The Glitchhouse
A field guide to broken Pokemon
Red and Blue contain 70 distinct creatures that were never designed: 'M, one MissingNo. that answers to 36 different addresses plus its three special forms, and 65 uniquely named hybrids living past the end of the species table. Every page here is decoded straight from the ROM, byte by byte, every specimen has a cry rebuilt from the cartridge, and every one can be fought in our recreation of the battle engine.
The Lab · Interactive
Don't just read about them. Fight them.
The Glitchhouse has a working half. The Lab is where the decoded data comes alive: a Gen 1 battle engine rebuilt from scratch, and tools that turn the glitches into things you can actually play with.
The Battler
A from-scratch recreation of the Pokemon Red battle engine. Build a team, fight any glitch or real Pokemon, or battle a friend over a link code.
Open the Battler →
The Name Glitch
Type a name and see exactly which wild and glitch Pokemon the old-man Cinnabar glitch would summon from it, cries and all.
Try it →
Deep dives · Long reads
The stories behind the glitches
Each of these is a full, interactive investigation of one famous Red and Blue glitch: how it works, why it happens, and what it does, all decoded from the ROM and built to play with, not just read.
The Old Man Glitch
Turn your name into wild Pokemon on the Cinnabar coast. Why the sea reads your letters as monsters, byte by byte.
Read it →
The Mew Glitch
The Trainer-Fly trick that summons Mew from a leftover pointer. The whole setup, walked step by step.
Read it →
Super Glitch
The moves with no name. Why printing one runs the game off the end of its own text and corrupts memory.
Read it →
Glitch City
Walk off the edge of the map into a town built from leftover blocks. How you fall in, and how you get out.
Read it →
Mew Under the Truck
The playground rumor, tested against the ROM. What is really under the S.S. Anne truck, and why the rumor spread.
Read it →The specimens
Game
Type
36 of 36 shown
'M
Index 00, the glitch that evolves into Kangaskhan, decoded from the ROM.
MISSINGNO.
The most famous glitch Pokemon in Red and Blue, decoded across five cartridges.
MissingNo. (Fossil Kabutops form)
Index B6/182: MissingNo. wearing the Pewter museum Kabutops fossil sprite.
MissingNo. (Fossil Aerodactyl form)
Index B7/183: MissingNo. wearing the Pewter museum Aerodactyl fossil sprite.
MissingNo. (Ghost form)
Index B8/184: MissingNo. wearing the Lavender Tower ghost sprite.
A
Index BF/191: the first hybrid, zero Attack and 178 Speed.
a
Index C0/192: the plain Water-type hybrid, one lowercase letter for a name.
(C1)
The name is a single katakana character followed by nothing the game c...
.4
The name trails off into a period and a four, like a file that got sav...
h POKe
Index C3/195: Ghost/Poison hybrid built on Gengar, 130 Special.
PokeWTrainer
Read the name aloud and it stops being random: the game's POKe gl...
PkMn (C5)
Its name is the PkMn glyph, the two-letter abbreviation the game keeps...
L M 4
The name is a traffic jam: a katakana u, an L, a double vertical bar t...
P T
Index C7/199: 788 stat total, two glitch types, a female symbol in its name.
U?
Its name ends in a question mark, which turns out to be the most hones...
8
The name opens with a small solid triangle, one of the corner tiles th...
PC 4S H
The first two letters of its name are PC, the storage computer, the bl...
P
Index CB/203: Normal/Flying hybrid whose only reachable evolution is Abra.
PkMn n
Buried in its name is the PkMn glyph, the game's own shorthand fo...
Trainer
No symbols, no kana, no cursor. Its name is just the word Trainer, spe...
W G d
Index CE/206: Poison-type hybrid named after the text-box arrow.
OPkMn4X
Index CF/207: Bug/Poison hybrid with a stock code for a name.
PkMn PkMn T
Its name stutters, the PkMn glyph printed twice in a row before traili...
4B 8 4 8
Index D1/209: Water/Fighting hybrid with a name made of numbers.
'
Index D2/210: 788 stat total, two glitch types, a syllable and an apostrophe.
M p'u
Index D3/211: the 209-Defense wall with two glitch types.
A G
Index D4/212: the second Ghost/Poison hybrid built on Gengar.
P
The name fades out. A P, then a katakana u, then another, then another...
4 h
Index D6/214: zero Attack, 178 Speed, and SonicBoom to make it count.
Glitch (D7)
Index D7/215: the nameless Water-type hybrid, known only by its address.
'M (FF), the Charizard one
Index FF/255: the 'M that borrows Charizard's sprite, types and stats.
Recently built
The Celebi Egg glitch
Hatch a real Celebi in Gold, Silver & Crystal, because Beat Up and Celebi share index number 251.
The Ditto glitch
A wild Ditto's Transform becomes a dial for the Mew glitch: its Special stat picks the species you encounter.
999999
ZZAZZ
The glitch trainer that floods your money to the maximum and eats your save, decoded byte by byte.
39 more specimens are being catalogued. New files land continuously.