Post by goldensandslash on Sept 7, 2020 22:25:53 GMT
What is the competitive Pokémon battling game like? Oh, sure, you can talk about all the crazy stuff you can do with your perfectly legal Pokémon, but you’re overlooking a very important thing: illegal Pokémon. Here’s what I’m gonna examine: the competitive Pokémon battling scene where EVERYTHING is legal.
“Oh, so you mean, like, allowing the uber legendaries and what-not?”
Oh, please. You’re thinking too small. No. I’m taking this in a completely different direction: glitches. If it can be done in the game using official hardware and software, it is legal. Period. You can use your glitchy Pokémon, your glitched-up movesets, whatever. As long as it was obtained on official hardware and software, it is fair game. (Using an external cheating device is still disallowed.)
This is arguably the “real” Pokémon metagame, because this is what is included in the games. Despite that, knowledge of this metagame is largely undocumented, so I guess I have to document it myself.
One quick note, we will NOT be discussing the metagames of Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee, nor the metagames of Generation 8. Why? Well, two reasons. One, they are on current hardware (Nintendo Switch), and thus are still being updated. Glitches can be removed on a moment’s notice by Nintendo and Game Freak. Two, I’m just not knowledgeable enough about those games in general. So we will just ignore them. We’ll start at Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, and work our way backwards, until we reach Red and Blue.
Why are we going backwards? Because the further back you go, the crazier it gets. Generation 1 is full of SO MUCH untapped glitch potential that if I were to start with this, it would make everything else seem like a letdown by comparison. So instead I’m gonna build up to it. This is the order that we will examine each metagame and how it changes if you allow glitches:
Generation 7 (Sun/Moon/Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon)
Generation 6 (X/Y/Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire)
Generation 5 (Black/White/Black 2/White 2)
Generation 4 (Diamond/Pearl/Platinum/HeartGold/SoulSilver)
Generation 3 (Ruby/Sapphire/FireRed/LeafGreen/Emerald)
Generation 2 (Gold/Silver/Crystal)
Generation 1 (Red/Green/Blue/Yellow)
Let’s go!
So, we start by looking at Generation 7. Unfortunately, it’s a huge letdown. There’s not much in terms of glitches that is found in Generation 7 that radically changes the metagame. So I guess just keep playing the way you were playing. Yeah, pretty boring.
Though having said that, there are quite a few glitches found in previous games that give you access to otherwise-illegal Pokémon. By transferring them to Generation 7, you can impact the metagame a fair bit, but we’ll examine these glitches as we come to the games that actually have them.
So now we move on to Generation 6. What do we have here? Well, Florges gets a huge spike in usage if you allow glitches.
Name: Florges
Types: Fairy
Stats: 78 / 65 / 68 / 112 / 154 / 75
Abilities: Flower Veil / Symbiosis
Now I know what you’re thinking. What’s so special about this thing? I mean, it’s okay. But it’s not great. Its Defense is terrible. And that’s a shame because it would otherwise make an excellent Pokémon. Fairy is a good type defensively, it has stellar Special Defense, the ability to heal with Synthesis and Wish, and high enough Special Attack to pull off a STAB Moonblast effectively. But that Defense stat means it can’t last long enough to do so if your opponent has any physical attacker whatsoever. So why use it?
Simple. Look at its abilities.
They’re useless. Flower Veil makes your team’s Grass-types immune to status ailments and having their stats lowered. Symbiosis makes it so that if a Pokémon on your side uses a consumable item, Florges will give its item to that Pokémon instead. Both of these do nothing unless you’re in a Double Battle, and even then, they’re nothing to write home about.
Well... Florges is the ONLY evolution line with Symbiosis in this generation. And we are about to break this ability wide open. Let me tell you about the Symbiosis glitch. To perform this glitch, you’ll need an Eject Button. When a Pokémon holding an Eject Button is hit by a damaging move, then that Pokémon switches out automatically and the Eject Button is consumed. Due to a glitch, in Generation 6 only, if you have a Pokémon with Symbiosis in play when this happens, the item will transfer after the Eject Button Pokémon switches out but before the replacement switches in.
Okay, so? That’s just graphical weirdness.
Ah, but it isn’t. Because, you see, by doing it this way, the Pokémon will indeed appear to have no item, but then when it switches back in, it gets the item properly. In truth, though, it had the item all along, and then it gets the item when it switches in anyways, essentially giving it TWO held items. And furthermore, if the item in question was a Leftovers, the way it works actually causes it to double again, giving you FOUR of them. So, if you use a Leftovers in this way, you are healing 25% of your HP every turn. And if you have a Pokémon with Protect, you can alternate usage of Protect in order to basically get a free 50% heal each turn.
And even without Leftovers, you can still do some broken stuff with this. Choice Band, Choice Specs, Choice Scarf, and Assault Vest all provide massive stat boosts, at the cost of limiting what moves you are allowed to use. Imagine what would happen if you had two of them. Yeah, the stat boost is further multiplied, and the downside is irrelevant, because you were already prevented from using those moves by the first of the items anyways.
It turns out that in Gen 6, if everything is legal, Florges reigns over the metagame.
Now, hold on. That seems a bit extreme, right? I mean, sure, this is absolutely broken if you can pull it off, but that’s an extreme “if”, right? For one thing, you’d have to use a Florges on your team. And then you’d need an Eject Button. And you’d need the appropriate items. And... it just seems hard to pull off.
Indeed it is. So perhaps this glitch doesn’t QUITE impact the metagame as much as it perhaps could have under better circumstances. But worry not, we’ve got a long way to go. We’re just getting started.
Let’s move on to Generation 5.
Here, we need to discuss the move Sky Drop, a move so broken that Nintendo flat-out banned it in official tournaments in this generation, just because of its glitch potential. So what does Sky Drop do? It’s a physical-based Flying-type move that causes the user to lift the target into the air. While in the air, they are mostly immune to being attacked (with exceptions for a few moves: Gust, Thunder, Twister, Sky Uppercut, Hurricane, and Smack Down). On the following turn, the user crashes the target into the ground, damaging it (60 base power). That’s it.
So... what’s wrong here? Well, it has to do with the move Gravity. If Gravity is used while two Pokémon are in the air due to being mid-Sky Drop, then it will return the Pokémon to the ground. That part works fine. What doesn’t work fine is the Sky Drop Glitch. Here’s what happens. Though it appears that both Pokémon return to the field as normal, it’s actually only the attacker that does so. The target will remain in the air, unable to attack or switch out.
If this happens to your Pokémon, then congratulations. You’re now basically only using one of your Pokémon against your opponent’s two Pokémon. You’re at a MONUMENTAL disadvantage. Good luck overcoming that.
The Sky Drop+Gravity interaction was so broken that it caused Nintendo to ban the move Sky Drop from official tournaments. So I think it’s safe to say that with glitches allowed, this would have kept making an impact.
Let’s go on to Generation 4.
Up until now, the glitches that I’ve talked about have only been usable in Double Battles. This will change though. I know a lot of people play Single Battles, and so we need to be able to accommodate them too. Let’s go ahead and try to find a glitch that breaks Single Battles in Generation 4. First, though, we need to get some Pokémon to use. Since literally ANY Pokémon is allowed, we’ll be looking at some uber legendaries. Specifically, Giratina and Arceus.
Giratina is the first Pokémon that can change form depending on its held item.
