Glitch City Laboratories Archives

Glitch City Laboratories closed on 1 September 2020 (announcement). This is an archived copy of a thread from Glitch City Laboratories Forums.

You can join Glitch City Research Institute to ask questions or discuss current developments.

You may also download the archive of this forum in .tar.gz, .sql.gz, or .sqlite.gz formats.

Pokémon Glitch Discussion

How did you get into glitching? - Page 1

How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: Spoink
Date: 2016-06-24 08:48:11
Title.

I first got into glitching when I was 9 and got a (illegal, however I now own a copy) Pokémon Yellow ROM and started figuratively shitting all over the memory viewer, until I encountered a game freeze accompanied by "2 error." I then took a handheld mirror out of my bathroom, then recorded from my mom's laptop webcam. It was probably very cringy, (although the video isn't available since the computer is dead, and I'm not paying a sum of money to dig up a shitty recording) I then started messing around and eventually bought some cartridges for my brother's old GBASP, which he gave to me since he had 2 for some reason. To this day, the gameboy is my favourite console.

Re: How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: Yeniaul
Date: 2016-06-24 09:32:24
Accidentally triggering the LRT glitch.

Re: How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: Krys3000
Date: 2016-06-24 09:42:04
Hearing about the Mew Glitch, back in 2004, and getting some informations on PokéGods. Yep, it was that time.

Re: How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: Stackout
Date: 2016-06-24 10:09:27
Reading some stuff about gen3 glitches in ~2005.

My first ever play through of a Pokémon game was around this time; and I'd somehow managed to screw up my Pokémon Ruby save file (most likely by cheating, I've had my Xploder for GBA since 2003 or 2004) in such a way that I could not progress.

Re: How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: Firebolt
Date: 2016-06-24 13:24:30
What a fitting topic for my first post. I had gotten into glitching back in 2008 or 2009 when I found out about Missingno., then proceeded to scour the internet for more information about any pokemon glitch. I spent a quite a lot of time watching youtube videos of various glitches and memory editing. Only recently have I wanted to become a part of the community, but I'm not really sure what sort of things I could contribute to this community where many things have already been discovered, other than off-topic posts about computer keyboards…

Time to lurk forever again :P

Re: How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: Flandre Scarlet
Date: 2016-06-24 14:27:28
I got into it when Missingnoxpert's LGPY series was recommended to me on Youtube. It doesn't have anywhere near the amount of details found here but it was hugely entertaining and a great watch. After that I found this place and lurked for about a year and a half before joining.

Re: How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: Bert
Date: 2016-06-24 15:30:37
I was in fifth grade and saw someone trigger an encounter with MissingNo. along the Cinnabar coast. I bought a copy of Red Version just so I could do it myself.

Re: How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: ISSOtm
Date: 2016-06-24 15:43:42
I played a nice Flash game full of pop culture references, and at some point the player "sent out MISSINGNO". Then, I found bulbapedia's articles about Pokémon glitches, and a reference link directed me to GCL wiki, which I got interested in quite quick.
Back in 2k14, I guess.

Re: How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: Yeniaul
Date: 2016-06-24 20:34:18

What a fitting topic for my first post. I had gotten into glitching back in 2008 or 2009 when I found out about Missingno., then proceeded to scour the internet for more information about any pokemon glitch. I spent a quite a lot of time watching youtube videos of various glitches and memory editing. Only recently have I wanted to become a part of the community, but I'm not really sure what sort of things I could contribute to this community where many things have already been discovered, other than off-topic posts about computer keyboards…

Time to lurk forever again :P

There's still a shit-ton left to find. I just recently compiled a list of Yellow predefined functions that will most likely end up in a Dex of its own. (Every tile, map, combination in stack, byte on screen, item/PkMn in inventory/PC, etc. affects the outcome of invalid ones, making 8x or so more outcomes than there are Go board combinations (Around 18x the number of atoms in the universe) so it'd be a SHIT-TON of info!) Even after games are 20 or so years old, glitches are still just being found. SMB, SMB3 for NES both had new glitches found within the last few years. Point is, glitches will probably still be found in the Arcade version of Donkey Kong in 2100. Glitches are forever. Every byte has the potential to completely break shit. No game is an exception. Get good at a game, and new glitches will appear in front of you. It's a constant. (Like Rule 34 of the Internet, or the Speed of Light.)

