Post by goldensandslash on Feb 7, 2021 0:44:59 GMT
Ah, Pokémon. A classic game. You just go around and catch Pokémon, stop an evil villainous team, and become a champion. What more is there? Well... glitches. Lots and lots of glitches. I already talked about these in another thread, where I analyzed what the hypothetical metagame would be in Pokémon competitive play if you allowed glitches. This started out fairly tame in modern games and then slowly degenerated until we reached Gen 1, where the game was a completely broken mess.
This got me thinking... could you beat a Gen 1 game without glitches? I mean... there are A LOT of glitches. The Bulbapedia article List of glitches in Generation I is not only ridiculously long, but it even has a notice at the top of the page informing you that the article is incomplete.
So... getting through the game without using glitches is a bit of a challenge. The entirety of the world is a landmine and stepping on ANYTHING could potentially trigger a glitch. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna save our game often, and then every time we use a glitch, we need to reset and load a previous save. Let's take a look.
By the way, I am not ACTUALLY playing this, I'm just theorizing what such a playthrough would look like. As you'll soon see, it's pretty damn messy and no one would be sane enough to attempt this for real.
I will be "playing" Red Version, though I imagine that the experience is equally insane in Green, Blue, or Yellow.
So to start with, we press Start on the title screen and choose New Game. We listen to Oak's speech, yadda yadda. Okay, now we're in Pallet Town. Oh, and I've set up a glitch alarm that will say "glitch alert" if I ever use a glitch, so we will be able to easily spot and avoid them. Great. Well, first of all, I don't know about you, but I feel the Oak's speech was a little long. I don't want to sit through that again if I happen to reset the game due to encountering a glitch. Let's just save the game now so that we can avoid that.
GLITCH ALERT!
So... after saving the game... my menu isn't going away. It's just... sitting there. What's going on? Well, it was because I held down the A button while saving. When you do this, the menu does not vanish until you let go of the A button. That's a glitch.
Time to reset and try again. And you have to keep this in mind EVERY time you save the game.
Okay, I reset the game, watched Oak's speech again, saved my game properly and am now ready to actually start the game. Let's choose a starter.
Actually, nah. I don't want to do that. I'm just gonna leave the lab without picking one. I think everyone has done this, just because it's fun to see Oak yell at you when you attempt it. It's harmless, really?
Or is it?
Leaving the lab without a starter once or twice is fine... but if you do it enough times... eventually... Professor Oak will turn invisible, as will the middle Poké Ball on the desk. After this occurs, you can press Start to bring up the menu, and then a bunch of glitchy text appears on-screen. You can simply exit the menu to remove the text and restore visibility to Oak and the Poké Ball. Everything goes back to normal. But... this is still a glitch and requires a reset.
Okay, no more goofing around. I'm just taking a Charmander and moving on. And then we have our first rival battle! Our rival has Squirtle and we have Charmander. Let's go for it!
Charmander used Scratch!
Charmander's attack missed!
Wait... what?
How can Scratch miss? It has 100% accuracy. Welcome to the 1/256 glitch. Every move (except Swift) has a 1/256 chance of missing, due to a glitch. So if you ever use a 100% accurate move and it misses, you just encountered a glitch and have to reset (unless your accuracy fell or your opponent's evasion rose, in which case, you're fine). Every time you attack in this game, there's a chance that this glitch occurs. And it's not just "attacks", it's any move, including Growl and Tail Whip and such. So there's not really any way out of this.
Oh, and as if this weren't bad enough, your opponent can trigger this glitch with their moves too, so you also have to pray that they don't trigger the glitch either.
(sigh)
You see how hard it is to play this game without glitches? Time for another reset...
Okay. We FINALLY made it through that rival battle (whether we win or lose, I don't really care).
Now, let's go ahead and catch some more Pokémon.
...
Oh, right. I don't have Poké Balls yet.
Uh, okay, take care of Oak's Parcel and what-not, get the Pokédex. Now we're good to go. You can buy Poké Balls at the Viridian City Poké Mart. However, little-known fact about this game: you can actually get five free Poké Balls from Professor Oak if you talk to him after defeating your rival on Route 22 if you have no other Pokémon besides your starter at that point.
Despite the difficulty in winning that second rival fight with only a single starter, I tend to go for this every time, because I find the free Poké Balls to be worth it, since money is scarce in the early-game. So yeah, gonna get some free Poké Balls from Oak before proceeding.