Giratina-Origin is what you get when it’s holding a Griseous Orb. Giratina-Altered is what you get with any other held item. The Griseous Orb also boosts Giratina’s Dragon-type and Ghost-type moves by 1.2x.
Giratina-Origin has the stats 150 / 120 / 100 / 120 / 100 / 90 and the ability Levitate.
Giratina-Altered has the stats 150 / 100 / 120 / 100 / 120 / 90 and the ability Pressure.
So basically, Giratina-Origin is more offensive, and Giratina-Altered is more defensive. But remember what I said. This is the first Pokémon to change form depending on held item. Being the first, naturally, it would be poorly programmed. If you add or remove the Griseous Orb item while Giratina is in the PC Storage System, then its stats and ability will change to its new form, but... and here’s the kicker: its sprite will NOT change. So you can go into a link battle with a Giratina of one form masquerading as a Giratina of the other form. This can really throw your opponent for a loop.
Bottom-line: in the glitched metagame of Generation 4, you CANNOT ever trust a Giratina.
And as for Arceus... oh boy.
So, let’s talk about Tweaking. It’s a glitch that lets you access parts of the overworld that you don’t normally have access to. There’s nothing substantial about it, really. It just opens up areas of the game sooner than you’d normally have access to them. The one cool thing you can do with it is access the Darkrai and Shaymin that would normally only be able to be reached with event-only items, allowing you to repeat these events long after they’re over. So if you need a Darkrai or Shaymin, there you go.
But that doesn’t give us access to anything that we wouldn’t normally have anyways, right? I mean, yeah, it’s impossible to get a new Darkrai or Shaymin today, but you could have just gotten one a long time ago and then held onto it this long, right? Right.
But there’s another event Pokémon: Arceus. The Arceus found in the Hall of Origin can only be accessed with the event-only Azure Flute item, or with the Tweaking glitch. But here’s the thing. That Azure Flute item? Those events NEVER HAPPENED. They were planned, but Nintendo scrapped them for unknown reasons, instead just having events where they distributed Arceus to players directly. But with the Tweaking glitch, you can get this event that never happened.
So what? It just gives you an Arceus. That’s nothing that you couldn’t already have. Well... no.
See, the Arceus at the Hall of Origin is Level 80. And the Arceus that Nintendo distributed was Level 100. This is a huge difference. You see, at Level 100, a Pokémon is unable to level up. Without the ability to level up, it cannot gain EVs from defeating Pokémon in battle (well, in Generation 4. Later games give you EVs immediately even without a level up). As such, the only way to get EVs on an Arceus in Generation 4 is to use vitamins. But vitamins are limiting. You can only get EVs in multiples of 10, and no more than 100 in any given stat. This limited Arceus’s potential in Generation 4.
At least, when playing the games legitimately. Because the Level 80 Arceus does not care about such restrictions, and can run a full 510-EV set, with up to 252 EVs in any given stat. That’s huge for Arceus in particular, because Arceus’s base stats are 120 / 120 / 120 / 120 / 120 / 120. An even distribution means that Arceus can perform just about any role (compounded by the fact that Arceus can be any type). This means that a Ghost or Steel Arceus becomes more defensive and a Ground Arceus becomes more offensive, among other possibilities.
All right, so we got our Pokémon. Now it’s time to battle. This time, we’ll be taking a look at a glitch that can be used in any battle, not just Double Battles. So what’s the game-breaking glitch this time? The Acid Rain Glitch.
Everyone knows that Generation 5 is the generation that was all about the weather. Prior to this generation, permanent weather abilities were confined to Groudon and Kyogre, which are ubers. And after this generation, weather abilities only last five turns. Well... in the glitch metagame, the generation that truly is all about weather is Generation 4. And the weather that reigns is acid rain.
So what is acid rain? Well, suppose you have sun, sand, hail, Trick Room, or Gravity in effect. During this time, a Pokémon switches out (either yours or your opponent’s). But before the Pokémon leaves, it gets hit by a Pursuit. This triggers a glitch called “acid rain”. When this glitch occurs, we get some really weird weather.
First up, it will create fog. Fog exists as weather in the overworld and can be removed by Defog, though there is normally no way to create this status condition in battle. Then, after every turn, each Pokémon in play is damaged by its ability, similar to how Solar Power works in sunlight. Except it damages each Pokémon FOUR TIMES per turn: once per weather condition. Because acid rain is actually all of the weather conditions combined. So you’re essentially losing 30% of your health every single turn. That’s nuts. But wait, it gets better. Thunder and Blizzard will both have perfect accuracy in acid rain, meaning that if your team can reliably set this up, you get to use these very powerful moves reliably. Another fun thing is that if you’re about to lose the game, you can send in a Castform or Cherrim. If you do, these Pokémon will change forms infinitely, causing the battle to never progress and the game becomes endless, resulting in a draw instead. But we’ll assume that literally creating an unwinnable endless battle is something that is disallowed even in a glitched metagame, and ignore that.
So what’s the metagame like here? Chlorophyll and Swift Swim everywhere. Just like in later generations with teams revolving around weather, except this time you don’t have to choose a weather condition, you can just have all of them. (Sand Rush and Slush Rush didn’t exist in Generation 4.)
Ordinarily, having Jumpluff and Floatzel on the same team would be extremely detrimental, but if you can reliably create acid rain, then both can use their abilities to full effect. This causes the Generation 4 metagame to have some interesting teams that you wouldn’t otherwise see.
Now we come to Generation 3. And if you thought anything above was game-breaking, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Let’s talk about a move called Mimic. What does this move do? Well, when a Pokémon uses Mimic, it will gain a copy of whatever move the opponent used (unless that move was Struggle) until the battle ends. However, there’s a glitch with this move. If a Pokémon uses Mimic in very early copies of Japanese versions of Diamond and Pearl, and copies Transform, and then uses Transform to get a whole new set of moves, and then it later faints in the battle, but then the player wins the battle after that, then the Pokémon gets to keep the moves in question. On its own, this is pretty broken. But it’s gonna get worse, because of the Rage glitch.
If a transformed Pokémon uses Rage until the “rage is building” message, and then that Pokémon wins the battle, then the transformed Pokémon gets to keep all of the moves used by the Pokémon with Rage. Thus, any Pokémon with Mimic gets to copy the movepool of ANY Pokémon that can legally learn the move Rage. Oh, and that includes Smeargle, which can learn every single move in the game. So yeah, any Pokémon with Mimic can now learn every move in the game.
This allows for any Pokémon that can use Mimic to basically use ANY move (except Struggle and Chatter). Their movepool is infinite, just like Smeargle. Well, almost. Unlike Smeargle, you would be limited only to moves that existed in Generation 4, with Diamond and Pearl. Though one of your moves could be Sketch, and then you could also permanently learn one move from a later game when you transfer it up.
So why is this in the Generation 3 section? Why not Generation 4 where this glitch ACTUALLY occurs? Well, we’re gonna talk about that. First of all, how many Pokémon can even learn Mimic? Does this ACTUALLY affect that many Pokémon?
Well, I didn’t say the Pokémon needed to learn Mimic in order to use the glitch. I only said that they needed to USE Mimic, whether they learned it or not. As such, any Pokémon that learns Copycat, Metronome, Transform, or Assist can also take advantage of this glitch, as those moves allow the user to use Mimic.
But still... how bad is it?
