PokeWTrainer
Read the name aloud and it stops being random: the game's POKe glyph, then a W, then the whole word Trainer, spelled out clean as day. Index 196 is one of a small cluster of glitch Pokemon that wear the word Trainer in their names, and in the folklore of Red and Blue, that word is a live wire. The Trainer flag is the byte that decides whether the game thinks it is fighting a wild creature or a person, and glitches in that family are the doorway to the trainer escape glitch and the notorious ZZAZZ corruption, where a single mangled Trainer value can rewrite your save.
The creature itself is a heavyweight without a face. It borrows the same phantom body as its neighbor at index 193, VRAM-dependent, so its appearance flickers with whatever your Game Boy last drew. Behind that shimmer sit huge numbers, 232 HP and triple-digit bulk, the exact profile that makes glitch Trainers so dangerous when the game hands one an impossible team.
Its learnset is where the danger shows through the mask. It learns move 0x00, the null move, at three different levels, a slot that points at no move at all. Firing nothing from a Pokemon that is half creature and half command flag is precisely the kind of contradiction that makes Red and Blue nervous. Its evolutions dissolve into Gastly, Ivysaur, Shellder, and Exeggutor, but the real story here is not what it becomes. It is what its name knows how to break.
GLITCH TYPE 0x8D GLITCH TYPE 0x84
The bytes
| What | Where in the ROM | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Index number | slot 196 of the species table | 0xC4 (196) |
| Pokedex byte | 0x410E7 | 205 (borrowed from a real species) |
| Stats entry | 0x39A2E | 91 E8 93 91 80 88 8D 84 91 F5... |
| Size byte | entry byte 10 | 0x50 = 0 wide, 5 tall (the buffer holds 7x7) |
| Name bytes | 0x1C9BC | D6 35 C3 54 1F 17 96 5D 22 50 |
| Catch rate | entry byte 8 | 145 |
Front sprite pointer 0x8E8F points into VRAM/RAM (depends on memory state). There is no sprite data there, only whatever your Game Boy was doing a moment ago. The images above cycle through three reconstructions seeded with different video memory states.
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: BARRAGE, CLAMP, LEECH LIFE, HI JUMP KICK.
Learnset (read straight from its pointer)
| Level | Move |
|---|---|
| L40 | GLITCH MOVE 0x00 |
| L255 | WRAP |
| L11 | GLITCH MOVE 0x00 |
| L55 | GLITCH MOVE 0x00 |
| L255 | HORN ATTACK |
| L12 | DOUBLE-EDGE |
| L1 | GLITCH MOVE 0x00 |
| L76 | MEGA PUNCH |
| L13 | TAIL WHIP |
| L80 | GLITCH MOVE 0x00 |
| L191 | SCRATCH |
| L14 | DISABLE |
TM and HM compatibility (flag bits, entry bytes 20 to 26)
| Machine | Move |
|---|---|
| TM02 | RAZOR WIND |
| TM08 | BODY SLAM |
| TM13 | ICE BEAM |
| TM15 | HYPER BEAM |
| TM18 | COUNTER |
| TM21 | MEGA DRAIN |
| TM24 | THUNDERBOLT |
| TM27 | FISSURE |
| TM29 | PSYCHIC |
| TM32 | DOUBLE TEAM |
| TM33 | REFLECT |
| TM34 | BIDE |
| TM35 | METRONOME |
| TM36 | SELFDESTRUCT |
| TM40 | SKULL BASH |
| TM43 | SKY ATTACK |
| TM48 | ROCK SLIDE |
| TM49 | TRI ATTACK |
| HM03 | SURF |
Evolutions
| Trigger | Becomes |
|---|---|
| LEVEL 75 (glitch method 0x05) | GASTLY (0x19) |
| LEVEL 15 (glitch method 0xFF) | IVYSAUR (0x09) |
| LEVEL 75 (glitch method 0x06) | SHELLDER (0x17) |
| LEVEL 15 (glitch method 0xFF) | EXEGGUTOR (0x0A) |
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.