4B 8 4 8
The name is nothing but numbers with spaces between them, 4B 8 4 8, like a dice roll, a lottery ticket, or a row of a hex editor read aloud. It is the most numerical name in the catalogue, a creature that answers to a string of digits, and index 209 wears it over a body you have seen before.
It is a Poliwrath, the same grown Water and Fighting frog that ゥL ‖ゥM 4 borrows a few doors back. Same solid stats, same seven by seven sprite, same competent opening of Hypnosis and Water Gun and Body Slam. On the surface these two are near-identical prizefighters. But the paths behind them fork, and this one forks somewhere remarkable. Read down its evolution data and there, at level 78, sits Mew.
That makes 4B 8 4 8 the second creature in this collection with a secret door to the rarest Pokemon in the game, and it is a very different door than the one ゥU? offers. That earlier Mew came from a one-pixel sliver, a fragile oddity you would never mistake for real. This Mew comes from a fully muscled Poliwrath, a fighter you could put in a lineup, which somehow makes it stranger. Its other quirks only add to the character: it learns Splash at level 56, the single most useless move in the game, and Struggle at 53, so this champion frog knows both how to do absolutely nothing and how to hurt itself trying. A dice-roll of a name, a boxer's body, and Mew waiting quietly at the end of the road.
WATER FIGHTING
The bytes
| What | Where in the ROM | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Index number | slot 209 of the species table | 0xD1 (209) |
| Pokedex byte | 0x410F4 | 62 (borrowed from a real species) |
| Stats entry | 0x38A8A | 3E 5A 55 5F 46 46 15 01 2D B9... |
| Size byte | entry byte 10 | 0x77 = 7 wide, 7 tall (the buffer holds 7x7) |
| Name bytes | 0x1CA3E | FA 61 D3 FE 04 C0 FA 62 D3 FE |
| Catch rate | entry byte 8 | 45 |
Front sprite pointer 0x73C1 resolves into ROM bank 0x0D (deterministic) at file offset 0x373C1. The decode is deterministic: it looks the same on every cartridge, every time.
Byte for byte identical in Blue.
Base stats
Its stat spread, straight from the entry bytes. Glitch specimens love extremes, a wall with zero attack, or a paper-thin speedster.
Moves
Knows from the start: HYPNOSIS, WATER GUN, DOUBLESLAP, BODY SLAM.
Learnset (read straight from its pointer)
| Level | Move |
|---|---|
| L93 | THRASH |
| L214 | DOUBLE TEAM |
| L202 | TACKLE |
| L56 | SPLASH |
| L53 | STRUGGLE |
| L84 | FLASH |
| L98 | WING ATTACK |
| L144 | MEDITATE |
| L82 | WRAP |
| L178 | GLITCH MOVE 0xE4 |
| L138 | SCRATCH |
| L6 | JUMP KICK |
| L83 | GLITCH MOVE 0xA9 |
| L21 | GLITCH MOVE 0xED |
| L137 | BARRAGE |
| L80 | FOCUS ENERGY |
| L228 | SKULL BASH |
| L71 | GLITCH MOVE 0xD6 |
| L55 | SWIFT |
| L56 | GLITCH MOVE 0xE0 |
| L136 | DRILL PECK |
| L26 | MEGA DRAIN |
| L138 | QUICK ATTACK |
| L168 | GLITCH MOVE 0xE2 |
TM and HM compatibility (flag bits, entry bytes 20 to 26)
| Machine | Move |
|---|---|
| TM01 | MEGA PUNCH |
| TM05 | MEGA KICK |
| TM06 | TOXIC |
| TM08 | BODY SLAM |
| TM09 | TAKE DOWN |
| TM10 | DOUBLE-EDGE |
| TM11 | BUBBLEBEAM |
| TM12 | WATER GUN |
| TM13 | ICE BEAM |
| TM14 | BLIZZARD |
| TM15 | HYPER BEAM |
| TM17 | SUBMISSION |
| TM18 | COUNTER |
| TM19 | SEISMIC TOSS |
| TM20 | RAGE |
| TM26 | EARTHQUAKE |
| TM27 | FISSURE |
| TM29 | PSYCHIC |
| TM31 | MIMIC |
| TM32 | DOUBLE TEAM |
| TM34 | BIDE |
| TM35 | METRONOME |
| TM40 | SKULL BASH |
| TM44 | REST |
| TM46 | PSYWAVE |
| TM50 | SUBSTITUTE |
| HM03 | SURF |
| HM04 | STRENGTH |
Evolutions
| Trigger | Becomes |
|---|---|
| LEVEL 34 (glitch method 0xF2) | SLOWPOKE (0x25) |
| LEVEL 78 (glitch method 0x0A) | PIDGEOT (0x97) |
| LEVEL 49 (glitch method 0xED) | KINGLER (0x8A) |
| LEVEL 78 (glitch method 0xA1) | MEW (0x15) |
| LEVEL 209 (glitch method 0x7A) | GOLBAT (0x82) |
| LEVEL 99 (glitch method 0x8C) | PIDGEY (0x24) |
| LEVEL 55 (glitch method 0x53) | NIDORINA (0xA8) |
| LEVEL 172 (glitch method 0x28) | MACHOP (0x6A) |
Hear its cry
A cry is three bytes the game looks up by index number: a base sound, a pitch, and a length. This specimen reads a base that points past the real cries into data that was never a cry, so it comes out broken straight from the table. I rebuild the sound live from the Game Boy's two pulse channels and its noise channel. This is not a recording.
Does it still work?
This is the question people actually ask about a glitch, so here is the honest answer for this one.
| Where | Still works? |
|---|---|
| Original Game Boy cartridge | Yes. The source of every byte on this page. |
| Game Boy Color / Super Game Boy | Yes, with the auto-assigned palette shown above. |
| 3DS Virtual Console (2016 re-release) | Yes. Nintendo shipped the re-release unpatched, so this is the most accessible way to reach it in 2026. |
| Later remakes (FireRed, Let's Go, and newer) | No. Rebuilt engines, the empty-slot overflow that produces this creature is gone. |
Fight it yourself
This is our from-scratch recreation of the Red battle engine. The enemy team is preset to this specimen; pick your own fighter, glitch or otherwise.
Every number on this page was read from a Pokemon Red ROM by reproducing the game's own out-of-bounds memory reads. Nothing is invented. Part of The Glitchhouse.