Oops. I just triggered a glitch.
When Oak gives you these Poké Balls, the dialogue box that pops up with his dialogue is actually glitchy. When advancing through his dialogue, it overwrites the text already in the text-box without clearing it out first, resulting in overlapping messages.
Time for another reset.
I guess we just have to buy the Poké Balls ourselves. Oh well.
So, from here, we can just go through the Viridian Forest and reach Pewter City to reach Brock, the first gym leader. We're meant to fight him, but I don't really feel up for it. I mean, I chose CHARMANDER. That's the worst choice to fight Brock with. So I'm just gonna leave Pewter City without the badge. I'll come back for it later.
...Or not.
Turns out there's an NPC that stops you from leaving. Well, there's a way to get past him. All you have to do is press Start to open the menu as you're talking to him, save the game, and then close all the dialogue boxes with the B button. Then reset your Game Boy and you'll find that this NPC has disappeared, and you are free to move on without facing Brock.
Obviously this is a glitch, so we're not gonna be doing that.
Guess I'll just have to resort to grinding up my Charmander...
Okay, Charmander is now really overleveled and I can take on Brock. Excellent. We got through that without a problem. Now we have our first badge, the Boulder Badge! Awesome.
More importantly, it means that we can go on to Route 3 without using glitches. Let's go through it now.
Lass wants to fight!
Lass sent out Pidgey!
Go Charmeleon!
Charmeleon used Scratch!
Enemy Pidgey used Sand-Attack!
Charmeleon's accuracy fell!
GLITCH ALERT!
Oh come on! What happened there? I've been hit by Sand-Attack by loads of Pidgey before now. What makes this one different? Well, the difference is that now I have a badge. When you have certain badges, they raise the stats of your Pokémon. In the case of the Boulder Badge from Brock, it raises Attack. Well... due to a glitch... whenever ANY of your stats are raised or lowered, the game recalculates these badge boosts, thus giving you a further increase. So... my Attack is now higher than it should normally be. That's a glitch, and I'm now required to reset.
So... to recap... I'm not allowed to EVER raise or lower any of my stats and I'm not allowed to have them be raised or lowered by an opponent either. Yikes. This playthrough is gonna take a while if I have to reset after EVERY time that this happens. Basically I have to pray that my opponents only ever use damaging moves from here on out. Oh, and remember that I am simultaneously praying that neither side runs into the 1/256 glitch. So yeah... this is pretty god damn insane.
All right, it took a lot of resets, but I finally made it through Route 3 and onto Route 4. There's a Pokémon Center on this route, and THANK GOD for that. See, I've been catching a lot of Pokémon in this playthrough, and I'd like to change my team up a bit. Give some fresh faces a chance to shine, y'know?
Okay, great. I swapped my team out and... huh?
"Red blacked out!"
What just happened?
Well, when I was depositing and withdrawing my Pokémon, I accidentally forgot which ones are fainted and which ones aren't. Pokémon sent to the PC aren't automatically healed in this generation. That's only a thing from Gen 2 to Gen 7, it's not in Gen 1 or Gen 8 (note that when I say "Gen 7", I am referring just to the 3DS games, the PC also does not heal your Pokémon in the Let's Go games). By the time I was finished withdrawing my Pokémon, I had a team of only fainted Pokémon.
So what's the problem? A black out is the expected outcome of having only fainted Pokémon, right? This isn't a glitch at all. Well, the glitch is that you don't black out immediately, you get to still survive until you take one step. That's a glitch, and that requires a reset.
All right, made it through Mt. Moon, and I have reached Cerulean City. Let me explore the city for a bit and... wait... why is the text in my game going faster than normal?
Yeah... if you talk to the Bike Shop owner before you receive the Bike Voucher, and then exit out of it without attempting to purchase the massively-expensive Bicycle... then the text that appears on-screen will always display all at once, rather than one character at a time, until you obtain the Bicycle for real. This is actually a very useful trick in speedrunning, but since it's a glitch, we're gonna have to reset and avoid it.
Let's just fight Misty.
Enemy Starmie used Water Gun!
GLITCH ALERT!
Oh, come on! What could have POSSIBLY happened there?
