8
The name opens with a small solid triangle, one of the corner tiles the game uses to draw menu boxes, as if a chunk of border broke off and drifted into a name. Index 201 wears it like a chip knocked off something much larger, which suits the body underneath perfectly, because this specimen is Onix.
Its shown species is 95, so it inherits the great rock serpent whole: the Rock and Ground typing, the enormous seven by seven sprite, and Onix's single most famous number, a defense of 160. Physical attacks bounce off it like pebbles off a cliff. But Onix was always a hollow giant, and the glitch inherits that honesty too, just 35 HP and a limp 45 attack behind all that armor. It is a wall you could hide behind that could not knock over a Caterpie. It even opens with Tackle and Screech, the exact starting moves the real Onix carries, so for the first few turns it is indistinguishable from the genuine snake.
The illusion holds longer than most. Only deep in its learnset do the seams appear, a Blizzard it should never know at level 39 and unprintable glitch moves scattered through the higher levels. Its evolutions crumble into the usual rubble, unreadable garbage and Jynx and Ditto and MissingNo. A mountain of a Pokemon, mostly empty inside, with a broken corner for a name.
ROCK GROUND
The bytes
| What | Where in the ROM | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Index number | slot 201 of the species table | 0xC9 (201) |
| Pokedex byte | 0x410EC | 95 (borrowed from a real species) |
| Stats entry | 0x38E26 | 5F 23 2D A0 46 1E 05 04 2D 6C... |
| Size byte | entry byte 10 | 0x77 = 7 wide, 7 tall (the buffer holds 7x7) |
| Name bytes | 0x1C9EE | 78 EA 36 CC D8 21 26 D1 CB FE |
| Catch rate | entry byte 8 | 45 |
Front sprite pointer 0x4164 resolves into ROM bank 0x0D (deterministic) at file offset 0x34164. 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: TACKLE, SCREECH.
Learnset (read straight from its pointer)
| Level | Move |
|---|---|
| L190 | STOMP |
| L39 | BLIZZARD |
| L223 | GLITCH MOVE 0xAA |
| L82 | GLITCH MOVE 0xB3 |
| L194 | KINESIS |
| L81 | BONE CLUB |
| L22 | SUBSTITUTE |
| L235 | GLITCH MOVE 0xC8 |
| L73 | SWIFT |
| L26 | DRAGON RAGE |
| L99 | GLITCH MOVE 0xAD |
| L25 | HARDEN |
| L20 | MEDITATE |
| L105 | BIND |
| L234 | KINESIS |
| L5 | TWINEEDLE |
| L4 | THUNDER WAVE |
| L34 | STRUGGLE |
| L57 | GLITCH MOVE 0xE0 |
| L199 | PIN MISSILE |
| L42 | TACKLE |
| L72 | SPORE |
| L131 | TACKLE |
| L4 | POISON STING |
TM and HM compatibility (flag bits, entry bytes 20 to 26)
| Machine | Move |
|---|---|
| TM06 | TOXIC |
| TM08 | BODY SLAM |
| TM09 | TAKE DOWN |
| TM10 | DOUBLE-EDGE |
| TM20 | RAGE |
| TM26 | EARTHQUAKE |
| TM27 | FISSURE |
| TM28 | DIG |
| TM31 | MIMIC |
| TM32 | DOUBLE TEAM |
| TM34 | BIDE |
| TM36 | SELFDESTRUCT |
| TM40 | SKULL BASH |
| TM44 | REST |
| TM47 | EXPLOSION |
| TM48 | ROCK SLIDE |
| TM50 | SUBSTITUTE |
| HM04 | STRENGTH |
Evolutions
| Trigger | Becomes |
|---|---|
| LEVEL 46 (glitch method 0x8A) | c\x4b\xd2\x4b7\x4b\x36\x4c\x72\x4c (0xE9) |
| LEVEL 248 (glitch method 0x4B) | JYNX (0x48) |
| LEVEL 14 (glitch method 0x46) | DITTO (0x4C) |
| LEVEL 178 (glitch method 0x1D) | MISSINGNO. (0x32) |
| LEVEL 104 (glitch method 0x84) | \xc9\x40\x0894\x38\xcdh\xc0\x21 (0xF9) |
| LEVEL 18 (glitch method 0x84) | ELECTABUZZ (0x35) |
| LEVEL 107 (glitch method 0x54) | MISSINGNO. (0x7A) |
| LEVEL 188 (glitch method 0xAA) | SHELLDER (0x17) |
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.