MissingNo.

Missingno. ("missing number", Japanese: けつばん (欠番 ketsuban, lit. missing number)) is a Glitch Pokémon which likely owes its existence to a programming oversight in the Game Boy games Pokémon Red and Blue.

There have also been Missingno.-like glitches in other Pokémon RPGs, which are even sometimes called a Missingno.; however, these aren't related to the Red/Blue Missingno., and are usually only obtainable with some sort of game enhancing device.

See also: Glitch

Encountering the Missingno. character has been known to interfere with the save game data in various ways, such as adversely affecting the Hall of Fame saved data.

Missingno.'s presence also allows what is known as the "Rare Candy Cheat", the games' infamous item duplication bug. It is commonly used to duplicate valuable and hard to obtains items, such the Rare Candy item. However, the duplication bug can affect any item in the game, not just Rare Candies.

Appearance

Missingno.'s most common appearance is as a mass of pixels in a backwards 'L' shape that is similar to a Tetris piece (see picture at top of page). However, it sometimes appears as a Ghost from Lavender Tower before receiving the Silph Scope item (see picture to the left).

Other types of Missingno. have been found that have the sprite of the Aerodactyl or Kabutops Fossil from Pewter City's museum.

Details

• Missingno. has the identification number #000.
• Its attacks are Water Gun, Water Gun, and Sky Attack.
• Its cry varies between battle (short Nidoran (M) cry) and its Stat screen (Rhydon cry).
• Its types are Bird (not Flying, Bird may be a lost beta type) and Normal.
• After encountering Missingno., players will find themselves with an increased amount of the sixth item on their item list - a glitch popular for duplicating items, especially rare items such as Rare Candies, Master Balls and hard to obtain TMs.
• If Missingno. is caught, it will not appear in the Pokédex (unless caught via the Mew Glitch BEFORE Cinnibar Island). Because of this, there is no official Pokédex description for Missingno..

Missingno. can only be found in the wild in Pokémon Red and Blue due to a bug in the map design.

Missingno. can be traded into the Pokémon Yellow version of the game, but cannot be traded into Pokémon Gold and Silver, the sequels to Red, Blue, and Yellow. In Pokémon Yellow, Missiongno. levels down to level 1 and stays there permanently. Rare Candies will not work because when this Missiongno. enters battle, after it gains EXP points, it will revert to level 1.

When it is tried, Missingno. appears as many different Pokémon from the Gold/Silver perspective, and when the player tries to trade Missingno. a message appears that says "Your <name> appears abnormal" and the trade automatically cancels.

Game Statistics

Base Stats:

• HP: 33
• ATK: 136
• DEF: 0
• SPD: 29
• SPC: 6

HM/TM You Can Teach It:

• TM01 - Mega Punch
• TM02 - Razor Wind
• TM03 - Swords Dance
• TM05 - Mega Kick
• TM06 - Toxic
• TM09 - Takedown
• TM11 - Bubblebeam
• TM14 - Blizzard
• TM20 - Rage
• TM26 - Earthquake
• TM30 - Teleport
• TM43 - Sky Attack
• TM44 - Rest
• TM45 - Thunderwave
• TM49 - Tri Attack
• HM01 - Cut

How to find Missingno

The most common way to encounter Missingno. in the Red and Blue versions of Pokémon is to do the following:

• Go to the northern part of Viridian City, and watch the Old Man's demonstration on how to catch a Pokémon.
• Fly to Cinnabar Island.
• Surf up and down along the east coast of the island until Missingno. appears. (Depending on the player's name, Missingno. may not show up.)

Capturing Missingno.

If Missingno. is caught, strange things may happen to a person's game, but they should solve themselves after about 15 minutes, with the exception of the Hall of Fame glitch.

Contrary to myth, it is untrue that capturing Missingno. will always delete a user's game. However, the possible risk of game deletion has in the past hindered research on the subject.

Pokémon and Pokémon trainers may appear glitched after Missingno. is captured.

Why Missingno. Appears

Missingno. is the Glitch Pokémon that appears after viewing the Old Man's tutorial in Viridian City on how to catch Pokémon, then immediately Flying to Cinnabar Island and surfing along the right hand side of the island until you encounter a wild Missingno., without visiting any other areas.

Whenever the game "sets up" the planned battle against the Old Man's Weedle, it needs to change the player's character name to "OLD MAN" so that it will display "OLD MAN" instead of the name the player has entered.

