This is the less-technical version of a glitch writeup by smogon user crystal_, who went through the source code for Red and Blue in order to determine how, exactly, MissingNo happens. In the end,...
This is the less-technical version of a glitch writeup by smogon user crystal_, who went through the source code for Red and Blue in order to determine how, exactly, MissingNo happens.
In the end, MissingNo is a placeholder for pokemon that were not used. It only shows up under very specific circumstances (somehow, the code checks whether an encounter can happen using a different sub-tile than the one from which the encounter table is calculated, leading to coastal tiles on Cinnabar being able to cause encounters (because Route 20 has them) but not having a table (because Cinnabar does not).
The item duplication that led to the glitch being popularized is an underflow for the engine trying to set a "seen" bit for a nonexistent entry
These kinds of glitches, which only happen because devs had to fit so much data into limited amounts of memory (leading to management tricks that occasionally produce corner cases like this), are fascinating.
Thanks for posting this. I love learning about glitches like this. They often highlight the tricks devs were required to use to make the most of their limited memory.
Thanks for posting this.
I love learning about glitches like this. They often highlight the tricks devs were required to use to make the most of their limited memory.
This is the less-technical version of a glitch writeup by smogon user crystal_, who went through the source code for Red and Blue in order to determine how, exactly, MissingNo happens.
In the end, MissingNo is a placeholder for pokemon that were not used. It only shows up under very specific circumstances (somehow, the code checks whether an encounter can happen using a different sub-tile than the one from which the encounter table is calculated, leading to coastal tiles on Cinnabar being able to cause encounters (because Route 20 has them) but not having a table (because Cinnabar does not).
The item duplication that led to the glitch being popularized is an underflow for the engine trying to set a "seen" bit for a nonexistent entry
These kinds of glitches, which only happen because devs had to fit so much data into limited amounts of memory (leading to management tricks that occasionally produce corner cases like this), are fascinating.
Thanks for posting this.
I love learning about glitches like this. They often highlight the tricks devs were required to use to make the most of their limited memory.