MissingNo.: Difference between revisions

This article is a featured article. This means that it has been identified as one of the best articles produced on Bulbapedia.

Missingno. (Japanese: けつばん Ketsuban) is a dual-type Bird/Normal Glitch Pokémon in Red and Blue, and a dual-type Normal/999 Glitch Pokémon in Yellow Version. Due to the ease of which it can be found, it is one of the best-known Glitch Pokémon.

In later generations, other Glitch Pokémon are referred to as "a Missingno.", despite there being little relation to the one found in Red and Blue or Yellow Version, except perhaps via a shared number of 000.

Missingno.'s cry is the game's equivalent of a "blank" cry: a Nidoran♂'s voice with a pitch of 0 and no echo. However, a few Missingno. have different cries.

If Missingno.'s Pokédex data is viewed, it will consist of a very long string of glitchy sounds, much like .4 or h POKé's entries. However, unlike their entries, Missingno.'s does not lock up the game.

Why Missingno. appears

Missingno. appears due to an oversight in the programming of the Old Man's tutorial in Viridian City on how to catch Pokémon. When the game sets up the battle between the Old Man and a wild Weedle, it needs to change the player's name (temporarily) to "OLD MAN" so that it will display that name, rather than the player's entered name, during the battle.

Due to the limited space in the Game Boy memory, the programmers decided to use the space where data for wild Pokémon found in the grass is stored (which is completely blank in Viridian City; only Surfing and Fishing data is used) to save the player's name temporarily. Normally, this would cause no abnormal activity, as this data is overwritten when the player moves to a different area.

In all cities, however, this data remains blank, and so the data is never overwritten (as there is nothing new to overwrite it with), and thus, the data that was last entered (be it the player's name or the wild Pokémon data from another area) remains in place. This itself still causes no harm; however, an oversight in the programming of the tiles used to denote the shore of an island marks them as equivalent to grass. As all water routes have no real grass on them, likewise, the data is not overwritten, and so whatever data is in the slots for wild Pokémon found in the grass is used, be it the player's name or wild Pokémon found elsewhere, such as the Safari Zone.

The name of the player has six hexadecimal values in it. The game needs only three "slots" of wild Pokémon data to store this.

The species of wild Pokémon the player encounters along the coast are determined by the third, fifth, and seventh characters of the player's name, while their levels are determined by the second, fourth, and sixth characters, respectively. By knowing which letters and symbols correspond to which species and levels, through the use of certain calculators and charts (such as [1]), it is possible to set the name of the player at the start of the game to find specific Pokémon at specific levels.

Forms

Normal form

Missingno. Normal form.

Missingno. normal form has a sprite that is a strange block of glitched pixels in a backward-L shape. Due to the larger number of characters that can be used to make it appear, it is the most common form. Normal form is exclusive to Red and Blue Versions.

• This form appears through the Old man glitch if G, H, J, M, S, T, :, ], a, b, c, m, o, p, or v is the character in the third, fifth, or seventh slot of the player's chosen name.
• This form appears through the Mew glitch with a special stat of 31, 32, 50, 52, 56, 61, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69, 79, 80, 81, 86, 87, 94, 95, 115, 121, 122, 127, 134, 135, 137, 140, 146, 156, 159, 160, 161, 162, 172, 174, 175 or 181.

Kabutops fossil form

Missingno. Kabutops fossil form uses the sprite of the Kabutops fossil found in the Pewter Museum of Science. Kabutops fossil form is exclusive to Red and Blue Versions.

• This form appears through the Old man glitch if w is the character in the third, fifth, or seventh slot of the player's chosen name.
• This form appears through the Mew glitch with a special stat of 182.

Aerodactyl fossil form

Missingno. Aerodactyl fossil form uses the sprite of the Aerodactyl fossil found in the Pewter Museum of Science. Aerodactyl fossil form is exclusive to Red and Blue Versions.

• This form appears through the Old man glitch if x is the character in the third, fifth, or seventh slot of the player's chosen name.
• This form appears through the Mew glitch with a special stat of 183.

Ghost form

Missingno. Ghost form uses the sprite of the Ghost found in Pokémon Tower if the player does not have the Silph Scope. Ghost form is exclusive to Red and Blue Versions.

• This form appears through the Old man glitch if y is the character in the third, fifth, or seventh slot of the player's chosen name.
• This form appears through the Mew glitch with a special stat of 184.

Yellow Version form

Missingno. Yellow Version form is Normal/999, whereas Missingno. forms in Red and Blue Versions are Bird/Normal. It uses the palette of Pikachu, and so appears as a yellow and red glitched box. It also causes glitches that Missingno. in Red and Blue Versions did not. If caught, it will cause graphical glitches, possibly rendering the player invisible and making duplicates of the player and all other on-screen characters walk in random locations on the screen. Yellow form is exclusive to Yellow Version.

• This form does not appear through the Old man glitch, as the Old man glitch was removed in Yellow Version.
• This form appears through the Mew glitch with a special stat of 31, 32, 61, 62, 63, 67, 68, 69 or 86.