Re: How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: Firebolt
Date: 2016-06-25 11:04:46
Sorry for derailing this thread, but what sort of resources should I take a look at to better understand how this game works, including the fundamentals of the 'architecture' of similar games?

Like I have no idea where to begin, other than my basic surface level understanding of these glitches.

Re: How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: Yeniaul
Date: 2016-06-25 12:44:08
RAM and ROM maps are always great places to start.

Re: How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: joonas2345
Date: 2016-06-25 15:20:05

Sorry for derailing this thread, but what sort of resources should I take a look at to better understand how this game works, including the fundamentals of the 'architecture' of similar games?

Like I have no idea where to begin, other than my basic surface level understanding of these glitches.


Link to Pokemon Red & Blue RAM and ROM maps: http://datacrystal.romhacking.net/wiki/Pok%C3%A9mon_Red_and_Blue
This video series helped me understand pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P55prFTaZoE&list=PL_91s-bjHU__doGoOWcSWv4fYoMAtnM8u&index=1

Here is Skeetendo thread about GEN 1 and GEN 2 Music hacking: https://hax.iimarck.us/topic/11/

ASM School is a great resource, as well: http://gameboy.mongenel.com/asmschool.html
GbDev wiki contains various resources about Game Boy: http://gbdev.gg8.se/wiki/articles/Main_Page
You should take look at the Pan Docs: http://gbdev.gg8.se/wiki/articles/Pan_Docs
Pokered disassembly will be very useful once you learn ASM: https://github.com/pret/pokered


EDIT1: I forgot the Big list: http://glitchcity.info/wiki/index.php/The_Big_HEX_List
Also, TASVideos page contains some info that might prove useful: http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/GBx/Pokemon.html
GB pointer tutorial: http://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=235574

EDIT2: You also need some tools…
an accurate emulator[1] (gambatte, [bizhawk] or BGB).
VBA is fine for quick testing but it isn't 100% accurate.
Link to BGB: http://bgb.bircd.org/
BGB has a great debugger.

You need a hex editor (E.G. wxHexEditor (cross-platform), HxD or GoldFinger (has support for table files):
GoldFinger: http://www.romhacking.net/utilities/204/
wxHexEditor: http://www.wxhexeditor.org/
HxD: https://mh-nexus.de/en/hxd/

[1] See http://gbdev.gg8.se/wiki/articles/Test_ROMs for details.

EDIT3: http://glitchcity.info/wiki/index.php/GB_Programming

Re: How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: Firebolt
Date: 2016-06-25 16:08:13
Thank you very much for these resources, will begin to read them shortly, and then hopefully I will be able to make contributions!

Re: How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: TMTRAINER
Date: 2016-06-25 17:46:36
While not really a researcher, I had a friend who showcased some of the more classic glitches, like the MissingNo. from Old Man glitch, and I instantly became enthralled with the fact that these games, which in my young 9 year old mind, were no longer perfect and I was the kind of person who loved to see how far games could go with the interesting quarks I could find in them.

Soon, I came across GCL and have been lurking around here for years (bar the time GCL was down). It's absolutely insane what has developed here over time, and it's been a pleasure reading through all this stuff.

A then a few years later, I came across Werster who was running some of the older games, and absolutely decimated one of the gen 2 games. That's when I really wanted to try some of the stuff myself.

Not a really groundbreaking way to get into glitching, but I'm a fan of the subject.

EDIT: Currently 20, I've been literally interested in glitches since I was 9. Time flies, yo.

Re: How did you get into glitching?

Posted by: MrGlitch
Date: 2016-06-26 01:08:53
WillisTheUnbreakable and Krauser912 on YouTube.

It's been nine years since WTU made his last Pokemon glitch video.  Wow.