MissingNo.
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| Missingno けつばん Ketsuban | |
 Usual sprite from Red/Blue | |
| National Dex | #000 |
| Type | Bird/Normal |
| Species | Glitch Pokémon |
| Height | ??? |
| Weight | ??? |
| Ability | ------- |
| Egg group | ? |
| Effort yield | ? |
| Exp. yield | 0 base exp. |
| Lv100 at | 0 exp. |
| Gender | None |
| Catch rate | ? |
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.
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.
When a Missingno. or other glitch Pokémon is viewed in Pokémon Stadium 2, it will show up as a Ditto, and if the game is then saved from Stadium 2, the Pokémon will be a Ditto permanently.
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 as 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 looks before one receives the Silph Scope (see picture to the left), or having the sprite of the Aerodactyl or Kabutops Fossil from Pewter City's museum. The differrent versions of Missingno. are tied to different hexadecimal numbers, and which kinds appear depend on the letters in the player's name. [1]
Details
- Missingno. has the Pokédex number #000.
- Its attacks are Water Gun, Water Gun, and Sky Attack.
- Its cry varies between battle (short Nidoran♂'s cry) and its Stat screen (Rhydon's 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 arriving at Cinnabar 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, Missingno. levels down to level 1 and stays there permanently. Rare Candies will not work because when this Missingno. enters battle, after it gains experience points, it will revert to level 1.
When it is traded, Missingno. appears as one of 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 | |
|---|---|---|
| Attack: | 137 | |
| Defense: | 0 | |
| Special: | 29 | |
| Speed: | 6 |
Learnset
By leveling up
| Level | Generation I |
|---|---|
| Start | Water Gun Water Gun Sky Attack |
By TM/HM
| Number | Generation I |
|---|---|
| TM01 | Mega Punch |
| TM02 | Razor Wind |
| TM03 | Swords Dance |
| TM05 | Mega Kick |
| TM06 | Toxic |
| TM09 | Take Down |
| TM11 | Bubblebeam |
| TM14 | Blizzard |
| TM20 | Rage |
| TM26 | Earthquake |
| TM30 | Teleport |
| TM43 | Sky Attack |
| TM44 | Rest |
| TM45 | Thunder Wave |
| TM49 | Tri Attack |
| HM01 | Cut |
| HM02 | Fly |
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, and other Pokémon may appear.)
Capturing Missingno.
If Missingno. is caught, strange things may happen to a person's game, but they should solve themselves after playing for a while or turning the game off and on again, 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. Checking the stats of a normal, non-glitched Pokémon will fix this.
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 one is encountered, 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. 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, however, there is no data indicating which wild Pokémon are catchable, and the same is true for both Viridian City and Cinnabar Island itself, at least by movement in long grass. The game uses whatever data was already in the corresponding area of data when determining which wild Pokémon encountered and their levels-- now the player's name. Normally this space in memory would hold the data of the last area visited where wild Pokémon were catchable in grass and their level data (this same glitch allows players to exit the Safari Zone and Fly immediately to Cinnabar Island to be able to catch and fight Safari Zone Pokémon in the same way as they would in other areas), however, since in both Viridian City and Cinnabar Island the data is empty for Pokémon obtainable in the grass, the active data is never overwritten, leading to Missingno.'s. availability, among other things.
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 Bill's 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. (or any other Pokémon) over level 100, and the Pokémon gains any Experience in a battle, it will level the Pokémon down 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 in the games.
A similar glitch exists, called 'M, which evolves into Kangaskhan when leveled up. Due to 'M's sprite's similarity to Missingno.'s, many say that a low-level Missingno. can evolve into Kangaskhan. This is untrue.
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.
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 and the popularity of the original games 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 disabled and 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.
Generation II equivalent
There is no true Generation II equivalent to Missingno., as Surfing up and down on the eastern shore of any location will come up with Pokémon available in that specific location. However, by using a cheating device or somehow messing with the game, players can encounter a Pokémon named ?????, which is also Pokédex number 000. The same Pokémon can be encountered by Gameshark's Steal Trainer Pokémon code. This Pokémon can transform to the last Pokémon you battled with. It will send you to Glitch City, and freeze the game.
Generation III equivalent
There is also no true equivalent to Missingno. in Generation III. However, like in Generation II, there is some amount of data at index and National Pokédex #000, known as ??????????. It has no ability, knows no attacks, and has its data zeroed out on all of its stats. Because of this, it is virtually of no use to trainers. However, there is another glitch-encountered Pokémon: ?. All that ? is is filler for old Unown data, so it has its call. Its TM/HM compatibility is similar as well, as it can learn none. Unlike Unown, though, its only attack is Tackle, and its sprite is a beta sprite representing a Pokémon not yet seen in the Pokédex.
Generation IV equivalent
In Generation IV, there is a closer equivalent to the idea of Missingno. that many have, which appears when a trainer enters a double battle with two fainted Pokémon, an egg, and one other Pokémon. Instead of the egg coming from a Poké Ball, however, a white rectangle with lines in it pops out and gives Bulbasaur's cry.[2] It also appears as a shining Pokémon for reasons unknown.
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