Well... I'm using a Charmeleon, so it took a lot of damage... in fact, it's down to 11 health out of 71. That's not allowed. That puts its HP in the "red zone", and we're avoiding glitches. So in addition to not having a 100% accurate move miss, and not getting our stats lowered/raised, we ALSO have to avoid ever having red HP.
Why? Because the game plays a sound effect to let the player know about the red health, namely that annoying beeping. Well, when this occurs, there's an unintended side-effect. It speeds up the rest of the sound effects and animations, so that's a glitch.
Oh, but hope is not lost yet! I still haven't seen any animations or heard any sound effects, so I can just use a Potion on this turn to no longer be in red health and then I can avoid a reset, right? Wrong. Going through the dialogue boxes to use a Potion is, in fact, an animation, as the dialogue boxes will disappear and reappear. That's animation.
So... yeah. You just have to avoid EVER getting your health this low.
At this point, I'm ready to pull my hair out over how impossible this glitchless run of Pokémon Red is sounding. But... it is still theoretically possible... so let's continue. A few resets later, we can beat Misty, and move on to our next Gym, Lt. Surge's Gym in Vermillion.
Except... now we have the fishing rod, since the Old Rod is obtained in Vermillion City. This lets us fish in any body of water. You can also fish in the statues here in the gym, but that's a glitch, so don't do that.
All right, Lt. Surge's gym badge obtained. Oh and I also cleared out the SS Anne and got HM01, Cut. That's our first HM. Now, from here, we need to head east of Cerulean to reach Route 9.
Just a sec, it's been a while since I saved my game, so I'm gonna do that now.
Oops, I saved on a tile that a Cut tree used to be on before I cut it down. Now when I reset, I'm standing on the tile and the Cut tree is still there, since it respawns when you reset. That's a glitch. So now you have to also, for the rest of the run, be careful about which tiles you save your game on.
In the meantime, I'm just gonna train up my Diglett a bit, and-
GLITCH ALERT!
What did I do wrong that time?
Well, I'm using it against a Jr. Trainer (Female)'s Oddish. And I used Dig. When you use a move that deals neutral damage to a dual-typed opponent due to the fact that it's super-effective on one type and not-very-effective on the other, then the game will, correctly, deal neutral damage, but the wrong message will be displayed. In this case, it displays a "It's super effective!" message despite being neutral.
Whoops. Guess I need to reset.
So yeah, keep that in mind if you are using a dual-type, or having a dual-type used against you. You're not allowed to use moves that deal neutral damage due to the types cancelling each other out.
All right, made it through Route 9, Route 10, and the Rock Tunnel. This game is becoming a glitchy minefield with all of the nonsense that I've been having to avoid. You know you're doing a scary run when LAVENDER TOWN is a sign of relief.
Anyways, we can ascend Pokémon Tower and...
Ghost appeared!
Darn! The Ghost can't be ID"d!
Oh right, I don't have the Silph Scope yet. Well, that's fine. The Ghost is just... a ghost. Easily avoidable. I can just press Run and...
Oh, oops. i accidentally hit "Pokémon" instead of "Run". And because I'm mashing A, I'm now just looking at my Charmeleon's stat screen. Haha, silly mistake. Oh well, no big deal. I can just exit out of this and...
...now the Ghost is a Gastly. Yeah. If you view ANY of your Pokémon's summaries while in a fight with a Ghost, the the sprite of the Ghost will change to be whatever the Pokémon that you're fighting ACTUALLY is. Though note that this is just a visual glitch. The Pokémon still behaves as an unidentified Ghost. Still, visual glitches count as glitches. Time to reset.
Okay, let's just go get the Silph Scope then. That'll save us a ton of trouble. Where is it again? Oh right, the Rocket Hideout in Celadon's Game Corner.
All right, we can clear that out without much problem.
Well... at least I *thought* that there would be no problem. Because in actuality... this happened.
Red defeated Rocket!
Rocket: No!
Red got $630 for winning!
So far, so good. But talking to this guy after the fight has... this happen.
Oh no! I dropped the Lift Key!
Yep. And now we take the Lift Key and can use it. Except... there's a problem. This guy always drops the Lift Key on the tile to his left. So if we talk to him from the left... then he drops it on us. This causes both Red and the key to be on the same tile. That's a glitch.
So... yeah. Can't do that.
Okay. Now we have the Lift Key, so we just need to go to Giovanni and defeat him to obtain the Silph Scope.
