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Generation I Glitch Discussion

Why does Nintendo treat Missingno as such a big deal? - Page 1

Why does Nintendo treat Missingno as such a big deal?

Posted by: Duelist Of Roses
Date: 2018-06-29 18:38:14
We all know Missingno. People who have only heard of it think it is this crazy glitch that will destroy the entire game to the last 1 and 0! However, that is not true. In Red and Blue, Missingno will only corrupt hall of fame data. Other than that, it is completely harmless. In fact, it is beneficial. It can give you 128 more of any item as long as it is in the 6th slot and the quantity is less than 128. Not to mention how funny the corruptions are. Some forms of Missingno can cause inverted sprites (the Ghost form for example), but this is fixed by simply viewing a normal Pokemon's data. In Yellow, Missingno can cause graphical glitches, but these are fixed by viewing a non-glitch Pokemon's Pokedex Info. It will still corrupt Hall Of Fame data however. Even though Missingno is practically harmless, Nintendo says that it will corrupt save data and is very dangerous. They also say that releasing it helps. However, releasing Missingno does not ever fix any of the glitches. Also, they say that you must reset your game data, but this is completely unnecessary. The thing that bugs me (no pun intended) is that no other glitch Pokemon are on their site even though some can actually damage your save file. They act like Missingno is the only one that matters. Also, very few Gen 1 glitches even are mentioned on their site regardless. Missingno is one of the least harmful glitches in the game. In fact, it isn't technically a glitch since they developers actually put it there intentionally. So why is Nintendo acting like a feature they added on purpose is worse than the Devil?

Re: Why does Nintendo treat Missingno as such a big deal?

Posted by: ISSOtm
Date: 2018-06-29 19:06:23
Everything you said is common knowledge, y'know.

Anyways, my guess is that Ninty simply doesn't like this kind of glitch be popular. The games are exceptionally broken, but Missingno somehow stood out more than the rest (which makes sense, given how random the rest may appear to be). And they didn't bother to update the page, because who cares anymore, anyways?

Re: Why does Nintendo treat Missingno as such a big deal?

Posted by: Duelist Of Roses
Date: 2018-06-30 16:42:54
They may still update it as R/B/Y has come out for the new Nintendo 3ds

Re: Why does Nintendo treat Missingno as such a big deal?

Posted by: Guy
Date: 2018-07-06 11:22:07
The "corrupting save data" bit from Nintendo probably came from the fact that encountering it actually modifies SRAM in an unintended way: buffers used for sprite decompression are contained, for whatever reason, at the beginning of SRAM, and when MissingNo.'s sprite is loaded, it stores much more data to those buffers than non-glitch sprites do, causing it to "spill over" into the next part of the RAM, which happens to be the HoF data. This is also why you get the "Saving" message when encountering it during the pause before battling it in Stadium's GB Tower, and why that pause is there; when it should just be loading a sprite, it's taking extra time to write to the area of memory the game saves to.

If they saw that just encountering this glitch Pokémon (which is by far the easiest to find if playing the game as intended) messed up save data, that would understandaly have caused a panic. It doesn't corrupt any important part, though, as we know now. They probably realized it too when they decided not to modify the original RBY Roms at all (Cable Club aside) when making the Virtual Console versions.