W G d
The name begins with the little down-pointing triangle that blinks at the bottom of every text box in the game, the symbol that means there is more, press to keep going. It is the most quietly perfect opening character a glitch could ask for. ▼ W G d starts its own name by telling you to advance the dialogue, a creature whose first letter is a request to continue.
Continue and you find a cobra. It wears Arbok, species 24, a clean Poison type with a solid, aggressive stat spread and the exact opening moves the real snake carries, Wrap to hold you, Leer to soften you, Poison Sting to wear you down. In a battle it slithers and constricts like it means it, one of the more competent bodies in the hybrid wing, catchable at a middling 90. For a while it is simply a snake.
Then the ending arrives, and it is a strange one. Press through its evolution data and ▼ W G d does not become another snake or a lump of static. It becomes Porygon, the artificial Pokemon, a creature made entirely of code. A cobra that evolves into a computer program, prompted along the whole way by the little arrow in its name that keeps whispering, keep going, there is more. In a game this broken, that is almost a mission statement.
POISON
The bytes
| What | Where in the ROM | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Index number | slot 206 of the species table | 0xCE (206) |
| Pokedex byte | 0x410F1 | 24 (borrowed from a real species) |
| Stats entry | 0x38662 | 18 3C 55 45 50 41 03 03 5A 93... |
| Size byte | entry byte 10 | 0x77 = 7 wide, 7 tall (the buffer holds 7x7) |
| Name bytes | 0x1CA20 | EE 21 96 D7 CB 86 21 A3 D7 CB |
| Catch rate | entry byte 8 | 90 |
Front sprite pointer 0x56B4 resolves into ROM bank 0x0D (deterministic) at file offset 0x356B4. 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: WRAP, LEER, POISON STING.
Learnset (read straight from its pointer)
| Level | Move |
|---|---|
| L156 | FLASH |
| L152 | FISSURE |
| L48 | SUPERSONIC |
| L38 | GLITCH MOVE 0xDA |
| L77 | COUNTER |
| L48 | GLITCH MOVE 0xCC |
| L182 | POISON STING |
| L88 | GLITCH MOVE 0xA6 |
| L114 | DIG |
| L193 | GLITCH MOVE 0xAD |
| L16 | GLITCH MOVE 0xB4 |
| L50 | GLITCH MOVE 0xC6 |
| L179 | THUNDER WAVE |
| L20 | ICE PUNCH |
| L202 | GLITCH MOVE 0xAC |
| L148 | GLITCH MOVE 0xE7 |
| L20 | ICE PUNCH |
| L124 | HEADBUTT |
| L87 | GLITCH MOVE 0xBF |
| L73 | GLITCH MOVE 0xCD |
| L4 | BUBBLEBEAM |
| L97 | WING ATTACK |
| L132 | ROCK SLIDE |
| L112 | AGILITY |
TM and HM compatibility (flag bits, entry bytes 20 to 26)
| Machine | Move |
|---|---|
| TM06 | TOXIC |
| TM08 | BODY SLAM |
| TM09 | TAKE DOWN |
| TM10 | DOUBLE-EDGE |
| TM15 | HYPER BEAM |
| TM20 | RAGE |
| TM21 | MEGA DRAIN |
| TM26 | EARTHQUAKE |
| TM27 | FISSURE |
| TM28 | DIG |
| TM31 | MIMIC |
| TM32 | DOUBLE TEAM |
| TM34 | BIDE |
| TM40 | SKULL BASH |
| TM44 | REST |
| TM48 | ROCK SLIDE |
| TM50 | SUBSTITUTE |
| HM04 | STRENGTH |
Evolutions
| Trigger | Becomes |
|---|---|
| LEVEL 78 (glitch method 0x57) | PORYGON (0xAA) |
| LEVEL 249 (glitch method 0xFF) | WEEZING (0x8F) |
| LEVEL 253 (glitch method 0x09) | GROWLITHE (0x21) |
| LEVEL 177 (glitch method 0xE3) | \xcfp\xea\x3c\xcc\x21\x28\x4b4\xf0 (0xE7) |
| LEVEL 163 (glitch method 0xAD) | \xd6\x35\xc3POKe\x1f\x17W\x5d\x22 (0xC4) |
| LEVEL 193 (glitch method 0xD3) | MISSINGNO. (0xB6) |
| LEVEL 211 (glitch method 0xD5) | \xc4\x01\x0f\x08\x3e\x07\xea\x2c\xd1\x3e (0xC1) |
| LEVEL 248 (glitch method 0xBF) | \x40\x40\x4094\x30\xd7\xcb\x47\xc0 (0xF1) |
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 its three bytes 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.