Glitches caused

Examples of corrupted Hall of Fame entries.

Missingno.'s appearance in-battle allows the item duplication glitch, which increases the number of items in the 6th bag slot by 128 or 255. It even affects key items, making it nearly impossible to deposit them in the PC.

Encountering Missingno. has been known to interfere with the save game data in various ways, such as adversely affecting the Hall of Fame saved data and (if its stats are viewed) messing with some graphics until the stats of a normal Pokémon are viewed.

Trading Missingno.

Missingno. can be traded from Red and Blue into Pokémon Yellow, but cannot be traded forward through the Time Capsule into Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal. In Yellow, Missingno. levels down to level 1 if it gains any experience, and cannot grow any higher. The only way to use a Missingno. at a different level in battle is to use a link cable to battle between two games.

In the trade center, Missingno., due to its index number, appears as many different Generation II Pokémon from the perspective of Pokémon Gold, Silver, and Crystal, most commonly Tyrogue (due to the common name of ASH in Generation I). To see which Missingno. becomes which Pokémon in Generation 2, see List of Pokémon by index number (Generation I). If the player tries to trade Missingno., a message will appear stating "Your <name> appears abnormal." and the trade will automatically be cancelled. Rarely, if a Missingno. is successfully traded, it will become the Pokémon it was said to be, and act normally (though it will retain any and all attacks). At this point, it only may be traded back into the Generation I game while the player is still in the Time Capsule (where it will again become a Missingno.), as if the player leaves, the Generation II game will detect it as a Generation II Pokémon and not allow the player to enter.

In Gold, Silver, and Crystal Versions

Though Missingno. cannot usually be traded into Generation II, it will appear to be a G/S/C Pokémon such as Remoraid or Stantler on the trade screen for Gold/Silver/Crystal, depending on its index number. If successfully traded to a Generation II game, it will turn into the Pokémon that the Generation II game called it.

In Pokémon Stadium

When viewed in Pokémon Stadium, Missingno. will appear as a tiny Rhydon doll (the appearance of a substitute), while in Pokémon Stadium 2, Missingno. will show up as a Ditto, and if the game is saved via Stadium 2, will then become a Ditto permanently. Capturing Missingno. in the Game Boy Tower in Pokémon Stadium 1 may cause the cartridge to become unable to be played with Pokémon Stadium.

Nintendo on Missingno.

Nintendo has an official description of Missingno. listed in their Customer Service troubleshooting section^[1]:

"MissingNO is a programming quirk, and not a real part of the game. When you get this, your game can perform strangely, and the graphics will often become scrambled. The MissingNO Pokémon is most often found after you perform the Flight Safari Zone Pokémon trick [or Viridian Old Man trick]. To fix the scrambled graphics, try releasing the MissingNO Pokémon."

However, as most people know, Nintendo was incorrect on the graphical issues. Releasing Missingno. did not fix the graphics. The actual fix on the graphics was to view the Pokédex data or stat page of a hybrid or official Pokémon.

Game data

Pokédex entry

Game locations

Learnset

Evolution

Most index nos. Normal Form Missingno.  Bird  Normal  ↔ Most index nos. File:000Y.png Yellow Form Missingno.  Normal  999

182 File:000G.png Ghost Form Missingno.  Bird  Normal  ↔ 182 File:000Y.png Yellow Form Missingno.  Normal  999

183 File:000A.png Aerodactyl fossil Form Missingno.  Bird  Normal  ↔ 183 File:000Y.png Yellow Form Missingno.  Normal  999

184 File:000K.png Kabutops fossil Form Missingno.  Bird  Normal  ↔ 184 File:000Y.png Yellow Form Missingno.  Normal  999

Trivia

• If counted among normal Pokémon, Missingno. has the highest Attack base stat of all in Red and Blue and Yellow Version; and the ninth highest of all Pokémon as of Generation IV.
  • Likewise, it has the lowest Defense base stat of any Pokémon, and the third lowest Speed base stat.
• Missingno. is much heavier than any regular Pokémon. Missingno. is about four times heavier than 'M. Missingno. is about half the weight of h POKé, the heaviest known Pokémon of any kind.
• Missingno.'s height is 10'0". 'M is more than twice as tall as Missingno.. This makes Missingno. the 19th tallest Pokémon when compared to non-Glitch Pokémon.
• In its normal form, it has the same learnset as 'M except 'M can learn Substitute via TM50.
• In 2010, Missingno. was entered into GameFAQs' 8th annual Character Battle. It advanced to the third round by defeating Crono and Yoshi before losing to Sephiroth.^[2]

Name origin

Missingno.'s English and Japanese names are both derived from "missing number", a reference to its number as 000, the missing number before 001, Bulbasaur.

External links

• Article on Wikipedia
• SailorClef's MissingNo. Page

References

This glitch Pokémon article is part of Project GlitchDex, a Bulbapedia project that aims to write comprehensive articles on glitches in the Pokémon games.