Hahaha I never thought I'd see the day when the kiddies talk about Missingno and pass if of as some sort of ground breaking discovery. <3
I still think it only got this popular because of the item duplication and the level 170 Mewtwos ;P
Anyways, if you allow me to nerd out for a moment, here's some corrections for those that may not actually know about it:
No one has ever caught it, ever.
Not true. Missingno can be caught just like any other Pokemon in the game.
So, nobody knows what type it is.
Fly/Normal ;P
And yes, I had to look that one up.
Q. How/why does it exist?
Sorry, but no. That entire paragraph is completely made-up speculation. Missingno appears because of a different reason, but I'll get to that.
and it's level appears as 99999999
I wish. >.>
Can you even fight it above level 200 ? I have no idea.
It's cry is said to be a combination of every other pokemon's cry
To quote Bulbapedia:
Missingno.'s cry is the game's equivalent of a "blank" cry: a Nidoranâ's voice with a pitch of 0 and no echo. However, a few Missingno. have different cries, such as a Rhydon's cry.
How would anyone possibly figure this out? I have absolutely no idea.
If you use a move on it, or a pokeball for instance, the game will freeze.
Nope. Fights like any ol' Pokemon. Missingno kinda sucks though. Missingno is perfectly, 100% safe.
You can only do this step after you beat the Champion. This is a key step, because the creators expected you to never go to him again so late in the game.
This can actually done as soon as you can use both Fly and Surf. Beating the Champion has nothing to do with it.
So Kenty, why is Missingno in the game then?
This'll be a bit of a tech-y explanation so bear with me.I'll try and explain without as simple as possible.
See, the thing about the Cinnabar Island shore is that while it's programmed to have random battles happening there, the developers just forgot to define WHICH ONES.
Normally, this isn't a problem because the game will just use the data from the last area you visited before flying to Cinnabar. What this means, is that if you were say, on Victory Road before flying to the island, you'd fight Pokemon from the Victory Road while surfing along the shore, etc. Entering a new area with random battles will overwrite this data.
So what causes Missingno to appear?This is the where the old man tutorial comes in. To show messages like "OLD MAN threw the poke ball" the game had to replace your character name with OLD MAN while the tutorial plays out. So obviously, the data containing the player's name had to be temporarily stored somewhere else.
Do you see what I'm getting at? Yep, the game stores the player name
where the game reads Pokemon Battle data. Again, this wouldn't normally be a problem, because this data is overwritten every time you enter a new area with random battles.
But the data doesn't change when you fly from one town into another...
So yeah, that's basically it. Missingno appears because the player fights against Pokemon based on the variables used to define the player's name.
Because of this, different names can influence both the type and level of Pokemon you fight. What blows my mind is that this is apparently so well researched that there's charts and calculations detailing what symbol combination gets you what. o-0
I won't bore you with the math behind it though, unless people really want me to post it.
One of the greatest and most popular Easter Eggs/Glitches in the history of computer games. Psychologists have even studied peoples' reactions to Missingno, which I must say, takes things to the extreme and is a testament to how impactful it is.
Do you have any links to this? Sounds like an interesting read.