Well... here we are in Generation 3. Mimic is a Move Tutor move. And EVERY SINGLE POKÉMON IN THE GAME (except Caterpie/Metapod, Weedle/Kakuna, Magikarp, Ditto, Unown, Wobbuffet, Smeargle, Wurmple/Silcoon/Cascoon, Wynaut, and Beldum) can learn it via Move Tutor.
Yeah, so you can break open this all due to Generation 3. And what makes this so game-breaking is that it affects not only this generation, but ALL LATER GENERATIONS AS WELL, since you can transfer your Pokémon up. So long as your Pokémon exists in Generation 3, it gets access to all moves that exist in Generation 4, and one move from later generations too if it wants to.
Shedinja can use Entrainment to give Wonder Guard to any other Pokémon it wants, breaking Double Battles wide open. Pidgeot can Mega Evolve and gain the No Guard ability, making it never miss when it uses Sheer Cold, a OHKO move. Groudon, after undergoing a Primal Reversion, could use Thousand Arrows. That sounds fun. Mega Glalie can use Fake Out and Extreme Speed together, thus being better at revenge-killing than any other Pokémon, thanks to its Refrigerate ability! Sylveon doesn’t exist in Generation 3, but it can still take advantage of the glitch by learning the necessary moves as an Eevee and then evolving in a later game. How does a Sylveon with Geomancy sound?
And this is only the tip of the iceberg. This is the most game-breaking glitch in the modern era of Pokémon, as it completely destroys any semblance of balance in EVERY generation of the games. If you want to completely break open the glitched metagame, this is the way to do it.
So... okay. In order to have some semblance of normality around here, we need to go back further than this. We need to go back to Generation 2. Because there’s no way to connect to future games in Generation 2, we don’t need to worry about any shenanigans like that, right? Well... not so fast.
Generation 2 is where Smeargle first debuted. Of course, it being the beginning means that Game Freak was bound to mess it up. And mess it up they did. So to recap, Sketch is supposed to permanently copy whatever move gets used. Fair enough. Except, here’s the Sketch glitch of Generation 2: this applies whenever Sketch is used. Period. That means that if you use Transform, become a Smeargle, and then use Sketch, you get to keep your Sketched move after the battle.
Logically, this opens the floodgates to any Pokémon that can use Transform to have an infinite movepool, right? Well, not quite. See, Generation 2 lacks Double Battles, so you’ll be unable to use the moves on your own Pokémon, making it unreliable to set up, since you’d be limited to working with the CPU opponents, who may or may not have teams that can work with this. Such a shame.
Oh wait, there is a way around that: the Viridian City Trainer House. Here, you’ll fight a CPU opponent once per day, and their team will be the same team as the player who you last Mystery Gifted with. So all you need to do is set up a team on one cartridge, Mystery Gift with another cartridge, and then there you go. Now all Pokémon that can use Transform can learn any move in the game! How many Pokémon does this apply to?
Well... two.
Yeah, not too impressive, right? The only Pokémon that can learn Transform are Ditto and Mew. Still, this is something, right? If only it could be more though. Oh wait, it can! Because any Pokémon that can use Metronome has a chance of getting Transform via Metronome and can then take advantage of this glitch. So, how many Pokémon can learn Metronome in Generation 2? Sadly, your options are still limited. Clefairy/Clefable, Mew, and Togepi/Togetic are the only Pokémon that get this move by level up. If you’re willing to put in some effort into breeding them, then you can also pass it on to a Cleffa, Snubbull, or Chansey. And if you happen to have a really really really old event Pokémon, there was an event Smoochum that had Metronome. That’s it.
But wait, there’s more! Because we’re not limited to Generation 2 here. We can step back in time, and look at Generation 1. And in Generation 1, Metronome was a TM move available to a wide variety of Pokémon: Clefairy/Clefable, Mankey/Primeape, Poliwhirl/Poliwrath, Abra/Kadabra/Alakazam, Machop/Machoke/Machamp, Geodude/Graveler/Golem, Gengar, Drowzee/Hypno, Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan, Chansey, Mr. Mime, Jynx, Electabuzz, Magmar, Snorlax, Mewtwo, and Mew.
Now that’s a sizable chunk of Pokémon that we can work with. Any of these Pokémon will have an infinite movepool in Generation 2. Alakazam and Mewtwo have base speeds of 120 and 130 respectively, nearly the fastest in the game. Alakazam ties with Dugtrio and loses to Mewtwo (and everything that Mewtwo ties/loses with). Mewtwo ties with Jolteon, Crobat, and Aerodactyl, and then loses to Electrode. That is it. Other than that, these are the fastest Pokémon in Generation 2. And now they can use Spore. Yeah. Good luck dealing with that. Snorlax has stats of 160 / 110 / 65 / 65 / 110 / 30, making it phenomenal in battle. Though it’s always been at a tremendous cost: that Speed stat of 30. A few other Pokémon have this same Speed (Slowbro, Slowking, Steelix, Sunflora, Sudowoodo, Magcargo, Parasect, Lickitung), but in terms of actually winning and not just tying? The only fully-evolved Pokémon that Snorlax can beat is a Shuckle. That’s really unfortunate. Well, now Snorlax can use Extreme Speed, so that low Speed isn’t even a problem for it! Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s teach Mew Spikes because why not?
The Pokémon that can take advantage of the Sketch glitch are insane, and the entire Generation 2 glitched metagame revolves around them. But wait, it gets better!
Generation 2 not only allows you to transfer your Pokémon forwards from Generation 1, but it also allows you to transfer BACKWARDS to Generation 1, something that has never been seen again since then. So now, all of these Pokémon that can learn any move in the game can not only break the Generation 2 metagame, but they’re also free to go back to Generation 1 and use their new toys to attempt to break that metagame too. I say “attempt” because, as you’ll see, the Generation 1 metagame is quite different.
So let’s talk about Generation 1. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Mew glitch, that allows you to encounter a Mew simply by flying away from a Trainer. But Mew is not the only Pokémon that can be obtained this way. The Pokémon that you encounter depends on the Special stat of the Pokémon that you last fought. So you can get anything you want, including glitch Pokémon. Suppose the Pokémon that you last fought had a Special stat of 192. How do you do that? Easy. You get a Pokémon with that stat, then encounter a wild Ditto, and let it transform.
If done correctly, the Mew glitch will now have you encounter the Pokémon called “4 4 Hy”. What’s so special about 4 4 Hy? Nothing. It’s as worthless as a Magikarp. But wait -- Magikarp isn’t worthless. It can evolve. And indeed, the same is true for 4 4 Hy. It evolves into Q ◣ at level 6. Q ◣ is unique in that it alone is able to perform the Pokémon Merge glitch.
What on earth is the Pokémon Merge glitch? I’m glad you asked. You need at least four Pokémon in your party in order to pull this off. One Pokémon that can be anything, the Q ◣ Pokémon, and the two Pokémon that you want to merge together. Put them in your party in this order. Then, go to Bill’s PC and deposit every single Pokémon into your PC, starting at the top of your party and working your way down, until you get to Q ◣. Deposit Q ◣ as well, and then ta-da! The two Pokémon below Q ◣ are now combined into one.
