PkMn n
Buried in its name is the PkMn glyph, the game's own shorthand for the word Pokemon, the single tile it stamps into POKeMON and PkMn Trainer and a dozen menus. Which makes this one quietly funny: a broken creature whose name literally contains the word Pokemon, as if it is insisting on the category it keeps falling out of. Index 204, a Pokemon named partly after the idea of a Pokemon.
The irony is that it comes closer than most. It wears Mankey, species 56, so it is a real Fighting type with a real 5 by 5 sprite, the scrappy pig-monkey standing there with its fists up. And it is genuinely catchable, a rate of 190, one of the friendliest numbers in the game, the same generous odds the real Mankey gives you. It opens with Scratch and Leer, and at level 8 it already knows Counter, the move that hurls an attacker's own force back at them, which feels right for a creature this stubborn about existing.
The seams are in the deep learnset, a scatter of glitch moves it should never know, and in evolution paths that stumble from Cubone to Victreebel to Venonat before landing on MissingNo. But of all the impostors in the hybrid wing, PkMn ◣ n is the one wearing a name tag that reads Pokemon, catchable and punchy and almost convincing, a little fighter arguing its own case.
FIGHTING
The bytes
| What | Where in the ROM | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Index number | slot 204 of the species table | 0xCC (204) |
| Pokedex byte | 0x410EF | 56 (borrowed from a real species) |
| Stats entry | 0x389E2 | 38 28 50 23 46 23 01 01 BE 4A... |
| Size byte | entry byte 10 | 0x55 = 5 wide, 5 tall (the buffer holds 7x7) |
| Name bytes | 0x1CA0C | 4A 23 23 78 22 79 22 C9 17 AD |
| Catch rate | entry byte 8 | 190 |
Front sprite pointer 0x6A11 resolves into ROM bank 0x0D (deterministic) at file offset 0x36A11. 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: SCRATCH, LEER.
Learnset (read straight from its pointer)
| Level | Move |
|---|---|
| L177 | GLITCH MOVE 0xF8 |
| L8 | COUNTER |
| L190 | GLITCH MOVE 0xBD |
| L83 | GLITCH MOVE 0xB6 |
| L187 | HYPNOSIS |
| L85 | REFLECT |
| L138 | GLITCH MOVE 0xFD |
| L9 | FURY SWIPES |
| L252 | GLITCH MOVE 0xE4 |
| L189 | GLITCH MOVE 0xD7 |
| L255 | GLITCH MOVE 0xCE |
| L107 | GLITCH MOVE 0xFB |
| L250 | BUBBLEBEAM |
| L151 | LOVELY KISS |
| L247 | GLITCH MOVE 0xD4 |
| L235 | SHARPEN |
| L169 | GLITCH MOVE 0xCE |
| L234 | AURORA BEAM |
| L154 | FIRE BLAST |
| L42 | STRUGGLE |
| L39 | BLIZZARD |
| L255 | GLITCH MOVE 0xD4 |
| L120 | TWINEEDLE |
| L214 | GLITCH MOVE 0xAF |
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 |
| TM16 | PAY DAY |
| TM17 | SUBMISSION |
| TM18 | COUNTER |
| TM19 | SEISMIC TOSS |
| TM20 | RAGE |
| TM24 | THUNDERBOLT |
| TM25 | THUNDER |
| TM28 | DIG |
| TM31 | MIMIC |
| TM32 | DOUBLE TEAM |
| TM34 | BIDE |
| TM35 | METRONOME |
| TM39 | SWIFT |
| TM40 | SKULL BASH |
| TM44 | REST |
| TM48 | ROCK SLIDE |
| TM50 | SUBSTITUTE |
| HM04 | STRENGTH |
Evolutions
| Trigger | Becomes |
|---|---|
| LEVEL 126 (glitch method 0x91) | CUBONE (0x11) |
| LEVEL 98 (glitch method 0xBA) | VICTREEBEL (0xBE) |
| LEVEL 115 (glitch method 0x46) | VENONAT (0x41) |
| LEVEL 48 (glitch method 0x24) | MISSINGNO. (0x73) |
| LEVEL 176 (glitch method 0xFA) | ZAPDOS (0x4B) |
| LEVEL 188 (glitch method 0xB9) | TENTACOOL (0x18) |
| LEVEL 223 (glitch method 0xB0) | \x23\x3e\x05\xea\xf0\xd5\xc9\x3e6\xea (0xFD) |
| LEVEL 63 (glitch method 0xD0) | A\x4c\x00\x4d\x6d\x4dz\x4d\x03\x4e (0xEA) |
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.