The programmers decided to use the area of data where wild Pokémon information is as a temporary storage area for the player's name, due to the lack of memory on a Game Boy cartridge. Normally this wouldn't cause any abnormal activity, as the correct data for the wild Pokémon available is written to this area in memory whenever the player travels to an area where it is possible to catch wild Pokémon.

Along Cinnabar Island's coast there is no data indicating which wild Pokémon are catchable, so the game uses whatever was already in the corresponding area of data when determining which wild Pokémon you have encountered. Normally this space in memory would hold the data of the last area you visited where wild Pokémon were catchable (this same glitch allows you to exit the Safari Zone and Fly immediately to Cinnabar Island and be able to catch and fight Safari Zone Pokémon the same way as you would in other areas.) For this glitch, the player's name is used to determine some of the wild Pokémon available.

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 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.

More Missingno. information

One rumor claims that the player must have five or less Pokémon with him or her if he or she actually tries to catch Missingno., otherwise, his or her game may malfunction when he or she tries to withdraw it from Bill's PC. (If, of course, a player has six Pokémon at the time Missingno. is caught, Missingno. will be sent to Bill's PC, just like any other Pokémon.)

This rumor is false; there is no reason why Missingno. should not be happy in Bills PC unless its level exceeds a certain value when the Experience it has goes over the allotted maximum value for experience.

In Pokémon Red and Blue, if the player captures a Missingno. over level 100, and the Pokémon gains any Experience in a battle, it will say "Missingno. has leveled up to Level 100".

When any Pokémon over level 100 is constantly given Rare Candies, eventually the Pokémon will get up to level 255, and then after level 255 the Pokémon will grow to level 0. However, as already mentioned, if a Pokémon over level 100 gains experience it will grow down to level 100.

Pokémon going from level 255 to 0 and Pokémon going from a level above 100 back to 100 are the only known cases of Pokémon leveling down instead of up. The only other Pokémon known to "level down" in the Pokémon games are the Pokémon above level 100 encountered due to the same glitch as the one that reveals Missingno.

Interestingly, if Missingno is given a rare candy when it is caught below level 100, it will evolve into a Kangaskhan. This makes for strange gameplay, as you can teach Missingno to fly, then evolve it into a Kangaskhan, and the game will recognize it as legitimate.

Other Glitches

Although similar, there seems to be no direct connection between Missingno. and Glitch City, another Glitch that can be accessed. Missingno. has acquired much notoriety due to its presence in many Pokémon myths, especially those involving Mew.

While these myths aren't true, Mew's popularity ensures that Missingno. will always have a place in Pokémon culture.

Missingno. in Pokémon Yellow

When Pokémon Yellow was released, the original Missingno. and M glitches were removed from the game.

However, some time after Yellow was released, a new code was discovered that allowed the capture of any Pokémon, including Mew and Missingno.

Missingno. in Pokémon Gold/Silver

Although not known specifically as "Missingno", a Missingno-eqsue glitch appears in Gold/Silver. Not much is known, or can be known about G/S Missingno, but there are some known stats:

Game Stats:

• #252-255, No Pokédex entry.
• Unknown Type Pokémon
• Has foot print data. However the footprint is that of Donphan, with the exception that the numbers 252, 253, 254, and 255 are printed in them for the appropriate Pokémon.

Missingno. in Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire

Ruby/Sapphire's Missingno-esque glitch is by far the most stable. There are actually two; "??" and "?-in-circle". Here are some known stats:

Game Stats:

"?-In-Circle" (??????????, ???????????)

• #000, "This is a newly discovered POKéMON. It is currently under investigation." / "No detailed information is available at this time."
• Its icon is a golden Bulbasaur.
• After catching the game freezes up or the caught Pokémon will disappear.
• In FireRed and LeafGreen, either the Sapphire will disappear from the Network Machine, or the game goes corrupt.

"??"

• #390, glitched PokéDex entry.
• Normal-type Pokémon
• Its cry sounds like Bellossom's cry, albeit slightly different.
• Its icon is a perspective ?.
• ?? only knows Tackle. It cannot learn any HM's or TM's, and does not learn any new attacks as it levels up.

"??'s" Stats (at LV 100):

• HP: 228
• AT: 329
• DF: 117
• SA: 336
• SD: 127
• SP: 333

Not much else is known.