This isn’t a fusion like Kyurem in Generation 5 though. This is a lot stranger. The Pokémon on the bottom will be the only one left, but it will have the stats and moves of the Pokémon that was above it. For example, if the top Pokémon was a Starmie and the bottom was a Tauros, the resulting fusion will be a Tauros that has the stats and moves of a Starmie. Okay, that’s great for confusing the opponent about why my Tauros is using Bubblebeam, but what about actual uses for this? Like, at the end of the day, it’s still a Starmie, it just looks like a Tauros. Is there any benefit to fusion? Well, consider this scenario. Your playgroup disallows use of Mewtwo and Mew because those Pokémon are completely broken in Generation 1. No problem! You can just use a Tauros instead, except it’s really a Mewtwo in disguise! Go back in time and wipe the floor with all the kids on the playground at recess.
And even if Mewtwo and Mew were disallowed even during this setup, you can still have a lot of fun with the fact that your opponent never knows the identity of the Pokémon that you are using. You essentially get six Zoroark, except that the opponent can’t even look at your team to figure out what’s going on.
While we’re on the topic of glitch Pokémon, there are a total of 105 different glitch Pokémon programmed into Gen 1. 4 4 Hy and Q ◣ aren’t alone. Let’s take a look at these glitch Pokémon and how they perform in the Generation 1 metagame. Quick note before I begin: most of the glitch Pokémon aren’t that good, but there are a small handful that are, so those are the ones that I’m going to focus on. I just don’t want to give the impression that ALL glitch Pokémon are as overpowered as I’m making them seem.
So we start with .g, which is a Bug-type Pokémon. It has base 254 Special and base 121 Speed. I’m sorry... what!? That is insane. And it can learn both Thunderbolt and Blizzard. Between the two of those, no Pokémon in Generation 1 resists both, so congrats, you just got perfect type coverage with .g, the Pokémon with ludicrous stats. Oh, and this thing can learn Soft-Boiled, for free easy healing. WHAT THE HELL. Is there anything wrong with .g? Well... yeah. It is a bit of a glass cannon. It only has 14 base HP and only 12 base Defense. This thing can’t take a hit from any physical-based moves, nor can it deal any, since its base Attack is 0. Shame too, because it can learn Swords Dance, along with Hyper Beam, Tri Attack, and Submission. Even Explosion, the most powerful move in the game (which .g can learn), doesn’t even kill a Chansey at half-health unless you give .g an Attack increase first. Because of its low physical Defense, you do need to be careful with .g, but its high Speed and stupidly high Special are enough that it is still worth using.
.PkMn is our next glitch Pokémon of note. It’s a Normal-type. Its stats are all terrible, except for Speed. It has a Speed stat of base 178. But with bad stats, what can it do with that? Well, it learns Hypnosis. This combination of high Speed and Hypnosis make .PkMn the best sleep-inducer in the game, provided that Hypnosis hits. Unfortunately, .PkMn is too reliant on that to be counted on too much. Its other base stats are 37 HP, 0 Attack, 40 Defense, and 19 Special. That’s really not good. If it does manage to hit with Hypnosis, it can use Seismic Toss, which doesn’t rely on its Attack stat, or STAB Wrap, which will trap the opponent indefinitely (man Wrap was broken back in Generation 1). But again, all of that is reliant on the fact that the initial Hypnosis hits. And Hypnosis only has 60 accuracy. This makes .PkMn a high-risk high-reward Pokémon.
Next up, we have A ゥ G. This one is Ghost/Poison, just like Gengar. How are its stats? Well, unlike other glitch Pokémon, A ゥ G’s stats are pretty normal. In fact, they’re identical to Gengar’s, and Gengar was already a pretty good Pokémon. Okay, so it has the same typing and stats as Gengar. So I guess that means it’s just the same thing as Gengar, right? Wrong. A ゥ G has a VASTLY superior movepool to Gengar. First of all, it can learn Spore, and put the opponent to sleep with perfect accuracy. Secondly, it knows Recover, so it can heal itself freely. Third, it has the insane attacking moves of Psychic, Thunderbolt, Fire Blast, and Aurora Beam. Fourth, it can learn Growth to boost its already-high Special stat even higher (remember, base 130 Special!). As if that weren’t enough, it also learns Explosion, so it can provide a last-ditch effort to take something down with it. If you feel like rolling the dice, it can also use the glitch move TM09, which is the same as Explosion: a ton of damage but you faint after using it. It actually is stronger than Explosion, having 255 power, as opposed to Explosion’s 170. The downside is that TM09 only has 33% accuracy, as opposed to Explosion’s 100% accuracy, making it a bit of a gamble. Overall, A ゥ G is stupidly broken. Not only can it do so much stuff here, but also: any attempt to counter it is null and void because it will almost certainly put you to sleep before you can execute that plan.
And now we come to the last glitch Pokémon that I will analyze today, Xゥ- xゥ. This one is a Normal-type. Xゥ- xゥ has the highest base stat total out of any Pokémon that has ever existed in any generation of the games. 132 HP, 145 Attack, 140 Defense, 141 Special, and 128 Speed. That’s a base stat total of 686. And if we take into consideration that Special should count twice, once for Special Attack and once for Special Defense, then its base stat total is actually 827. By comparison, a Mega Rayquaza only has a base stat total of 780, which is the highest non-glitch Pokémon that we’ve seen to date. (If you want to bring up Eternamax Eternatus’s base stat total of 1125, fine, I will concede that this is higher, but I don’t count this because there’s no way for the player to legally obtain it for themselves, it’s just an NPC encounter.) So, tell me, what moves can Xゥ- xゥ use with those stats? Well, it can use Body Slam (and remember, it gets STAB on that), along with Wrap, Submission, Rock Slide, Thunderbolt, Waterfall, and Psychic. Unfortunately, all of these moves are offensive moves, and that’s probably Xゥ- xゥ’s biggest weakness: it has no form of HP recovery, so any Pokémon with HP recovery can stall it out. As such, given a choice, I think I’d rather have a Mewtwo or a Mew in a Generation 1 battle than a Xゥ- xゥ. But still, no reason you can’t use both.
But never mind all that! Because Generation 1 is FAR more broken than just a couple of glitch Pokémon. Let’s talk about 8F. 8F is a glitch item that can be used to perform arbitrary code execution. For the unfamiliar, this lets you pretty much reprogram the Generation 1 games to do LITERALLY WHATEVER YOU WANT. You can even delete the entire source code of the game and replace it with a source code for your own custom game if you want. Of course, programming within a Pokémon game is REALLY tedious and really hard to do. But it is still possible. There’s no limit to what you can do if you can perform arbitrary code execution. So, how does this affect the metagame? Well, you can basically just make your own Pokémon. It can have 255 as its base stat in every single stat. It can have whatever moves you want. It can be whatever type you want.
This destroys the very notion of the game itself. And that’s basically what the Generation 1 glitched metagame is: each player has six Pokémon, all maxed out on stats, with typing unknown to the other player, and able to perform any moves they want.
It’s... pretty dumb. And definitely unrecognizable as the game “Pokémon” that you know and love. But it is possible to do on official hardware and software. Meaning that this is the real Pokémon competitive metagame.
Even though almost everyone ignores it entirely.
I hope you enjoyed this look through Pokémon glitches. They can be quite fun to play around with, and the resulting metagames that you get from allowing these glitches are really quite unlike any “official” metagame.
And, of course, these are just the glitches that have been discovered thus far. Who knows what’s waiting right around the corner, waiting to be discovered next? Perhaps someday we’ll be able to break modern Pokémon games in the same manner as old ones.