GLITCH ALERT!
Yeah, using the Lift Key has the potential for a glitch. The game allows you to enter the elevator and go to ANY floor. This includes the floor that you are currently on. And if you happen to go to that one, it still plays the animation of the elevator moving, even though the elevator does not move. This is a glitch.
All right. Now we're done here. My item inventory is getting a little low though, after making it through that long dungeon. So I need to replenish it. Luckily, there's no better place in the game to do so, we're in Celadon City, home of the Department Store!
Time for a shopping spree.
Okay, I bought as much as I could afford and- oh, shoot. I forgot. I still need to have some money for a drink for the Saffron City guards. Well, fortunately, it's no big deal. I managed to hold onto exactly $231, and since a Fresh Water only costs $200, we can just get that one. We're unable to get a Soda Pop ($300) or Lemonade ($350) though.
Breaking news: I lied! Turns out if you have at least $200, you can still purchase a Soda Pop or a Lemonade (but it still deducts $300 or $350 from your wallet, leaving you with $0). This is a glitch... probably. It's also possible that they intended for you to have the option to become a thief and steal stuff, but... just to be safe, we'll call it a glitch and disallow it from our glitchless playthrough.
While we're in Celadon, let's check out the building in the southeastern corner. It's a hotel that serves no purpose in-game. The interior is remarkably similar to a Pokémon Center. If you go to where the PC would be in a Pokémon Center, though, there is no PC there. Or so it would appear. While they did indeed delete the PC graphic, they left all the code intact, so you can still walk up to where the PC was and just use it as normal. It's an invisible PC. Yeah, that's a glitch. Just... avoid this building entirely during your playthrough. Or, if you do go in, just... don't press the A button on the tile that's facing the PC.
As we're in the mid-game now, I think my team could use an upgrade. So let's catch some more Pokémon.
GLITCH ALERT!
Wha-?
All I did was throw a Great Ball!
Yeah, that's a glitch. The game assigns the wrong value to Great Balls in the capture formula of this generation. So... to avoid glitches, we're not allowed to use Great Balls. Ever. We're limited to just normal Poké Balls for now, until we get to the point where Ultra Balls become available. So that's annoying. We'll have to be sure to really weaken our opponents in order to catch them with a normal Poké Ball.
GLITCH ALERT!
Oh yeah, another thing: you can't weaken an opposing Pokémon too much. If it is ever at or below one-third of its health, then the formula also miscalculates stuff. So be sure to avoid this.
At this point... maybe it's better to just not catch Pokémon. Well, luckily, that doesn't mean that I can't OBTAIN any Pokémon. We're in Celadon, after all, so we can get a free Eevee here. Awesome! I love Eevee.
We should train it up though. Since it's a freshly-obtained Pokémon, our best bet is switch-training. I haven't used my Onix in a while, so I can switch it with that and then they'll both gain the levels they need. That's a good idea.
Eevee grew to Level 26!
What? Eevee is evolving!
Eevee evolved into Vaporeon!
What the hell!? What just happened? Well, if you have a Pokémon that evolves by stone, and it gains a level in a battle, but the Pokémon that you have out at the end of the battle has an ID number that corresponds to the stone's ID number in the game's code, then it will trigger the evolution. In our case, Onix corresponds to the Water Stone. If you are curious, the full list is Onix for Water Stone, Growlithe for Thunderstone, Psyduck for Leaf Stone, and Exeggutor for Moon Stone. The Fire Stone corresponds to a glitch Pokémon that you wouldn't obtain in a glitchless playthrough anyways.
Depending on what Pokémon that a player decides to include on their in-game team, this is a glitch that you may have discovered on your own, actually. It's pretty easy to accidentally stumble into this. I wonder how many people mistakenly thought that some of the stone evolutions in Gen 1 were actually level up evolutions because this is how they discovered them.
All right, I think we're done in Celadon now, so now we begin the long trek to Fuchsia City.
Excuse me! Wait up please! No pedestrians are allowed on Cycling Road!
Oh yeah, I totally forgot to get the bike, lol. I guess I was scared off from that Bike Shop glitch that we saw way back in Cerulean.
Turns out, though, the bike isn't necessary. If you hold the Left button as the guard is talking, you can take an additional step to the left, which is past the point where he will try and stop you, enabling you to walk through this building and onto Cycling Road without a bike. If you do this, though, then your character will automatically be on a Bicycle when they emerge from the other side, despite the Bicycle not even being in your inventory!
