Missingno.

Missingno.
	File:Missingno.jpg; National Pokédex; ’M - Missingno. (#000) - Bulbasaur
Japanese name	Ketsuban (けつばん)
Evolves from	None
Evolves into	Kangaskhan, Ditto, or Rhydon
Generation	First
Species	Glitch Pokémon
Type	Bird / Normal
Height	Missingno.’s height is unknown, since it is a programming oversight and not an official Pokémon. - ? ft ? in (? m)
Weight	[convert: invalid number]
Ability	Abilities were introduced in the third generation, which does not feature Missingno.

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Missingno. is a glitch found in the Pokémon Red and Blue Game Boy games and likely owes its existence to a programming oversight. Missingno. is an abbreviation of “missing number”, like its Japanese name, けつばん (Ketsuban), which is also “missing number”. It is apparently a test/beta Pokémon that was not removed. There have also been Missingno.-like glitches in other Pokémon games, which are even sometimes called Missingno.; however, these occurrences are not related to the Red/Blue or Yellow Missingno. and are usually only obtainable with a cheat device.^{[citation needed]}

How Missingno. is found

The most common way players encounter Missingno. in the Red and Blue versions of Pokémon is by doing the following:

Going to the northern part of Viridian City and watching the Old Man’s demonstration of how to catch a Pokémon.
Flying or Teleporting to Cinnabar Island or Fuchsia City.
Surfing up and down along the east coast of Cinnabar Island or the Seafoam Island closest to Fuchsia City until Missingno. appears. (Depending on the player’s name, Missingno. may not show up.)
Alternatively, a player can also cause Missingno. to appear by trading Pokémon with a friend via a link cable or with one of the in-game traders, then Flying to Cinnabar and surfing along the coast as mentioned before.

[1], [2]

File:Oldmanmisingnoguideversion.JPG

One way to start the Missingno. capture sequence is to say “No” to the Old Man (in the red box, also known as the “Coffee Man” to distinguish him from other old men) in Viridian City.

Theories regarding Missingno.

The most logically consistent explanation for Missingno.’s existence suggests that whenever the game “sets up” the planned battle against the Weedle, it needs to change the player’s character name to “OLD MAN” so that the training sequence will display “OLD MAN” instead of the name the player has entered. In order to do this, the programmers needed somewhere to store the player’s name data for later retrieval, and decided to store it where information on wild Pokémon availability is usually loaded, since the player won’t encounter any wild Pokémon in Viridian City. When the battle ends, the game retrieves the player’s name from its temporary storage place.[3]
The reasoning is that whenever the player goes to another area with wild Pokémon, such as Route 2, the game will overwrite that data with info on the wild Pokémon in the new area. Flying directly to another city doesn’t seem to change that data, since cities don’t have wild Pokémon data.
However, along Cinnabar Island’s coast, there is no data for wild Pokémon programmed in^{[citation needed]}, apparently an oversight. Although the game recognizes that this is a place where random battles happen, it doesn’t load any new data on wild Pokémon. The program will assume that the data already loaded to that part of the memory is wild Pokémon data.
Thus, when a random battle begins, the game will check this for a wild Pokémon list. Instead of finding a list, it will find the player’s name data, but still try to load Pokémon data. This means it can load data from parts of the code that are not Pokémon, and will assume it is appropriate Pokémon data.[4]

The name of the player has six hexadecimal values in it. The game sees this as three “slots” of wild Pokémon data. The wild Pokémon the player encounters along the coast are determined by the third, fifth, and seventh characters of the player’s name, while the levels are determined by the second, fourth, and sixth characters, respectively.^{[citation needed]}
This means that the player’s name has an influence on what will appear on Cinnabar Island’s east coast. For example, if a player decides that his/her name will be all question marks, he/she will encounter a trainer on Cinnabar’s coast after talking to the Old Man in Viridian City, since the game interprets the hex value for a question mark as a pointer to data on a trainer. With a little calculation, this is easy to exploit; for example, the a player using the name DxDyDzD (case sensitive) will encounter Mewtwo at Level 183 to lv 185 or so. This sometimes allows players to catch Pokémon which do not normally appear in the wild, including the starter Pokémon.^{[citation needed]}

When a trainer catches a Pokémon, the program always adds the player’s name to its data as the Original Trainer (OT). In a trade, the game basically deletes the Pokémon from one cartridge and re-creates it on the other. In order to get a different Original Trainer, the player’s name and ID no. change temporarily to that of the person he/she is trading with, the same data-swapping trick occurs as during the Old Man’s demonstration, and one trainer’s name is stored in the wild Pokémon memory as mentioned before. This explains encounters with Missingno. or other Pokémon on Cinnabar coast after trading.