“Oh, so you mean, like, allowing the uber legendaries and what-not?”
Oh, please. You’re thinking too small. No. I’m taking this in a completely different direction: glitches. If it can be done in the game using official hardware and software, it is legal. Period. You can use your glitchy Pokémon, your glitched-up movesets, whatever. As long as it was obtained on official hardware and software, it is fair game. (Using an external cheating device is still disallowed.)
This is arguably the “real” Pokémon metagame, because this is what is included in the games. Despite that, knowledge of this metagame is largely undocumented, so I guess I have to document it myself.
One quick note, we will NOT be discussing the metagames of Let’s Go! Pikachu and Eevee, nor the metagames of Generation 8. Why? Well, two reasons. One, they are on current hardware (Nintendo Switch), and thus are still being updated. Glitches can be removed on a moment’s notice by Nintendo and Game Freak. Two, I’m just not knowledgeable enough about those games in general. So we will just ignore them. We’ll start at Ultra Sun and Ultra Moon, and work our way backwards, until we reach Red and Blue.
Why are we going backwards? Because the further back you go, the crazier it gets. Generation 1 is full of SO MUCH untapped glitch potential that if I were to start with this, it would make everything else seem like a letdown by comparison. So instead I’m gonna build up to it. This is the order that we will examine each metagame and how it changes if you allow glitches:
Generation 7 (Sun/Moon/Ultra Sun/Ultra Moon)
Generation 6 (X/Y/Omega Ruby/Alpha Sapphire)
Generation 5 (Black/White/Black 2/White 2)
Generation 4 (Diamond/Pearl/Platinum/HeartGold/SoulSilver)
Generation 3 (Ruby/Sapphire/FireRed/LeafGreen/Emerald)
Generation 2 (Gold/Silver/Crystal)
Generation 1 (Red/Green/Blue/Yellow)
Let’s go!
So, we start by looking at Generation 7. Unfortunately, it’s a huge letdown. There’s not much in terms of glitches that is found in Generation 7 that radically changes the metagame. So I guess just keep playing the way you were playing. Yeah, pretty boring.
Though having said that, there are quite a few glitches found in previous games that give you access to otherwise-illegal Pokémon. By transferring them to Generation 7, you can impact the metagame a fair bit, but we’ll examine these glitches as we come to the games that actually have them.
So now we move on to Generation 6. What do we have here? Well, Florges gets a huge spike in usage if you allow glitches.
Name: Florges
Types: Fairy
Stats: 78 / 65 / 68 / 112 / 154 / 75
Abilities: Flower Veil / Symbiosis
Now I know what you’re thinking. What’s so special about this thing? I mean, it’s okay. But it’s not great. Its Defense is terrible. And that’s a shame because it would otherwise make an excellent Pokémon. Fairy is a good type defensively, it has stellar Special Defense, the ability to heal with Synthesis and Wish, and high enough Special Attack to pull off a STAB Moonblast effectively. But that Defense stat means it can’t last long enough to do so if your opponent has any physical attacker whatsoever. So why use it?
Simple. Look at its abilities.
They’re useless. Flower Veil makes your team’s Grass-types immune to status ailments and having their stats lowered. Symbiosis makes it so that if a Pokémon on your side uses a consumable item, Florges will give its item to that Pokémon instead. Both of these do nothing unless you’re in a Double Battle, and even then, they’re nothing to write home about.
Well... Florges is the ONLY evolution line with Symbiosis in this generation. And we are about to break this ability wide open. Let me tell you about the Symbiosis glitch. To perform this glitch, you’ll need an Eject Button. When a Pokémon holding an Eject Button is hit by a damaging move, then that Pokémon switches out automatically and the Eject Button is consumed. Due to a glitch, in Generation 6 only, if you have a Pokémon with Symbiosis in play when this happens, the item will transfer after the Eject Button Pokémon switches out but before the replacement switches in.
Okay, so? That’s just graphical weirdness.
Ah, but it isn’t. Because, you see, by doing it this way, the Pokémon will indeed appear to have no item, but then when it switches back in, it gets the item properly. In truth, though, it had the item all along, and then it gets the item when it switches in anyways, essentially giving it TWO held items. And furthermore, if the item in question was a Leftovers, the way it works actually causes it to double again, giving you FOUR of them. So, if you use a Leftovers in this way, you are healing 25% of your HP every turn. And if you have a Pokémon with Protect, you can alternate usage of Protect in order to basically get a free 50% heal each turn.
And even without Leftovers, you can still do some broken stuff with this. Choice Band, Choice Specs, Choice Scarf, and Assault Vest all provide massive stat boosts, at the cost of limiting what moves you are allowed to use. Imagine what would happen if you had two of them. Yeah, the stat boost is further multiplied, and the downside is irrelevant, because you were already prevented from using those moves by the first of the items anyways.
It turns out that in Gen 6, if everything is legal, Florges reigns over the metagame.
Now, hold on. That seems a bit extreme, right? I mean, sure, this is absolutely broken if you can pull it off, but that’s an extreme “if”, right? For one thing, you’d have to use a Florges on your team. And then you’d need an Eject Button. And you’d need the appropriate items. And... it just seems hard to pull off.
Indeed it is. So perhaps this glitch doesn’t QUITE impact the metagame as much as it perhaps could have under better circumstances. But worry not, we’ve got a long way to go. We’re just getting started.
Let’s move on to Generation 5.
Here, we need to discuss the move Sky Drop, a move so broken that Nintendo flat-out banned it in official tournaments in this generation, just because of its glitch potential. So what does Sky Drop do? It’s a physical-based Flying-type move that causes the user to lift the target into the air. While in the air, they are mostly immune to being attacked (with exceptions for a few moves: Gust, Thunder, Twister, Sky Uppercut, Hurricane, and Smack Down). On the following turn, the user crashes the target into the ground, damaging it (60 base power). That’s it.
So... what’s wrong here? Well, it has to do with the move Gravity. If Gravity is used while two Pokémon are in the air due to being mid-Sky Drop, then it will return the Pokémon to the ground. That part works fine. What doesn’t work fine is the Sky Drop Glitch. Here’s what happens. Though it appears that both Pokémon return to the field as normal, it’s actually only the attacker that does so. The target will remain in the air, unable to attack or switch out.
If this happens to your Pokémon, then congratulations. You’re now basically only using one of your Pokémon against your opponent’s two Pokémon. You’re at a MONUMENTAL disadvantage. Good luck overcoming that.
The Sky Drop+Gravity interaction was so broken that it caused Nintendo to ban the move Sky Drop from official tournaments. So I think it’s safe to say that with glitches allowed, this would have kept making an impact.
Let’s go on to Generation 4.
Up until now, the glitches that I’ve talked about have only been usable in Double Battles. This will change though. I know a lot of people play Single Battles, and so we need to be able to accommodate them too. Let’s go ahead and try to find a glitch that breaks Single Battles in Generation 4. First, though, we need to get some Pokémon to use. Since literally ANY Pokémon is allowed, we’ll be looking at some uber legendaries. Specifically, Giratina and Arceus.
Giratina is the first Pokémon that can change form depending on its held item.
Giratina-Origin is what you get when it’s holding a Griseous Orb. Giratina-Altered is what you get with any other held item. The Griseous Orb also boosts Giratina’s Dragon-type and Ghost-type moves by 1.2x.
