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Glitches Referenced in "Being Human"
I wrote a one-shot for this year's Zoroark Games that was all about glitches! I thought it would be fun to lay out the glitches being referenced there, but as there are so many I figured it would be distracting to have all of them actually in the AO3 document itself/have footnote references every few words. Instead, I'm posting here and linking in the story's notes. :)
Most of the glitches that I didn't already know I found by browsing this list of natural glitches in Gen I. In general, the Glitch City Wiki is a great resource for learning more about Pokémon game glitches, if those are of interest to you!
Without further ado, all the glitches referenced in "Being Human":
1. "There's a computer in Celadon City that isn't there." - Literally, there's an invisible computer in Celadon City's hotel. This is one that I found myself as a kid, and it delighted me.
2. "There's an old man in Viridian City" - Of course this refers to the famous old man glitch! As does the general description of what to do over the next couple paragraphs.
3. "Present your offering and watch hunks of gold gush between skeleton jaws" - It's our good friend Aerodactyl Missingno. helping out with an item duplication glitch!
4. "Computers begin to forget your name. They spit up confused symbols, make uncertain sounds." - The Missingno. glitch can corrupt the Hall of Fame data in Red and Blue--a very eerie effect for a kid who wasn't expecting it and didn't know what was going on!
5. "What you store in them won't return unchanged." - When I was a kid, one of the warnings given after catching Missingno. was to never store it in a PC box! It could cause other Pokémon in the PC to become deleted or to become corrupted or evolve in strange ways. I haven't found any information about glitches that can corrupt PC box data, though, and this is pretty similar to some of these "glitch rumors," so this probably isn't a real glitch, but rather part of the lore that sprang up around Missingno.
6. "there are whole cities that wait invisible, unnamed and unknown and very real" - Glitch city!
7. "There are what might be other travelers, or what might only be playing at human." - Glitch trainers!
8. "Learn to tread where others can't." - Well, maybe it would be more accurate to say "surf" where others can't, but that doesn't sound quite so poetic. Once you've surfed to whatever illegal location, you can walk around in it as much as you like. ;)
9. "Learn to carry more than you can hold." - Red/Blue's small bag size is incredibly annoying. Fortunately, you can glitch your way into a bigger pack (and then proceed to cause complete havoc through arbitrary code execution). I'm rather fond of this line.
10. "People will struggle to see you, perhaps." - I was being more metaphorical when I wrote this and not thinking of anything in particular, but yes, of course, there's a glitch that will turn the player's sprite invisible.
11. "No walls can hold you" - There are a number of ways to gain the ability to walk through walls in Red and Blue. This is one I saw my brother do once with the aid of a GameShark, and it really fired my imagination. Finally, you could see what was in the long grass beyond the barriers around Pallet Town (which schoolyard rumor naturally said contained all kinds of powerful, otherwise-undiscoverable species). Visit Bill's secret garden! Walk clear off the edge of the map--this is what I remember seeing, watching the Game Boy over my brother's shoulder. You could simply walk out over the ocean, keep going and going, find increasingly strange arrangements of floating platforms, rocks, and land tiles, as though there really were a whole world right there in that little cartridge.
12. "no one can bar your way" - It's possible to sneak past the Youngster who ordinarily drags you to Pewter Gym in Red/Blue, which also allows you to skip getting the Boulder Badge entirely.
13. "You'll find enough of them in places they can't be, some of them strange and shimmering and wild." - This isn't a specific reference, but certainly there are any number of ways to trigger Pokémon encounters in places that shouldn't have any, and an entire Pokédex's worth of glitchmon!
14. "Follow them and see where they will not go, the paths that will lead you through the forest unopposed." - There are particular grass tiles in Viridian Forest that won't spawn Pokémon--if you step only on them, you'll be guaranteed not to have any wild encounters while passing through the grass!
15. "Hear what growlithe know of lightning and onix of the water deep below the earth." - In Red/Blue it's possible to evolve Pokémon like Eevee without using an evolutionary stone because the memory address used to store what Pokémon is in battle is the same as the one that stores what item is used. Some Pokémon species' internal identifiers correspond to the internal identifiers for evolutionary stones, and this fact can be manipulated by allowing stone-evo Pokémon to evolve simply by being in the same battle as some other Pokémon. Growlithe correspond to the Thunder Stone, and Onix to the Water Stone, specifically. This is a glitch that I found out about while writing this story, and it delights me; I'm a sucker for "this thing is secretly some other thing if viewed a different way." Turns out Psyduck is just a Leaf Stone sometimes!
16. "There's a clot of gold in the old Rocket hideout below Saffron" - There are a few hidden items in Red and Green that will, yes, respawn each time you show a fossil to the scientists in the Cinnabar Lab. One of these is a hidden Nugget in the Rocket Hideout.
17. "You will have learned that what you choose to throw away is much more valuable than what you keep." - Not a specific glitch, but rather a common technique used in the process of executing arbitrary code execution glitches. Code is often written through the use of a specific sequence of items, which often involves tossing a lot of items, likely generated through other glitches, until you have the correct number available.
18. "But who would desire gold when they could move mountains, rewrite history, reshape reality however they'd like?" - Arbitrary code execution allows you to, well, make arbitrarily large changes to the game world. This might involve giving yourself 99 of every item or writing a Sylveon into the game as an official Pokémon, or it might mean turning the game into Tetris, or even writing some payload code to send your friends a virus over the Link Cable. The possibilities are literally endless (within the game's hardware constraints, that is), and I'm always delighted to hear whatever wacky new effects people have managed to achieve by reprogramming an old Pokémon game through glitches. It really captures the fun of exploration and creativity that are a huge part of my love of the Pokémon franchise--albeit in a way that the game designers most certainly didn't intend!