And now we beat Koga and obtain the Soul Badge, along with TM06, Toxic. And now here's a glitch that sees actual competitive usage! Toxic inflicts a different type of poison than normal. Normal poison does a set amount of damage every turn, but with Toxic, the poisoning, known as "bad poison" will accelerate over time. Each turn it does a little bit more. But it turns out that the variable that keeps track of the bad poison and increments over time is the same variable used for Leech Seed's damage calculation. So if you end up hitting an opponent with both Toxic and Leech Seed at the same time, then Leech Seed will also accelerate, and since the healing from Leech Seed is proportional to the amount of damage done, it means the healing will also accelerate. I think that every Gen 1 competitive player knows about this, but nonetheless, it is a glitch, so we have to avoid this. Oh, and just a small glitch on the side, but... if the Pokémon faints due to the Toxic poisoning, it will still subtract HP from Leech Seed anyways (and heal you by the appropriate amount) even after the Pokémon is fainted.
Just... don't use Toxic and Leech Seed together if you're avoiding glitches. It produces problems.
Okay... so, we're almost through this game now. Just a bit more to go. But the enemy Pokémon are getting to be significantly harder to deal with. At this point, my team is entirely fainted, save for one single Electrode, and it's down to low health (well, low-ish health. It's still in the yellow zone since I'm not allowed to go into the red). It'll probably die soon. Well, if I go down, I'm taking you with me!
Electrode used Selfdestruct!
Critical hit!
Red is out of usable Pokémon!
Red blacked out!
Yeah... it always did bug me how, in every Pokémon game, if you get a drawn match, it counts as a loss for the player. But hey, nothing you can do about it.
GLITCH ALERT!
Oh great, what now?
Well, when you end up in a draw in Gen 1... you do lose as you're supposed to, but it plays the music that's supposed to play when you win. This is a glitch, and it's playing the wrong song. We have to avoid ever getting into a draw. Yet another thing to add to our list of things that we need to carefully avoid during this run. As I said, this game is a minefield.
All right. Now we reach Cinnabar Island, home to the seventh gym. Let's go take it on.
The door is locked...
Oh yeah, you have to go through Pokémon Mansion first to get the key. Forgot that. Well, that's no big dea-
GLITCH ALERT!
What the hell!? Why is there an old man on top of the Gym's roof!? What caused that?
Well, that's what happens when you are not on Cinnabar Island, and then you approach Cinnabar Island from the east side, and then attempt to enter the gym without the key. It's a sprite displacement. The man appears in the wrong spot, in this case, on a roof.
Let's... just ignore this and move on.
Going through Pokémon Mansion, my Charizard learned Slash. This is a great move, since it has a high critical hit rate. In fact, I'll use a Dire Hit to make the critical hit rate even higher! Then it'll almost always get a critical hit. That'd be great. After all, these Dire Hits that I've been picking up have just been clogging up my inventory this whole time. May as well get rid of them.
And... that's a glitch. Reset the game.
What happened? Well, I used a Dire Hit. When you use a Dire Hit, the game is meant to multiply your critical hit rate by 4, but it actually divides it by 4 instead. The same is true if you use the move Focus Energy, making Gen 1 Focus Energy literally the worst move that Pokémon has ever had. Yes, it's worse than Splash. Congrats.
All right, we got our seventh badge, now we just fly to Viridian to get our eighth.
Now for the most boring part of any Pokémon game: grinding your team to a respectable level before Victory Road and the Elite Four. You usually use the Exp. Share to make this go faster, but this is Gen 1, so held items don't exist. Luckily, the spirit of the Exp. Share does exist in Gen 1, in the form of the Exp. All.
I never actually picked that thing up on Route 15 cause I forgot it was there. Oh well. Let's just grab it now. Okay great. So, let me explain how this thing works. When you defeat a Pokémon with this in your bag, then half of the experience is distributed evenly among all the Pokémon that fought in the battle, and the other half is distributed evenly among the rest.
For example, suppose I kill a Pokémon that gives 600 experience, using a single Pokémon to do so. The Pokémon that fought gets 300 experience, and the rest of my team gets 60 experience each, for a total of 600.