Giratina-Origin has the stats 150 / 120 / 100 / 120 / 100 / 90 and the ability Levitate.
Giratina-Altered has the stats 150 / 100 / 120 / 100 / 120 / 90 and the ability Pressure.
So basically, Giratina-Origin is more offensive, and Giratina-Altered is more defensive. But remember what I said. This is the first Pokémon to change form depending on held item. Being the first, naturally, it would be poorly programmed. If you add or remove the Griseous Orb item while Giratina is in the PC Storage System, then its stats and ability will change to its new form, but... and here’s the kicker: its sprite will NOT change. So you can go into a link battle with a Giratina of one form masquerading as a Giratina of the other form. This can really throw your opponent for a loop.
Bottom-line: in the glitched metagame of Generation 4, you CANNOT ever trust a Giratina.
And as for Arceus... oh boy.
So, let’s talk about Tweaking. It’s a glitch that lets you access parts of the overworld that you don’t normally have access to. There’s nothing substantial about it, really. It just opens up areas of the game sooner than you’d normally have access to them. The one cool thing you can do with it is access the Darkrai and Shaymin that would normally only be able to be reached with event-only items, allowing you to repeat these events long after they’re over. So if you need a Darkrai or Shaymin, there you go.
But that doesn’t give us access to anything that we wouldn’t normally have anyways, right? I mean, yeah, it’s impossible to get a new Darkrai or Shaymin today, but you could have just gotten one a long time ago and then held onto it this long, right? Right.
But there’s another event Pokémon: Arceus. The Arceus found in the Hall of Origin can only be accessed with the event-only Azure Flute item, or with the Tweaking glitch. But here’s the thing. That Azure Flute item? Those events NEVER HAPPENED. They were planned, but Nintendo scrapped them for unknown reasons, instead just having events where they distributed Arceus to players directly. But with the Tweaking glitch, you can get this event that never happened.
So what? It just gives you an Arceus. That’s nothing that you couldn’t already have. Well... no.
See, the Arceus at the Hall of Origin is Level 80. And the Arceus that Nintendo distributed was Level 100. This is a huge difference. You see, at Level 100, a Pokémon is unable to level up. Without the ability to level up, it cannot gain EVs from defeating Pokémon in battle (well, in Generation 4. Later games give you EVs immediately even without a level up). As such, the only way to get EVs on an Arceus in Generation 4 is to use vitamins. But vitamins are limiting. You can only get EVs in multiples of 10, and no more than 100 in any given stat. This limited Arceus’s potential in Generation 4.
At least, when playing the games legitimately. Because the Level 80 Arceus does not care about such restrictions, and can run a full 510-EV set, with up to 252 EVs in any given stat. That’s huge for Arceus in particular, because Arceus’s base stats are 120 / 120 / 120 / 120 / 120 / 120. An even distribution means that Arceus can perform just about any role (compounded by the fact that Arceus can be any type). This means that a Ghost or Steel Arceus becomes more defensive and a Ground Arceus becomes more offensive, among other possibilities.
All right, so we got our Pokémon. Now it’s time to battle. This time, we’ll be taking a look at a glitch that can be used in any battle, not just Double Battles. So what’s the game-breaking glitch this time? The Acid Rain Glitch.
Everyone knows that Generation 5 is the generation that was all about the weather. Prior to this generation, permanent weather abilities were confined to Groudon and Kyogre, which are ubers. And after this generation, weather abilities only last five turns. Well... in the glitch metagame, the generation that truly is all about weather is Generation 4. And the weather that reigns is acid rain.
So what is acid rain? Well, suppose you have sun, sand, hail, Trick Room, or Gravity in effect. During this time, a Pokémon switches out (either yours or your opponent’s). But before the Pokémon leaves, it gets hit by a Pursuit. This triggers a glitch called “acid rain”. When this glitch occurs, we get some really weird weather.
First up, it will create fog. Fog exists as weather in the overworld and can be removed by Defog, though there is normally no way to create this status condition in battle. Then, after every turn, each Pokémon in play is damaged by its ability, similar to how Solar Power works in sunlight. Except it damages each Pokémon FOUR TIMES per turn: once per weather condition. Because acid rain is actually all of the weather conditions combined. So you’re essentially losing 30% of your health every single turn. That’s nuts. But wait, it gets better. Thunder and Blizzard will both have perfect accuracy in acid rain, meaning that if your team can reliably set this up, you get to use these very powerful moves reliably. Another fun thing is that if you’re about to lose the game, you can send in a Castform or Cherrim. If you do, these Pokémon will change forms infinitely, causing the battle to never progress and the game becomes endless, resulting in a draw instead. But we’ll assume that literally creating an unwinnable endless battle is something that is disallowed even in a glitched metagame, and ignore that.
So what’s the metagame like here? Chlorophyll and Swift Swim everywhere. Just like in later generations with teams revolving around weather, except this time you don’t have to choose a weather condition, you can just have all of them. (Sand Rush and Slush Rush didn’t exist in Generation 4.)
Ordinarily, having Jumpluff and Floatzel on the same team would be extremely detrimental, but if you can reliably create acid rain, then both can use their abilities to full effect. This causes the Generation 4 metagame to have some interesting teams that you wouldn’t otherwise see.
Now we come to Generation 3. And if you thought anything above was game-breaking, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
Let’s talk about a move called Mimic. What does this move do? Well, when a Pokémon uses Mimic, it will gain a copy of whatever move the opponent used (unless that move was Struggle) until the battle ends. However, there’s a glitch with this move. If a Pokémon uses Mimic in very early copies of Japanese versions of Diamond and Pearl, and copies Transform, and then uses Transform to get a whole new set of moves, and then it later faints in the battle, but then the player wins the battle after that, then the Pokémon gets to keep the moves in question. On its own, this is pretty broken. But it’s gonna get worse, because of the Rage glitch.
If a transformed Pokémon uses Rage until the “rage is building” message, and then that Pokémon wins the battle, then the transformed Pokémon gets to keep all of the moves used by the Pokémon with Rage. Thus, any Pokémon with Mimic gets to copy the movepool of ANY Pokémon that can legally learn the move Rage. Oh, and that includes Smeargle, which can learn every single move in the game. So yeah, any Pokémon with Mimic can now learn every move in the game.
This allows for any Pokémon that can use Mimic to basically use ANY move (except Struggle and Chatter). Their movepool is infinite, just like Smeargle. Well, almost. Unlike Smeargle, you would be limited only to moves that existed in Generation 4, with Diamond and Pearl. Though one of your moves could be Sketch, and then you could also permanently learn one move from a later game when you transfer it up.
So why is this in the Generation 3 section? Why not Generation 4 where this glitch ACTUALLY occurs? Well, we’re gonna talk about that. First of all, how many Pokémon can even learn Mimic? Does this ACTUALLY affect that many Pokémon?
Well, I didn’t say the Pokémon needed to learn Mimic in order to use the glitch. I only said that they needed to USE Mimic, whether they learned it or not. As such, any Pokémon that learns Copycat, Metronome, Transform, or Assist can also take advantage of this glitch, as those moves allow the user to use Mimic.
But still... how bad is it?
