Glitch City Laboratories Archives

That's an interesting theory. Maybe there was a mixture of 'Kanto' and 'Johto' types/themes (I put these in apostrophes because both Generation I and II wouldn't have been finalized then) planned early in development, and these are the early badge plans that co-exist with the finalized badges.

It seems strange that there are nine of these badges. This may conflict with this concept art, which shows eight locations with a large square; not nine, where areas with a large square are probably ones with a gym, due to Pallet Town and Indigo Plateau not having one (but there is also a large square surrounding the place that is now Cinnabar Island, so if we assume this theory is correct, we also have to assume that what is now Cinnabar Island didn't use to have a gym).

Who knows? Perhaps Professor Oak would give you the Friend Badge as the ninth badge (possibly after a battle) for recognizing that you are friends with your Pokémon, without you having to beat a gym for it, although if you did battle him it would be possibly even harder than a gym, and this would be backed up by his unused rosters being higher leveled than the final Blue. Alternatively, the ninth badge could have been intended out of the region.

There's a more apparent flaw in this "no gym for the ninth badge" theory though. The concept art was very early in development, and it's possible a ninth gym was added or considered some point in the game before the unused badge names were programmed in.

Stuff like that really fascinates me, if I had the capabilities I would have already done a Generation I hack based on these theories.

Yes, I'm aware of why the game places you at the top-left corner on the Town Map. As there are actually twelve of those locations with a smaller square, and the number of 'main places' including the unused town if it counts is 12, you're likely right that one of them is that unused map.

I find it weird that the 'C' place is not connected to other maps. Maybe it was intended to be an island or the S.S. Anne? If it was the S.S. Anne, this may have meant that a port was intended in Celadon City rather than Vermilion City. It's relatively close to the sea, even though it's not as close as Vermilion City or the Route 17 Cycling Road. As 'C' has a large square surrounding it, it may mean that if it was S.S. Anne it had a gym.

I also had a thought that the "Ground rose up somewhere!" text could mean that 'C' rose up from under the sea, but I wouldn't rely on that theory as I'm probably putting two and two together and making five.

Another thing I noticed is that according to the Kanto map concept art it may have been intended that you wouldn't cross the sea to get from where is now Cinnabar Island to Pallet Town. Maybe since it doesn't seem to be directly connected to Celadon City 'C' was the original Cinnabar Island? I would not say that the letter backs this up though. In Japanese, Cinnabar Island is known as Guren Island or Guren Town, and it was probably a special place for it to have a letter as its name, like 'T'.

While it's probably still possible that 'T' could mean Team Rocket, since Gairaigo (borrowed words) are common in Japanese (yet I dunno, I still have a feeling that this is making an unnecessary assumption), they are known as the Rocket-dan, (Rocket Gang, or more literally Rocket Group) in Japanese, so I think the letter may have also been 'R' if it was related to Team Rocket.

I think that if your theory is right about Petit Captain, Captain, Petit Master, Little Master being ranks for a 'battle tower' like facility, the place could have also been in Celadon City, maybe in the Celadon Hotel or the Celadon House with a removed warp. I like the idea of the metals being medals for your success.

As I don't know where "Excellent" came from or what the original Japanese is, I wouldn't speculate about that yet, personally. Though it does remind me that at one point in the game there was no health bar, and phrases like "That hurt" and "That really hurt" would be used instead.

The fact that these unused strings exist in the game at all is really interesting to me, because they don't seem like something from late in the game's development.

Another theory I have about Professor Oak is that he would battle you when you complete your Pokédex. Regarding the Pokédex though, the game wasn't always about completing it and Ken Sugimori says it was only in the middle of development that the goal of your game became completing the Pokédex, so it's possible that if this theory is true the team was programmed in to the game not so early in development. The Champion theory is probably more reliable though, because it makes the least new assumptions.

Egg and Chick remind me of not just Earthbound, but of Togepi too. Since Togetic's name is actually based on an alternative romanization of Togechikku, it may be that the Chick was based on an early version of Togepi/Togetic. A problem with this theory is that "Chick" appears as a text string, so a question you could raise from that is: "where would it be used if you'd already have the Pokémon name; Togepy or Togechikku to add in the dialog?" but the fact that Togepi appeared in the anime in the Indigo League series makes this theory seem more feasible to me. Maybe there was an incubator and two of the options were "Egg"/"Chick", where "Chick" would appear so you could withdraw the Pokémon when you had successfully incubated the Egg.