Its name seems to be assigned by a subroutine which detects an unused slot in an internal list. The programmers had the name MISSINGNO. (and a species ID# of 000) returned when no other name matched, since it’s good programming practice in videogames not to allow the program to crash, even when an unexpected error occurs.^{[citation needed]}

Some players believe Missingno. could be a deliberate glitch added by the programmers of the game to aid them in testing, but this has been thoroughly disproven.^{[citation needed]}

Another theory suggests that Missingno. was going to be the 4th “legendary bird” Pokémon, but its data was left unfinished. This is because when checking missingno's type, it says water/bird pokemon. the bird pokemon type was changed to flying type later in the testing. Another interesting fact is that it shows water gun twice making it have three attacks, and when you capture a legendary bird, it only has 3 attacks. Another rumor says that if you piece the pixels together, you get the picture of a unknown location or bird.^{[citation needed]}

Appearance

File:Missingno ghost.jpg

Missingno. may also appear as an unidentified ghost.

Within the program code of the game is a table which points the program to each Pokémon’s graphic data. The program may look in the graphics table for Pokémon number n, and be pointed to tiles x, y, and z, each of which is a piece of a Pokémon’s image. There are 256 slots in the table, from 0 to 255, but since there are only 151 Pokémon in the first generation, not all are used.The other 105 slots are either empty or point to random parts of the code.(most of those slots are filled with trainers and other glitchs)[5].^{[citation needed]}
As explained above, when a player performs certain actions, extra data is written into the memory area that usually contains the information about a region’s wild Pokémon. This data is not reset until the player enters an area with wild Pokémon. But the programmers neglected to code this information for the eastern coast of Cinnabar Island, so when the player Surfs here, it is still treated as an area with random battles, but the data for the kinds of Pokémon is not reset.
When the player runs into a wild Pokémon, the program reads this data and uses it to fetch the graphics and other characteristics for the Pokémon. In the case of Missingno. or ’M, the data it reads is incorrect, and points to parts of the code that aren’t graphics. It may read game text, for example, but interpret it as graphics data, and thus display pixels in an unintended pattern.^{[citation needed]}
As noted above, since part of the invalid data that could be stored in this area is the user’s name, it may be possible to manipulate what graphics will appear. The program may interpret the hex code for the letter R, for example, as a pointer to the visual data for Kabutops.^{[citation needed]}

Missingno.’s most common and well-known appearance is as a mass of pixels in a backward ‘L’ shape (see infobox picture). However, it sometimes appears as the sprite which represents ghost-Pokémon in Lavender Tower before the player receives the Silph Scope item. Other types of Missingno. have been spotted that use the sprites of the Aerodactyl or Kabutops fossils from Pewter City’s museum. In the Red and Blue versions, these non-pixel Missingno.s may only be encountered when[6]:^{[citation needed]}

The player character’s name has a lowercase “y” as the third, fifth, or seventh letter. (“ghost” Missingno.)^{[citation needed]}
The player character’s name has a lowercase “x” as the third, fifth, or seventh letter. (Aerodactyl fossil Missingno.)^{[citation needed]}
The player character’s name has a lowercase “w” as the third, fifth, or seventh letter. (Kabutops fossil Missingno.)^{[citation needed]}

Glitch

Missingno. is one of many glitches that occur in the Red and Blue versions. It is arguably the most well-known Pokémon glitch and has acquired much notoriety due to its presence in many Pokémon myths, especially those involving Mew.^{[citation needed]} While these myths aren’t true, Mew’s popularity has secured Missingno. a place in Pokémon culture.

Another glitch Pokémon similar to Missingno. exists, with a glitched name consisting of block shapes, an apostrophe, and the letter “M.” This “Pokémon,” known as ’M, evolves into a Kangaskhan when it is given a Rare Candy. Because of this, some people believe it may have originally been intended to be a baby Kangaskhan(the one you see in the pouch), however that's probably not true. ’M is also commonly referred to as “’M Block” or “Box ’M Box”.

Some players question whether Nintendo really does not acknowledge Missingno.—its name was not left as けつばん, as would be expected if the company and the programmers were really unaware of it, and since the game cannot translate what it is not told to, it does pose, for some, an interesting question.
If Missingno. is indeed a failsafe against unknown errors causing the game to crash, that would account for the translation of its name, and for its presence in Yellow despite the original method of catching it being removed.