Well... here we are in Generation 3. Mimic is a Move Tutor move. And EVERY SINGLE POKÉMON IN THE GAME (except Caterpie/Metapod, Weedle/Kakuna, Magikarp, Ditto, Unown, Wobbuffet, Smeargle, Wurmple/Silcoon/Cascoon, Wynaut, and Beldum) can learn it via Move Tutor.
Yeah, so you can break open this all due to Generation 3. And what makes this so game-breaking is that it affects not only this generation, but ALL LATER GENERATIONS AS WELL, since you can transfer your Pokémon up. So long as your Pokémon exists in Generation 3, it gets access to all moves that exist in Generation 4, and one move from later generations too if it wants to.
Shedinja can use Entrainment to give Wonder Guard to any other Pokémon it wants, breaking Double Battles wide open. Pidgeot can Mega Evolve and gain the No Guard ability, making it never miss when it uses Sheer Cold, a OHKO move. Groudon, after undergoing a Primal Reversion, could use Thousand Arrows. That sounds fun. Mega Glalie can use Fake Out and Extreme Speed together, thus being better at revenge-killing than any other Pokémon, thanks to its Refrigerate ability! Sylveon doesn’t exist in Generation 3, but it can still take advantage of the glitch by learning the necessary moves as an Eevee and then evolving in a later game. How does a Sylveon with Geomancy sound?
And this is only the tip of the iceberg. This is the most game-breaking glitch in the modern era of Pokémon, as it completely destroys any semblance of balance in EVERY generation of the games. If you want to completely break open the glitched metagame, this is the way to do it.
So... okay. In order to have some semblance of normality around here, we need to go back further than this. We need to go back to Generation 2. Because there’s no way to connect to future games in Generation 2, we don’t need to worry about any shenanigans like that, right? Well... not so fast.
Generation 2 is where Smeargle first debuted. Of course, it being the beginning means that Game Freak was bound to mess it up. And mess it up they did. So to recap, Sketch is supposed to permanently copy whatever move gets used. Fair enough. Except, here’s the Sketch glitch of Generation 2: this applies whenever Sketch is used. Period. That means that if you use Transform, become a Smeargle, and then use Sketch, you get to keep your Sketched move after the battle.
Logically, this opens the floodgates to any Pokémon that can use Transform to have an infinite movepool, right? Well, not quite. See, Generation 2 lacks Double Battles, so you’ll be unable to use the moves on your own Pokémon, making it unreliable to set up, since you’d be limited to working with the CPU opponents, who may or may not have teams that can work with this. Such a shame.
Oh wait, there is a way around that: the Viridian City Trainer House. Here, you’ll fight a CPU opponent once per day, and their team will be the same team as the player who you last Mystery Gifted with. So all you need to do is set up a team on one cartridge, Mystery Gift with another cartridge, and then there you go. Now all Pokémon that can use Transform can learn any move in the game! How many Pokémon does this apply to?
Well... two.
Yeah, not too impressive, right? The only Pokémon that can learn Transform are Ditto and Mew. Still, this is something, right? If only it could be more though. Oh wait, it can! Because any Pokémon that can use Metronome has a chance of getting Transform via Metronome and can then take advantage of this glitch. So, how many Pokémon can learn Metronome in Generation 2? Sadly, your options are still limited. Clefairy/Clefable, Mew, and Togepi/Togetic are the only Pokémon that get this move by level up. If you’re willing to put in some effort into breeding them, then you can also pass it on to a Cleffa, Snubbull, or Chansey. And if you happen to have a really really really old event Pokémon, there was an event Smoochum that had Metronome. That’s it.
But wait, there’s more! Because we’re not limited to Generation 2 here. We can step back in time, and look at Generation 1. And in Generation 1, Metronome was a TM move available to a wide variety of Pokémon: Clefairy/Clefable, Mankey/Primeape, Poliwhirl/Poliwrath, Abra/Kadabra/Alakazam, Machop/Machoke/Machamp, Geodude/Graveler/Golem, Gengar, Drowzee/Hypno, Hitmonlee, Hitmonchan, Chansey, Mr. Mime, Jynx, Electabuzz, Magmar, Snorlax, Mewtwo, and Mew.
Now that’s a sizable chunk of Pokémon that we can work with. Any of these Pokémon will have an infinite movepool in Generation 2. Alakazam and Mewtwo have base speeds of 120 and 130 respectively, nearly the fastest in the game. Alakazam ties with Dugtrio and loses to Mewtwo (and everything that Mewtwo ties/loses with). Mewtwo ties with Jolteon, Crobat, and Aerodactyl, and then loses to Electrode. That is it. Other than that, these are the fastest Pokémon in Generation 2. And now they can use Spore. Yeah. Good luck dealing with that. Snorlax has stats of 160 / 110 / 65 / 65 / 110 / 30, making it phenomenal in battle. Though it’s always been at a tremendous cost: that Speed stat of 30. A few other Pokémon have this same Speed (Slowbro, Slowking, Steelix, Sunflora, Sudowoodo, Magcargo, Parasect, Lickitung), but in terms of actually winning and not just tying? The only fully-evolved Pokémon that Snorlax can beat is a Shuckle. That’s really unfortunate. Well, now Snorlax can use Extreme Speed, so that low Speed isn’t even a problem for it! Oh, and while we’re at it, let’s teach Mew Spikes because why not?
The Pokémon that can take advantage of the Sketch glitch are insane, and the entire Generation 2 glitched metagame revolves around them. But wait, it gets better!
Generation 2 not only allows you to transfer your Pokémon forwards from Generation 1, but it also allows you to transfer BACKWARDS to Generation 1, something that has never been seen again since then. So now, all of these Pokémon that can learn any move in the game can not only break the Generation 2 metagame, but they’re also free to go back to Generation 1 and use their new toys to attempt to break that metagame too. I say “attempt” because, as you’ll see, the Generation 1 metagame is quite different.
So let’s talk about Generation 1. I’m sure you’re familiar with the Mew glitch, that allows you to encounter a Mew simply by flying away from a Trainer. But Mew is not the only Pokémon that can be obtained this way. The Pokémon that you encounter depends on the Special stat of the Pokémon that you last fought. So you can get anything you want, including glitch Pokémon. Suppose the Pokémon that you last fought had a Special stat of 192. How do you do that? Easy. You get a Pokémon with that stat, then encounter a wild Ditto, and let it transform.
If done correctly, the Mew glitch will now have you encounter the Pokémon called “4 4 Hy”. What’s so special about 4 4 Hy? Nothing. It’s as worthless as a Magikarp. But wait -- Magikarp isn’t worthless. It can evolve. And indeed, the same is true for 4 4 Hy. It evolves into Q ◣ at level 6. Q ◣ is unique in that it alone is able to perform the Pokémon Merge glitch.
What on earth is the Pokémon Merge glitch? I’m glad you asked. You need at least four Pokémon in your party in order to pull this off. One Pokémon that can be anything, the Q ◣ Pokémon, and the two Pokémon that you want to merge together. Put them in your party in this order. Then, go to Bill’s PC and deposit every single Pokémon into your PC, starting at the top of your party and working your way down, until you get to Q ◣. Deposit Q ◣ as well, and then ta-da! The two Pokémon below Q ◣ are now combined into one.