By the way,  one of the unused Missingno. cries (for Missingno. 0x43) is speculated to sound like Togepi, but there's no hard evidence that it is.

Stuff like that really fascinates me, if I had the capabilities I would have already done a Generation I hack based on these theories.

There was a hack in development called "Pokemon Secrets and Rumours" on the Skeetendo forums, but the thread doesn't seem to exist anymore, sadly, and I don't know if many rumours were added in to the game.

Is it possible that the item names were from things like link capabilities?  Such as from "Coluseum 2"?  The stuff there might have been planned capabilities; and items are used for menu options (8F, NEW NAME, ect…)

6A - Mountain Man (Hiker) = simulates a shop window option, you can buy glitch items, the effect is identical to the Yami Shop glitch, so the music fades and glitches when you try to buy the items. I don't know why this happens with "6A".

Probably "8F" allows the execution of arbitrary code like we already know but I couldn't check. Maybe all the other "nothing happens" items could have a similar effect?

Great research, again!

6A - Mountain Man (Hiker) = simulates a shop window option, you can buy glitch items, the effect is identical to the Yami Shop glitch, so the music fades and glitches when you try to buy the items. I don't know why this happens with "6A".

Nice find. This would be more practical to do than the Yami Shop glitch once you get the item, as then you could just activate the shop at 'any' time on the overworld ('any' is in apostrophes because I've had the game crash when testing this due to the player sprite disappearing, though the freeze doesn't always happen).  I wonder what the items you can buy are based on and if they're constant.

For the Yami Shop glitch, what you can find is apparently affected by screen data (note you may have to change your character encoding to EUC-JP to display that page properly).

If you can buy Master Balls or Rare Candies, it would prove useful though as a way of getting loads of them, with the Old Man glitch not working in Red/Green/Japanese Blue and all Missingno. except fossil/ghost Missingno. freezing the game on encounter in the original Red/Green. You could use the Ditto glitch to find fossil/ghost Missingno. or the make your own items glitch to change the second item's quantity but that's a bit out of the way, and the Ditto glitch is impossible if you don't have a spare 'long-range' Trainer/a Trainer that will see you only after a wild battle in front of them has finished, and these don't let you make another Master Ball if you lost the only one. (though with the item underflow glitch or this you could theoretically get one)

Probably "8F" allows the execution of arbitrary code like we already know but I couldn't check. Maybe all the other "nothing happens" items could have a similar effect?

Actually, in Red/Green/Japanese Blue and translated Green 5F or 5 (hex: 5A) essentially works the same as the English 8F, executing code from D123 rather than D163, but both of these addresses correspond to the number of Pokémon. Here is some more information about 5.

There are likely to be more of those items with variable effects, except for ones that execute code from the ROM. TheZZAZZGlitch documented all of the item execution pointers in Red/Blue, and some of them execute code from writable memory; not ROM, though a workable address like D163 seems to be very rare.

I am afraid that the game always freezes when exiting the Mountain Man Yami Shop, it always happened to me when I tried, at least.

I didn't see any Rare Candies ("Curious Sugar" in this version), but there are free Master Balls indeed

I am afraid that the game always freezes when exiting the Mountain Man Yami Shop, it always happened to me when I tried, at least.

No, it doesn't always freeze.  Maybe it might work for you if you save and reset? (or have you already tried that?) Actually, I'm not sure whether it technically froze at all for me on the genuine Green but I think the game may have froze at one point on translated Green due to a large amount of '9's on the screen, but only when browsing through the items.

When exiting the Mountain Man Yami Shop (ha ha that sounds like a seemingly random name for someone who doesn't know what it is), the player sprite may disappear, but if you press B a few times you can make it return again and you can move again after walking on the spot for a bit (like in the select button version). Perhaps you may have been able to avoid your freezes with B.

I didn't see any Rare Candies ("Curious Sugar" in this version), but there are free Master Balls indeed

Cool. I might make a video of obtaining Mountain Man (Gold Badge in the genuine Green) and exiting the shop without a freeze. Though I suppose there's the possibility that it's because I'm using an emulator that I'm not getting a freeze. You can use the select button version to get Master Balls already, but this is a nice alternative method.