For those of us who never experienced MissingNo in the flesh, it was a myth, a legend, a creepypasta before there was creepypasta: many kids claimed to have encountered the mysterious glitched out Pokémon in their copy of Pokémon Blue, but of course, none of the ones in your school could prove it. A friend of a friend did it! While on vacation. But his brother and his uncle that works at Nintendo saw him do it so, it totally happened. To a kid, nothing is more tantalizing than the promise of secret content and the chance to show off their video game skills in the process, heck it’s why I spent too many hours of my pre-teen life trying to get the Triforce in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
But while that was a hoax, MISSINGNO is absolutely real, and for the recent digital release of Pokémon Blue, Nintendo has left him in the game. You still have to perform a series of tricks to access him, but he’s there. Watch a German player pull off the trick, above.
MissingNo was first documented in 1999 and is considered an unofficial Pokémon species, the convergence of lazy programming and glitches. The name stands for MISSINGNUMBER, a placeholder used when the game tries to access a Pokémon that does not exist. Once captured, it is fully functional and occupies the 000 spot on the roster. To see how the trick is performed on the original Gameboy and get a full explanation of how it worked, check out the video below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tOyBahKkbk
In other Pokémon related news, today The Pokémon Company and Nintendo announced the latest generation of Pokémon, Sun and Moon. Revealed just a day in advance through a leaked trademark registration, this new set of games is expected later this year.
