror Move while Transformed, you'll be stuck with a blank move that DOES have PP, but cannot be depleted, thereby preventing Ditto (or Mew) from using Struggle. There's also no way to fix it, apart from Transforming into a Mirror Move Pokémon and hoping Mirror Move occupies the exact same glitched slot, then using all of its PP.

[Bloody-Butterfly]

I like teaching MissingNo. Fly, evolving him into a Kangaskhan and then uploading him to Pokemon Stadium on N64.

[chrisruskai]

The experience one is because negative numbers in binary are encoded using the Two's Complement. Basically, you use the left-most bit as the pos/neg sign and then the rest of the bits represent the number.

For example, when dealing with signed numbers,

(signed)
010 = +2
110 = -2

(unsigned)
010 = 2
110 = 6
However, since the developers never intended for there to be negative experience, the binary representing the experience gained from a battle is likely read by the game as an unsigned number and since the left-most bit is 1, that makes the unsigned equivalent a really large integer.

[ramen]

Wow! I always hate hearing about the exact same glitches over and over whenever I want to learn something new, and I was hoping that you wouldn't have the Missingno glitch here, but even though you did, I was stunned to know about those other glitches, and even how they worked, and it was really enjoyable to watch:) thank you for uploading this video😊

[lazula]

Here's a bit more of an in-depth explanation of integer underflow:

Gen 1 pokemon games store experience values as *unsigned integers*. In my example, I'm going to simplify it by assuming that we're working with 4 bits. A 4 bit unsigned integer can store 16 different values(base 2^4 digits), from 0 to 15, which is equal to the numbers 0000 to 1111 in binary/base 2. If we were working with *signed integers*, it would be from -7 to 7, using the 8 bit to instead mark whether the number is positive or negative. In the case of tracking experience, negative numbers are unnecessary, so an unsigned integer is used.

So, what happens if we try to create a negative number when working with an unsigned integer? Obviously we won't get one because it's impossible, so what happens instead? The numbers simply loop back around, hence "underflow" or "overflow" if going the other way.

0000
-0001
=1111

In this example, I simply subtracted 1 from 0. Instead of getting -1, we get 15. You might be looking at the equation and wondering why this works. The simple answer is that to the computer, 0000 to 1111 are the only values that exist for this number. Taking variable names from C's limits.h, let's call 0 UINT_MIN and 15 UINT_MAX. UINT_MIN-1 is equal to UINT_MAX, as shown above. The reverse is also true, as UINT_MAX+1 will resolve to UINT_MIN, which is why adding 1 to an 8-bit unsigned integer equal to 255 will give you 0 instead of 256. Some processors clamp values and prevent over/underflow by simply making adding anything to UINT_MAX resolve to UINT_MAX. A perfect example of an unsigned 8-bit integer overflow is Styder7x's "Cracking a Frozen Lake 258 Times is Perfectly Acceptable".

Signed integers are usually handled differently. Their behavior when doing calculations that would exceed INT_MAX or go below INT_MIN are very dependent on the language in use. Ada raises a Constraint_Error, Java will have normal overflow behavior going from INT_MAX to INT_MIN, and Python 2 converts the number to a long.

I hope that helped some people who may have been a little confused about how experience/integer underflow works! This isn't anywhere near an exhaustive explanation since over/underflow is a result of many properties of computing and involves a lot of different environmental conditions; I'm just trying to clarify why it happens. Feel free to ask questions or point out anything I missed.

[keegankoeneman]

There are alot of really powerful glitches like the basic item dupe glitch and Data mod glitches like item underflow and ACE with things like super glitch and 8F, but the most interesting Imo is Pokemon merging. I guess you could do it with 8F, but back in the day it was always so fun to make hybrids of my favourite mons, especially if one of them was a glitch mon with a cool color pallet/ beast stats.

[mrsmith]

The Mew one is the best one cuz you can get it early and as soon as it gets up to about level 20 it's super strong it learns mega Punch and then literally almost knocks anything out!

[cmoneyAZ]

The reason the experience/item underflow works that way is because the game uses some sort of circular indexing system like a circular queue that when it reaches the very end it wraps back to the first, so in theory if you want over the max amount of xp or items it could drop you back to one, that's why the xp is so high, so that normally a trainer could never get that much xp. So therefore if you go backwards in the queue it's going to bring you to the end of it.