List of glitches (TCG GB)

This is a list of glitches in Pokémon Trading Card Game and Pokémon Trading Card Game 2: The Invasion of Team GR!.

List of glitches

Both games

These are glitches that appear in both games.

Invalid card

An invalid card is any card with an unused index number. (see the index numbers available in the first game and in the second game) An invalid card may be acquired by using cheating devices in both games and the premature deck save glitch in the second game only.

The invalid card may change from one moment to another. It either has the same name as the player or it takes the form of other cards currently in the game memory.

If an invalid card is the first card in a booster pack, then the card name is the player name, the card image is Grass Energy and it has no description.
If an invalid card is the first card in the player's hand at the start of a duel, then it is a copy of a card from the opponent's deck.
If an invalid card is between the slots 2 and 5 of a booster pack or the player's hand, then it appears to be exactly like the card above it.
In a card list (such as a booster pack or the player's hand), if the player scrolls the list or checks the description of a card, then the invalid card becomes the last card that appeared because of scrolling or the last card whose description was checked. The invalid card will not seem to change in the list itself unless it disappears and reappears because of the scrolling. However, the player may see the new appearance of the invalid card by checking its description.

A duel with invalid cards may corrupt the save and cause the game to start with a frozen blank screen, preventing further gameplay.

Missing error messages

Normally, this error message appears if the player attempts to place and evolve a Pokémon in the same turn: "You cannot evolve a Pokémon in the same turn it was placed." However, no error message appears if the player attempts to do it when another Pokémon in the team is able to evolve using the same Evolution card. For instance, if the player has two Charmeleon—one placed in the current turn and the other placed in a previous turn—and attempts to evolve the former Charmeleon, it will be unable to evolve in this turn as expected, but no error message will appear.

Pokémon Trader: Empty deck error message

The error message "<player>'s deck has 0 cards." appears when Pokémon Trader is used with an empty deck. However, Pokémon Trader can still be normally used as stated above even with an empty deck (by moving the same Pokémon card from the hand to the deck, and then back to the hand), in spite of this error message. This is unlike most error messages in these games, which appear when the player is unable to do something. This error message appears after the fact, when the player has finished using Pokémon Trader.

Pokémon Trader: Trading a Pokémon card with itself

When Pokémon Trader is used, the player is first asked to move a Pokémon card to the deck, and then move a Pokémon card from the deck to the hand. However, the Pokémon card moved from the hand appears at the top of the list of cards in the deck (unless the player presses Select, which automatically sorts the cards in the deck). This allows the player to move the same Pokémon card from the hand to the deck and then back to the hand (which effectively leaves both hand and deck unchanged, except the deck is shuffled and the used Pokémon Trader is discarded as usual). Doing this contradicts the card text, which states that a card should be traded for another and that both should be shown to the opponent. Pokémon Trader can only be used if there is at least 1 Pokémon card in the player's hand, or else an error message appears. Pokémon Trader can be used even if there is no Pokémon card in the deck (or if the deck is empty), in which case the only option is to place a Pokémon card from the hand in the deck and then the same card back to the hand. For comparison, Energy Retrieval and Super Energy Retrieval also allow cards to be traded (between the Hand and Discard Pile) and mention the word "trade" in the card text, but they don't allow cards to be traded with themselves the same way as Pokémon Trader.

Start button before link duels

When two players attempt to duel via Game Link Cable, this message appears to both players before the battle: "Press Start when you are ready." However, in reality, only one of them is required to press Start, which causes the duel to start in both Game Boy systems. The player that presses Start first decides the number of Prize Cards of the current duel. If the two players press Start exactly at the same time, the transmission will fail with this message in both systems: "Transmission error. Start again from the beginning."

Pokémon Trading Card Game

Down+A duel locking

In the American English version, it is possible to lock the game during a duel.

The player needs to go to "Check", then "In play area". If the player presses Down+A at the same time while the cursor is located at the lowest point on the play area screen: the player's Bench if there's any card there, or the player's Active Pokémon card if no Pokémon is on the Bench. (Normally, pressing only Down would open the player's party; pressing only A would open the Active Pokémon card.) By pressing both buttons together, the party will appear but the player will be unable to leave this screen: if they try pressing B, this will just shortly flash the play area screen and return to the party.

The player can resume the duel normally by resetting the game and using the option "Continue duel".

