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Pokémon Discussion

The PokeGods - Page 1

The PokeGods

Posted by: Redstar
Date: 2010-04-03 18:54:17
So I've been working with a friend for nearly a year on a project hoping to research, document, and discuss the PokeGod phenomenon of the Pokemon franchise that took place in the late '90s.

For those not familiar, the "PokeGod" phenomenon were the rumors and speculation concerning what "secrets" the Red and Blue versions of Pokemon (and later Gold and Silver versions) might hold. These rumors were largely inspired by very early beta artwork, pre-release artwork, and anime appearances of new Pokemon for the Gold and Silver versions at a time when those sequels were almost entirely unknown and unexpected. People then assumed that these Pokemon were present in the current games, Red and Blue, and rumors on how to obtain these "secret" Pokemon (dubbed "PokeGods", due to the belief that they were super-powerful and near unbeatable) began to be widely circulated online.

Our site is treating this phenomenon as a type of urban legends, or modern "folklore", and writing about it from a sociological perspective. We've uncovered the origins of many so-called "PokeGods" and rumors that were once thought to be entirely made-up, as well as placed these origins months, and sometimes a full year before their commonly-placed time.

We also have projects focusing on other areas of the Pokemon franchise, most of which are pretty much ignored by all the "big" sites. We have sections covering MissingNo. and other glitches, the oft-rumored and mystical Japan versions (Green version), early magazine and website coverage, and beta information. We're hoping to become a definitive resource for information that would otherwise be forgotten, yet has legitimate reasons for study.

Here's the site: http://www.blue-reflections.net/ragecandybar/main/ and the PokeGods project portion of it: http://www.blue-reflections.net/ragecandybar/projects/pokegods/

Re: The PokeGods

Posted by: Axaj
Date: 2010-04-08 22:50:27
Very nice work on this!

Re: The PokeGods

Posted by: Guy
Date: 2010-04-09 08:57:49
This looks like it'll be great. I'll check it out when I get some time.

Re: The PokeGods

Posted by: Redstar
Date: 2010-04-12 20:29:05
Thanks for the responses. All the information is currently on a single page, which can make for a lengthy read, but we've chosen to do that at least for awhile so people won't miss anything during these first few months of the site's public showing. Everything will be divided up onto individual pages later.

Re: The PokeGods

Posted by: Stackout
Date: 2010-04-15 03:52:01
lol @ the fake "Diminox" dex screenshot. I mean, No.359 ? In Gen I ? Truly impossible. I guess the Pokemon Factory creator didn't know how much FF was.
BTW, archive.org FTW

Re: The PokeGods

Posted by: Redstar
Date: 2010-04-22 13:28:44
Well the Pokemon Factory's rationale for such high numbers is because they didn't want to have their fakes share numbers with official Pokemon, after they realized Gold and Silver were coming up. They originally started at 151, but after coverage of G/S became more prevalent there was a jump in numbers.

Re: The PokeGods

Posted by: Stackout
Date: 2010-04-24 10:01:44
By the way, MissingNo ['M HYBRID] does write to your savefile. And here's the proof.

Re: The PokeGods

Posted by: Redstar
Date: 2010-04-25 18:20:05
The MissingNo. portion of the site is not my area of work or expertise, so I'll forward the page to who is and get their opinion on it. She's very vocal about that "myth".

Re: The PokeGods

Posted by: Redstar
Date: 2010-04-26 21:38:37
I spoke to her, and this should have occurred to me, but, what she and the article was getting at was the myth that MissingNo. can write to the save file and delete or corrupt it, which is entirely untrue.

Re: The PokeGods

Posted by: Stackout
Date: 2010-04-28 13:52:21
Oh right. I'm actually talking about this section though, which perhaps should be reworded, because certain Glitch Pokémon do write to your save file. IIRC, Ghost/Skel MissingNos don't write to your savefile though:
"When you encounter MissingNo., it writes to your save file!"
MISSINGNO. DOES. NOT. WRITE. TO. YOUR. SAVE. FILE.
People believe this because it says "saving" when encountering MissingNo on the stadium games.. HOWEVER. Battles do not in any way, shape, or form, by any extent of coding error, NO MATTER WHAT, EVER WRITE TO SRAM. IT CAN'T DO THAT.
The battle engine, even if MissingNo. glitched the game to smitherines, could in no way access SRAM. It is in an entirely different range of memory so that random events in game can not break it. The only way to access that part of the memory is through the save function which is programmed to access it when nothing else will effect it, hence the reason why you cant move, etc during saving.


But this does make you wonder why several Glitch Pokémon write to the save file on encounter.

Re: The PokeGods

Posted by: Redstar
Date: 2010-04-28 14:41:50
If you or anyone else can link to proof that MissingNo./'M write to the save file, please feel free to link to it so we can properly describe and cite the phenomenon.

Re: The PokeGods

Posted by: Axaj
Date: 2010-04-28 16:15:02

If you or anyone else can link to proof that MissingNo./'M write to the save file, please feel free to link to it so we can properly describe and cite the phenomenon.

And here's the proof.

Re: The PokeGods

Posted by: Redstar
Date: 2010-04-28 22:39:01
It's not really "proof". It's just a screen with little explanation. I talked to him myself and he even said he's not really a programmer and knows next to nothing about it, and is really just an artist. Self-admitted lack of credentials on the subject. :-\

Re: The PokeGods

Posted by: Chaos
Date: 2010-04-29 00:51:47
Is this STILL being discussed?
Pokegods aren't real.
END OF DISCUSSION.

Re: The PokeGods

Posted by: Torchickens
Date: 2010-04-29 17:05:36

It's not really "proof". It's just a screen with little explanation. I talked to him myself and he even said he's not really a programmer and knows next to nothing about it, and is really just an artist. Self-admitted lack of credentials on the subject. :-\


I can help clarify what is happening if you'd like; each legitimate Pokémon when first encountered will add a value of 128 to their own special values known as an encounter flag, which for normal Pokémon was defined to index the relevant Pokémon as 'seen' in the Pokédex interface. For many glitch Pokémon however (except hybrids with encounter flags of real Pokémon such as h Poké), such data is undefined and thus, the game will manage the encounter flag by writing (invalid) data to the next set of bytes after the Pokédex interface - the hall of fame data.

When the game registers Pokémon in the Hall of Fame, the game will save, but this save data is seperate on its own. The game does not overwrite and save variables other than those within the Hall of Fame interface itself.

I'll try to bring up any older posts on such matters if I can find any.