It has been also noted that Missingno., when caught in Pokémon Blue/Red/Yellow carries with it the possibility of rendering the game cartridge itself worthless and unplayable, although there is less than a 10% chance of this occurring.^{[citation needed]}

Details

Because the Missingno. glitch involves surfing on the Cinnabar coast, an area with no natural wild Pokémon data, Pokémon from the last “wild” area visited sometimes appear. Many players exploit this to catch Safari Zone Pokémon without the hassle of the Zone’s restrictions.
While waiting for Missingno. to appear, some players report the screen going black for extended periods of time. This is because the game saves automatically when Missingno. is encountered.^{[citation needed]}
After encountering Missingno., players will find themselves with 128 more of the sixth item on their item list—a glitch popular for duplicating items, especially items such as Rare Candies, Master Balls, TMs, which are hard to obtain. Since the game is not designed to allow for more than 99 of an item in the inventory, this will cause the count of that item to display incorrectly until the count is brought back down to 99 or below[7], often displaying various animation objects like plants.
Its cry is the same as a Nidoran♂’s, only a bit shorter. In the Stat screen, it has Rhydon’s cry. Finally, the Missingno. in Yellow Version has its own cry, which makes it sound even more glitch-like.^{[citation needed]}
The most common Missingno. has the attacks Water Gun (listed twice) and Sky Attack or the other way around. The other versions’ attacks are based on the starting moves of the last Pokémon to attack in battle, or seen in the Hall of Fame or Pokédex.^{[citation needed]}
Missingno. does not register in the Pokédex, but has the Pokédex species ID#000 on its Stat screen. Because it does not appear in the Pokédex, there is no official Pokédex description for Missingno.
Missingno. is part Bird-type - not Flying - Bird-type is apparently a lost beta type about which little is known. It appears to have no bearing on damage received nor damage inflicted.
Missingno. has no evolutions (although one report shows it evolving to Kangaskhan, these results have not been duplicated and are being investigated further.^{[citation needed]}
When viewed as part of the player’s team, its icon changes depending on the player’s current location.^{[citation needed]}
Defeating (instead of catching) Missingno. can also cause glitches in the Hall of Fame data. However, if the player defeats the Elite Four again after doing this, the player’s team at this time will be displayed normally in the Hall of Fame.^{[citation needed]}
Since not all letters in the player’s name correspond to Pokémon, while searching for Missingno. the player occasionally encounters trainers, or even Professor Oak. These glitched trainers have similarly glitched Pokémon (Missingno.-like Pokémon and Pokémon over Level 100), and may use attacks which are named after Technical Machines (TMs) such as “TM42”, and which can crash the game and delete the saved data. This happens when certain non-normal characters are used in the player’s name, such as gender symbols.^{[citation needed]}
If the player views Missigno.’s stats from the Pokémon menu, game sprites (such as Pokémon and trainer images) will appear scrambled or backwards. Viewing a normal Pokémon’s stat screen usually solves the problem.^{[citation needed]}
When Missingno. is encountered, all previous Hall of Fame data is overwritten with garbage data. Viewing the Hall of Fame from the PC in Pokémon centers yields erratic results, including Pokémon with bizarre or impossible names, the prototype version’s Bird type, unusual levels, and bizarre music glitches. Even if the player does not save the game after encountering Missingno., these glitches persist and can be used to determine whether a player has used the Missigno. glitch to duplicate items. This is because the game makes a partial save upon encountering Missingno.. It is possible to observe this effect by playing the cartridge in Pokémon Stadium. The “saving” message appears at the bottom of the screen upon encountering the creature.^{[citation needed]}

Advantages and disadvantages of the glitch

Encountering Missingno. has been known to interfere with the save game data in various ways, such as adversely affecting the saved Hall of Fame data, and sometimes corrupting the game program over time (e.g. when in battle the images may be corrupted).^{[citation needed]}

Missingno.’s presence also allows what is known as the “Rare Candy Cheat”, the games’ infamous item duplication bug, which multiplies the sixth item in the inventory list. It is commonly used to duplicate valuable and hard-to-obtain items, such as Rare Candies and Master Balls. However, the duplication bug can affect any item in the game, not just Rare Candies. Using the bug to duplicate key items is possible, allowingthe player to obtain more fossils for creating Aerodactyl and Kabuto/Omanyte, however this is not recommended, as the user ends up with 128 or so of the key item, with no number indicator. This is not evident until attempting to deposit the item in the PC, or otherwise give the item to someone (i.e., giving a fossil to a scientist to revive it), in which case the item will still appear in the inventory. Depositing the item leads to unnecessary loss of item slots in your PC or inventory, due to the multiple instances of the key item, which cannot be “toss”ed away or sold.

