L M 4
The name is a traffic jam: a katakana u, an L, a double vertical bar the game uses for nothing in particular, another u, an M, and a lonely 4. It looks like a corrupted license plate. But do not let the name fool you, because index 198 has one of the most legitimate bodies in the whole hybrid wing.
It wears Poliwrath. Its shown species is 62, so it inherits the full grown frog, the real Water and Fighting typing, and Poliwrath's genuinely solid stat line, 90 HP behind 95 defense and even offense. It fills a proper seven by seven sprite, no slivers or scatter, just the muscular amphibian standing there like it belongs. And its opening moves are exactly what a Poliwrath would throw: Hypnosis to put you to sleep, then Water Gun, DoubleSlap, and Body Slam to finish the job. In a battle it does not act broken. It acts like a competent mid-tier fighter that happens to have a keyboard smash for a name.
The cracks are all in the paperwork. Deeper in its learnset are unprintable glitch moves and a Teleport it learns at level 154, and its evolution chain makes no sense at all, sliding from Magikarp to Electrode to Dewgong to the ever-present MissingNo. A prizefighter with a garbled name and an impossible family tree. If a is the counterfeit that could almost pass, this is the counterfeit that could almost win.
WATER FIGHTING
The bytes
| What | Where in the ROM | Value |
|---|---|---|
| Index number | slot 198 of the species table | 0xC6 (198) |
| Pokedex byte | 0x410E9 | 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 | 0x1C9D0 | EA 8B CF 7C EA 8C CF FA 36 CC |
| 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 |
|---|---|
| L205 | GLITCH MOVE 0xF9 |
| L154 | TELEPORT |
| L209 | STUN SPORE |
| L152 | EMBER |
| L99 | GLITCH MOVE 0xC3 |
| L38 | REST |
| L49 | GUILLOTINE |
| L66 | GLITCH MOVE 0xB0 |
| L33 | DOUBLE KICK |
| L82 | ACID ARMOR |
| L146 | GLITCH MOVE 0xC6 |
| L53 | VINE WHIP |
| L194 | SUBSTITUTE |
| L44 | MEGA KICK |
| L173 | DOUBLE-EDGE |
| L47 | GROWTH |
| L68 | SCRATCH |
| L146 | SKULL BASH |
| L145 | GLITCH MOVE 0xB2 |
| L19 | SAND-ATTACK |
| L20 | ACID ARMOR |
| L110 | AMNESIA |
| L6 | FISSURE |
| L145 | GLITCH MOVE 0xD3 |
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 40 (glitch method 0x63) | MAGIKARP (0x85) |
| LEVEL 129 (glitch method 0x41) | ELECTRODE (0x8D) |
| LEVEL 66 (glitch method 0x2A) | MISSINGNO. (0x51) |
| LEVEL 35 (glitch method 0x8C) | DEWGONG (0x78) |
| LEVEL 129 (glitch method 0x7D) | CLEFABLE (0x8E) |
| LEVEL 249 (glitch method 0x45) | MOLTRES (0x49) |
| LEVEL 25 (glitch method 0x4E) | MEW (0x15) |
| LEVEL 70 (glitch method 0x8E) | KADABRA (0x26) |
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.