Pokémon Red and Blue’s MissingNo glitch was discovered over 27 years ago. Here is how the iconic Kanto Region glitch was first uncovered by players, and became the stuff of legends on school playgrounds around the world.
Pokémon Red and Blue MissingNo Was Discovered 27 Years Ago
If you were a ’90s child like myself, you likely first learned about Pokémon Red and Blue’s MissingNo glitch from another kid at school. The popular bug quickly became a myth on playgrounds and became a rite of passage for Gen 1 Pokémon fans. The infamous glitch results in a random string of numbers popping up as a Pokémon, which you could then catch.
At the time, there was even a myth that the garbled Pokémon pixels was Mew itself. Although this was untrue. The glitch is actually triggered by players manipulating the game’s Pokémon generator algorithm after the game’s tutorial. It can specifically be found by using Fly to travel to Cinnabar Island. Then, after using Surf, the glitched monstrosity can appear as an encounter.
While MissingNo wasn’t a secret Pokémon, many kids chose to find it to say they truly “caught” everything in the game. But the glitch also multiplied your sixth item slot to 128, which made it a handy trick for speedrunners. To celebrate its 27th anniversary on January 11, fans tried to track down the origins of the Gen 1 Kanto glitch. How was it discovered in the first place? Who was the first player to find it?
How Pokémon MissingNo Glitch Was First Discovered
Interestingly, the MissingNo glitch was actually known fairly early on after the game’s release due to cheat codes. However, in terms of the first player to actually report it, that honor currently goes to Gyarados23, who accidentally stumbled upon it. On January 11, 1999, the user made a post on a Pokémon forum and described what would eventually become the method to trigger the MissingNo encounter.
“OK, first go to Viridian City and talk to the Old Man. Then fly to Cinnabar Island, and on the east coast you’ll run into a lv 129 Golduck. The problem is once he levels up, he reverts to lv 100.” Where this gets fascinating is a second account on the forum by the name of Jack White then replied, saying this method led him to finding multiple MissingNo’s.
“I was pretty surprised to see that this trick actually worked! However, I didn’t get a Psyduck. I got a L139 Starmie, x2 L128 Cloysters, and a few screwed up Missingnos (spelled ### ‘M ##, with glitchy parts where the “#s” are written). Didn’t try to experience any of them yet. Oh well.” So yeah, it appears the MissingNo glitch as we all know it today started out as a mistaken encounter.
Of course, it should go without saying that we can’t definitively say this is the first player to discover it. But it’s one of the earliest public examples of it being reported on by fans. As I said earlier, MissingNo itself was already known about through cheat codes. Still, this forum post would end up becoming the method many children of the ’90s would use to encounter it.
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