This isn’t a fusion like Kyurem in Generation 5 though. This is a lot stranger. The Pokémon on the bottom will be the only one left, but it will have the stats and moves of the Pokémon that was above it. For example, if the top Pokémon was a Starmie and the bottom was a Tauros, the resulting fusion will be a Tauros that has the stats and moves of a Starmie. Okay, that’s great for confusing the opponent about why my Tauros is using Bubblebeam, but what about actual uses for this? Like, at the end of the day, it’s still a Starmie, it just looks like a Tauros. Is there any benefit to fusion? Well, consider this scenario. Your playgroup disallows use of Mewtwo and Mew because those Pokémon are completely broken in Generation 1. No problem! You can just use a Tauros instead, except it’s really a Mewtwo in disguise! Go back in time and wipe the floor with all the kids on the playground at recess.
And even if Mewtwo and Mew were disallowed even during this setup, you can still have a lot of fun with the fact that your opponent never knows the identity of the Pokémon that you are using. You essentially get six Zoroark, except that the opponent can’t even look at your team to figure out what’s going on.
While we’re on the topic of glitch Pokémon, there are a total of 105 different glitch Pokémon programmed into Gen 1. 4 4 Hy and Q ◣ aren’t alone. Let’s take a look at these glitch Pokémon and how they perform in the Generation 1 metagame. Quick note before I begin: most of the glitch Pokémon aren’t that good, but there are a small handful that are, so those are the ones that I’m going to focus on. I just don’t want to give the impression that ALL glitch Pokémon are as overpowered as I’m making them seem.
So we start with .g, which is a Bug-type Pokémon. It has base 254 Special and base 121 Speed. I’m sorry... what!? That is insane. And it can learn both Thunderbolt and Blizzard. Between the two of those, no Pokémon in Generation 1 resists both, so congrats, you just got perfect type coverage with .g, the Pokémon with ludicrous stats. Oh, and this thing can learn Soft-Boiled, for free easy healing. WHAT THE HELL. Is there anything wrong with .g? Well... yeah. It is a bit of a glass cannon. It only has 14 base HP and only 12 base Defense. This thing can’t take a hit from any physical-based moves, nor can it deal any, since its base Attack is 0. Shame too, because it can learn Swords Dance, along with Hyper Beam, Tri Attack, and Submission. Even Explosion, the most powerful move in the game (which .g can learn), doesn’t even kill a Chansey at half-health unless you give .g an Attack increase first. Because of its low physical Defense, you do need to be careful with .g, but its high Speed and stupidly high Special are enough that it is still worth using.
.PkMn is our next glitch Pokémon of note. It’s a Normal-type. Its stats are all terrible, except for Speed. It has a Speed stat of base 178. But with bad stats, what can it do with that? Well, it learns Hypnosis. This combination of high Speed and Hypnosis make .PkMn the best sleep-inducer in the game, provided that Hypnosis hits. Unfortunately, .PkMn is too reliant on that to be counted on too much. Its other base stats are 37 HP, 0 Attack, 40 Defense, and 19 Special. That’s really not good. If it does manage to hit with Hypnosis, it can use Seismic Toss, which doesn’t rely on its Attack stat, or STAB Wrap, which will trap the opponent indefinitely (man Wrap was broken back in Generation 1). But again, all of that is reliant on the fact that the initial Hypnosis hits. And Hypnosis only has 60 accuracy. This makes .PkMn a high-risk high-reward Pokémon.
Next up, we have A ゥ G. This one is Ghost/Poison, just like Gengar. How are its stats? Well, unlike other glitch Pokémon, A ゥ G’s stats are pretty normal. In fact, they’re identical to Gengar’s, and Gengar was already a pretty good Pokémon. Okay, so it has the same typing and stats as Gengar. So I guess that means it’s just the same thing as Gengar, right? Wrong. A ゥ G has a VASTLY superior movepool to Gengar. First of all, it can learn Spore, and put the opponent to sleep with perfect accuracy. Secondly, it knows Recover, so it can heal itself freely. Third, it has the insane attacking moves of Psychic, Thunderbolt, Fire Blast, and Aurora Beam. Fourth, it can learn Growth to boost its already-high Special stat even higher (remember, base 130 Special!). As if that weren’t enough, it also learns Explosion, so it can provide a last-ditch effort to take something down with it. If you feel like rolling the dice, it can also use the glitch move TM09, which is the same as Explosion: a ton of damage but you faint after using it. It actually is stronger than Explosion, having 255 power, as opposed to Explosion’s 170. The downside is that TM09 only has 33% accuracy, as opposed to Explosion’s 100% accuracy, making it a bit of a gamble. Overall, A ゥ G is stupidly broken. Not only can it do so much stuff here, but also: any attempt to counter it is null and void because it will almost certainly put you to sleep before you can execute that plan.
And now we come to the last glitch Pokémon that I will analyze today, Xゥ- xゥ. This one is a Normal-type. Xゥ- xゥ has the highest base stat total out of any Pokémon that has ever existed in any generation of the games. 132 HP, 145 Attack, 140 Defense, 141 Special, and 128 Speed. That’s a base stat total of 686. And if we take into consideration that Special should count twice, once for Special Attack and once for Special Defense, then its base stat total is actually 827. By comparison, a Mega Rayquaza only has a base stat total of 780, which is the highest non-glitch Pokémon that we’ve seen to date. (If you want to bring up Eternamax Eternatus’s base stat total of 1125, fine, I will concede that this is higher, but I don’t count this because there’s no way for the player to legally obtain it for themselves, it’s just an NPC encounter.) So, tell me, what moves can Xゥ- xゥ use with those stats? Well, it can use Body Slam (and remember, it gets STAB on that), along with Wrap, Submission, Rock Slide, Thunderbolt, Waterfall, and Psychic. Unfortunately, all of these moves are offensive moves, and that’s probably Xゥ- xゥ’s biggest weakness: it has no form of HP recovery, so any Pokémon with HP recovery can stall it out. As such, given a choice, I think I’d rather have a Mewtwo or a Mew in a Generation 1 battle than a Xゥ- xゥ. But still, no reason you can’t use both.
But never mind all that! Because Generation 1 is FAR more broken than just a couple of glitch Pokémon. Let’s talk about 8F. 8F is a glitch item that can be used to perform arbitrary code execution. For the unfamiliar, this lets you pretty much reprogram the Generation 1 games to do LITERALLY WHATEVER YOU WANT. You can even delete the entire source code of the game and replace it with a source code for your own custom game if you want. Of course, programming within a Pokémon game is REALLY tedious and really hard to do. But it is still possible. There’s no limit to what you can do if you can perform arbitrary code execution. So, how does this affect the metagame? Well, you can basically just make your own Pokémon. It can have 255 as its base stat in every single stat. It can have whatever moves you want. It can be whatever type you want.
This destroys the very notion of the game itself. And that’s basically what the Generation 1 glitched metagame is: each player has six Pokémon, all maxed out on stats, with typing unknown to the other player, and able to perform any moves they want.
It’s... pretty dumb. And definitely unrecognizable as the game “Pokémon” that you know and love. But it is possible to do on official hardware and software. Meaning that this is the real Pokémon competitive metagame.
Even though almost everyone ignores it entirely.
I hope you enjoyed this look through Pokémon glitches. They can be quite fun to play around with, and the resulting metagames that you get from allowing these glitches are really quite unlike any “official” metagame.
And, of course, these are just the glitches that have been discovered thus far. Who knows what’s waiting right around the corner, waiting to be discovered next? Perhaps someday we’ll be able to break modern Pokémon games in the same manner as old ones.