More Missingno. information

One rumor claims that the player must have five or fewer Pokémon in his or her party when trying to catch Missingno., otherwise, the game may malfunction when he or she tries to withdraw it from Bill’s PC. (If a player has six Pokémon when another is caught, it will be sent to Bill’s PC). This is not necessarily true. Missingno. apparently only causes problems with the PC if its experience is over 16777215.^{[citation needed]}

In Pokémon Red and Blue, if the player captures a Pokémon over level 100, it will level “up” to level 100 upon gaining any experience. When any Pokémon over level 100 is constantly given Rare Candies it will grow to level 255, and another Rare Candy will cause it to revert to level 0 as the level value wraps from its maximum (255) back around to its minimum (0)[8].

The “ghost” and “fossil” Missingno. change levels in a very odd manner. Even after reverting to level 100, they may continue to level up, but the stats and levels change randomly. These Missingno. can be at level 100, for example, level up, and grow to level 70 with weak stats. They may later grow to level 80 after a few more battles, then to level 10, etc.^{[citation needed]}

When 'M is caught. the battle will continue. If he is caught again, he will be a Ditto.

To safely turn Missingno into a usable Rhydon, players should have six pokemon in their party. Go to the P.C. and view missingnos stats. Change boxes then change back. View again, and is should appear as a Rhydon. It will have it's starting moves and stats, but will simply be a Rhydon with unusual level and moves.

“Missingno.” in other Pokémon games

Missingno. can be found in the wild in Pokémon Red and Blue due to a bug in the map design. Missingno. (and ’M) can be traded to the Yellow version of the game, (’M becomes 3trainerpoké).

In all later Pokémon games there exist glitch-based “Pokémon” similar to Missingno. that are obtainable through cheat devices. Players often refer to these anomalies as “Missingno.s” even though none of them explicitly carry the name Missingno. within the games. For more information on second- and third generation glitches, see “Question mark glitches in Pokémon”.

In Pokémon Yellow

File:Missingnoyellowversion.jpg

In a link battle between the Yellow version and another game, Missingno.’s image is a (somewhat variable) glitch-box from Yellow's perspective.^{[citation needed]} This is one possible appearance.

When Pokémon Yellow was released, the right coast of Cinnabar, as well as the right coasts of other usable areas, were reprogrammed to disallow wild encounters. However, some time after Yellow was released, a new glitch was discovered that allowed the capture of any Pokémon, including Missingno. and Mew. This is detailed in the Glitch Guide on GameFAQs’s Pokémon Yellow page.

A Yellow-version player can also receive a Missingno. simply by trading with an obliging player of the Red or Blue version. In this case, Missingno. will affect the Yellow version in the same way it affected the Red and Blue versions, including messing up the Pokémon League Hall of Fame.^{[citation needed]}

In Pokémon Stadium

Missingno. and ’M can be uploaded to Pokémon Stadium, and (if the game doesn’t freeze) will look like substitutes (small Rhydon-like figures that usually appear when a Pokémon uses the move Substitute). Missingno.’s substitute is purple and ’M’s is blue. When viewed in the Pokémon Center, all of Missingno.’s stats will be question marks (even though the Pokédex species ID# is a question mark, the Game Boy game confirms that both Missingno. and ’M are #000). However, Missingno. will not be allowed to battle, nor will it function correctly in the Gallery (in which players can take pictures of Pokémon). The photos of it will not develop if taken.
If Missingno. or any other Pokémon is selected in the “see list” the game will freeze, playing the music without the beat in the background.^{[citation needed]} If a player tries to view Missingno.’s stats, the game will also occasionally freeze[9].

In the Second Generation

Missingno. cannot be traded to Pokémon Gold and Silver because it does not exist in games after the first generation. In the trade center, Missingno. appears as a second-generation Pokémon such as Tyrogue from the Gold/Silver perspective, and when the players try to trade a message appears, stating “Your friend’s [name of player’s Missingno.] appears to be abnormal.” and the trade is cancelled automatically, or Missingno. turns into a second-generation Pokémon, such as Smeargle or Stantler.^{[citation needed]}

Similar problems are present when attempting to transfer Missingno. or ’M to Pokémon Stadium 2 (USA). If successfully transferred, Missingno. and ’M will become Ditto.

References/External links

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