Most of the glitches that I didn't already know I found by browsing this list of natural glitches in Gen I. In general, the Glitch City Wiki is a great resource for learning more about Pokémon game glitches, if those are of interest to you!
Without further ado, all the glitches referenced in "Being Human":
1. "There's a computer in Celadon City that isn't there." - Literally, there's an invisible computer in Celadon City's hotel. This is one that I found myself as a kid, and it delighted me.
2. "There's an old man in Viridian City" - Of course this refers to the famous old man glitch! As does the general description of what to do over the next couple paragraphs.
3. "Present your offering and watch hunks of gold gush between skeleton jaws" - It's our good friend Aerodactyl Missingno. helping out with an item duplication glitch!
4. "Computers begin to forget your name. They spit up confused symbols, make uncertain sounds." - The Missingno. glitch can corrupt the Hall of Fame data in Red and Blue--a very eerie effect for a kid who wasn't expecting it and didn't know what was going on!
5. "What you store in them won't return unchanged." - When I was a kid, one of the warnings given after catching Missingno. was to never store it in a PC box! It could cause other Pokémon in the PC to become deleted or to become corrupted or evolve in strange ways. I haven't found any information about glitches that can corrupt PC box data, though, and this is pretty similar to some of these "glitch rumors," so this probably isn't a real glitch, but rather part of the lore that sprang up around Missingno.
6. "there are whole cities that wait invisible, unnamed and unknown and very real" - Glitch city!
7. "There are what might be other travelers, or what might only be playing at human." - Glitch trainers!
8. "Learn to tread where others can't." - Well, maybe it would be more accurate to say "surf" where others can't, but that doesn't sound quite so poetic. Once you've surfed to whatever illegal location, you can walk around in it as much as you like. ;)
9. "Learn to carry more than you can hold." - Red/Blue's small bag size is incredibly annoying. Fortunately, you can glitch your way into a bigger pack (and then proceed to cause complete havoc through arbitrary code execution). I'm rather fond of this line.
10. "People will struggle to see you, perhaps." - I was being more metaphorical when I wrote this and not thinking of anything in particular, but yes, of course, there's a glitch that will turn the player's sprite invisible.
11. "No walls can hold you" - There are a number of ways to gain the ability to walk through walls in Red and Blue. This is one I saw my brother do once with the aid of a GameShark, and it really fired my imagination. Finally, you could see what was in the long grass beyond the barriers around Pallet Town (which schoolyard rumor naturally said contained all kinds of powerful, otherwise-undiscoverable species). Visit Bill's secret garden! Walk clear off the edge of the map--this is what I remember seeing, watching the Game Boy over my brother's shoulder. You could simply walk out over the ocean, keep going and going, find increasingly strange arrangements of floating platforms, rocks, and land tiles, as though there really were a whole world right there in that little cartridge.
12. "no one can bar your way" - It's possible to sneak past the Youngster who ordinarily drags you to Pewter Gym in Red/Blue, which also allows you to skip getting the Boulder Badge entirely.
13. "You'll find enough of them in places they can't be, some of them strange and shimmering and wild." - This isn't a specific reference, but certainly there are any number of ways to trigger Pokémon encounters in places that shouldn't have any, and an entire Pokédex's worth of glitchmon!
14. "Follow them and see where they will not go, the paths that will lead you through the forest unopposed." - There are particular grass tiles in Viridian Forest that won't spawn Pokémon--if you step only on them, you'll be guaranteed not to have any wild encounters while passing through the grass!
15. "Hear what growlithe know of lightning and onix of the water deep below the earth." - In Red/Blue it's possible to evolve Pokémon like Eevee without using an evolutionary stone because the memory address used to store what Pokémon is in battle is the same as the one that stores what item is used. Some Pokémon species' internal identifiers correspond to the internal identifiers for evolutionary stones, and this fact can be manipulated by allowing stone-evo Pokémon to evolve simply by being in the same battle as some other Pokémon. Growlithe correspond to the Thunder Stone, and Onix to the Water Stone, specifically. This is a glitch that I found out about while writing this story, and it delights me; I'm a sucker for "this thing is secretly some other thing if viewed a different way." Turns out Psyduck is just a Leaf Stone sometimes!
16. "There's a clot of gold in the old Rocket hideout below Saffron" - There are a few hidden items in Red and Green that will, yes, respawn each time you show a fossil to the scientists in the Cinnabar Lab. One of these is a hidden Nugget in the Rocket Hideout.
17. "You will have learned that what you choose to throw away is much more valuable than what you keep." - Not a specific glitch, but rather a common technique used in the process of executing arbitrary code execution glitches. Code is often written through the use of a specific sequence of items, which often involves tossing a lot of items, likely generated through other glitches, until you have the correct number available.
18. "But who would desire gold when they could move mountains, rewrite history, reshape reality however they'd like?" - Arbitrary code execution allows you to, well, make arbitrarily large changes to the game world. This might involve giving yourself 99 of every item or writing a Sylveon into the game as an official Pokémon, or it might mean turning the game into Tetris, or even writing some payload code to send your friends a virus over the Link Cable. The possibilities are literally endless (within the game's hardware constraints, that is), and I'm always delighted to hear whatever wacky new effects people have managed to achieve by reprogramming an old Pokémon game through glitches. It really captures the fun of exploration and creativity that are a huge part of my love of the Pokémon franchise--albeit in a way that the game designers most certainly didn't intend!