Instant win glitch

The player can instantly win any duel by performing this glitch, including the Challenge Machine duels. It works specifically in the American English version, not the Japanese or European versions. It works on the Game Boy and Switch, but not on the Nintendo 3DS. This can be used in Any% speedruns if glitches are allowed.^[1]

The player needs to perform the "Down+A duel locking" multiple times, pressing Down+A at the "In play area" screen and then resetting and continuing the duel. After doing this a few times, then pressing Down+A will actually cause an instant win instead of locking the screen.

This glitch only causes an instant win if the player has won their latest duel before performing this glitch. If the player has lost the latest duel, then this glitch will result in an instant loss instead.

Player's deck starting with the inverted exclamation mark

This is only available in the Spanish version of this game. The player may start a deck name with the inverted question mark (¡), even though this charater is not available in the deck name screen. This limitation can be circumvented if the player builds the Spanish deck named "Mazo ¡Paralizar!" from the Auto Deck Machine (which requires the Water Medal and all the cards from this deck), then they may freely rename this deck and change the cards, while keeping the "¡" as the first character.

It's still not possible to use this procedure to start a deck with "¿"; the only deck starting with this character is the "Mazo ¿Imakuni?", but it is not available in the Auto Deck Machines.

Predefined decks with inverted exclamation mark and question mark

In the Spanish version of the first game, some predefined decks are named with the inverted exclamation mark (¡) and question mark (¿), even though these punctuation marks are unavailable to the player: Paralyze! Deck and Imakuni? Deck are named "Mazo ¡Paralizar!" and "Mazo ¿Imakuni?" in Spanish, respectively.

Space before Ronald's name

Ronald is the only duelist non-player character without a class (such as "Club Master" or "Club Member"). In all language versions of this game, there is a space behind Ronald's name at the start of the duels against him, which would be the space normally located between the duelist class and the character name.

Pokémon Trading Card Game 2: The Invasion of Team GR!

Dismantle deck glitch

Due to an oversight, the player is always required to display the Deck Save Machine in order to successfully dismantle a deck, even if they don't want to save a deck in this machine.

If the player has multiple decks and attempts to dismantle one of them, the game asks two questions: "Dismantle this deck?" and "Record this deck?"*. The second question is about saving a copy of the deck configuration in the Deck Save Machine. However, if the player answers "no" to the Deck Save Machine question, the player will return to the list of decks and the deck won't be dismantled. (this can cause a nonstandard deck to be saved, which is detailed in the premature deck save glitch below)

The player needs to answer "yes" to both questions in order to successfully dismantle the deck. The second "yes" causes the Deck Save Machine screen to appear, which can be closed if the player doesn't want to save a copy there.

Hidden deck name glitch

It is possible to have an empty deck slot with a hidden deck name. It appears to be a normal unused "New Deck" slot, but when the player attempts to create a new deck on that slot, the hidden deck name will automatically appear as the name for that deck (which may be edited as usual).

The player may do this by performing the premature deck save glitch above to save a deck with zero cards, which must have the intended hidden name. Specifically, the player would create a new deck and type the deck name, which must have no cards (or alternatively, the player would edit an existing deck and rename it if needed, then remove all cards from it). Then the player would click "Dismantle the deck". When the game asks "Record this deck?", the player would answer "No" which brings them back to the list of decks. After this is done, the deck name will technically remain in the internal game data but will be hidden from view because the deck has zero cards. The empty deck will appear as a normal "New Deck", and the deck name will appear when the player creates a new deck on that slot.

Premature deck save glitch

It is possible to use this glitch to exit prematurely from deck edit screen while saving any changes, even if they would not be allowed in normal decks. As a result, the player may have a non-standard deck between 1 and 80 cards, which is allowed to have no Basic Pokémon cards. However, duels still require 60-card decks, so extra cards are ignored in duels and missing cards are replaced by invalid cards (which may corrupt the save if used in duels, as stated above). If the player attempts to duel with no Basic Pokémon cards, then they will be indefinitely stuck in the screen that repeatedly asks the player to reshuffle the deck because no Basic Pokémon cards were found in the player's hand.

As stated in the dismantle deck glitch above, if the player has multiple decks and attempts to dismantle one of them, the game asks "Record this deck?" If the player answers "No", they will leave without dismantling the deck and any unsaved changes to this deck are saved at this point, without checking if the deck is valid. The player is required to have at least 1 card in the deck because if they remove all the cards, the deck becomes an unused "New Deck" and if this was the main deck, then it loses the main deck status. If the player tries to remove all cards from all decks using this glitch, then the last one won't be able to be dismantled and the "Record this deck?" question won't appear for the last deck.

References

↑ Any% No ACE Notes - Speedrun.com

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