And if I use two Pokémon to kill it, then each Pokémon that fought gets 300 experience (the 600 is split between them), and the other four Pokémon on my team get 75 experience each (the remaining 300 is split into four equal-sized pieces).
Except... that's not what happens. Due to a glitch, each of my four Pokémon that didn't fight will only get 60 experience, not 75. This means that 60 experience is unaccounted for and just goes missing. The game uses the number assuming that you had five Pokémon that didn't fight, regardless of whether that number is accurate or not. This is a glitch, so in order to do a glitchless playthrough, we cannot use the Exp. All.
All right, our team is all set up. It's time to take on Victory Road.
Here, we encounter my arch-nemesis: boulder-pushing puzzles. You know them, you hate them. Here they are. Well, when you push the boulders into the holes and then jump down the holes yourself to follow them, you need to make sure that you're not on a bike. Why? Because you spawn at the lower floor without the bike, but the bike music will still be playing. This is a glitch, so be sure not to do that.
All right. We made it through Victory Road. Onto the Elite Four! We've done it! We've actually beaten the game without glitches!
And to top it off, my Spearow, which was really only used for Fly purposes, got to evolve as a result of the final battle. That's a nice final touch. So, that's it for playing through Pokémon Red without glitches. I hope you enj-
GLITCH ALERT!
Oh boy. So... if you have a not-fully-evolved Pokémon in your party when you beat the game, and it evolves as a result of the final battle with the Champion... then the game will completely kill the music during the final cutscene with Oak and the Hall of Fame.
So... okay. We need to reset the game.
Now I've gone and evolved Spearow into Fearow properly, and can beat the game without incident.
Whew.
That was an absolute nightmare. It required countless resets to avoid all the glitches, but I've managed to do it. I beat Pokémon Red without using any glitches! Aren't I amazing? I recorded the whole thing and spliced it together, and am playing the footage to my glitch alarm now, and it's not going off at all. So that's proof that it IS possible to beat the game without glitches.
You know, if you happen to avoid ever getting your stats lowered, having your health hit the red zone, having your Pokémon level up and evolve at the wrong time, and so forth... it's absolute insanity.
No one would ever in their right mind do this. There's just SO MANY GLITCHES. I hope I've proven to you that this type of playthrough just DOES NOT WORK. The glitches in Gen 1 are so plentiful and prevalent that you just can't avoid them. If anyone does successfully pull this off, they are an absolute madman.
I hope you enjoyed taking a look at this classic game and all of the insanity contained within. This wasn't even close to all of them. There's THAT MANY glitches. Yeah... pretty insane. Anyways, join me in my next thread for... something completely different, probably. I dunno.
Peace out!
GLITCH ALERT!
Wait, what?
How can there be a glitch NOW? The game is over! I did everything right. The glitch alarm never triggered from when I turned on the glitch alarm until I beat the game, and whenever it did, I just reset and undid that. How, in the name of Arceus, is there a glitch? What could have POSSIBLY come up?
Well, remember when I set up the glitch alarm? It was in Pallet Town, at the start of the game. Turns out, we already triggered a glitch before that and didn't notice it until the glitch alarm was reviewing the footage that I filmed.
In Professor Oak's speech at the beginning of the game, he sends out a Nidorino, and it plays Nidorino's cry at this time. Except... it doesn't. The cry that plays is actually that of a Nidorina. Because this is absolutely 100% unavoidable... even if you had the skills of a god and could masterfully tiptoe through this minefield of a glitchy game... you still could not complete Pokémon Red without glitches.
This got me thinking... could you beat a Gen 1 game without glitches? I mean... there are A LOT of glitches. The Bulbapedia article List of glitches in Generation I is not only ridiculously long, but it even has a notice at the top of the page informing you that the article is incomplete.
So... getting through the game without using glitches is a bit of a challenge. The entirety of the world is a landmine and stepping on ANYTHING could potentially trigger a glitch. So here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna save our game often, and then every time we use a glitch, we need to reset and load a previous save. Let's take a look.
By the way, I am not ACTUALLY playing this, I'm just theorizing what such a playthrough would look like. As you'll soon see, it's pretty damn messy and no one would be sane enough to attempt this for real.
I will be "playing" Red Version, though I imagine that the experience is equally insane in Green, Blue, or Yellow.
So to start with, we press Start on the title screen and choose New Game. We listen to Oak's speech, yadda yadda. Okay, now we're in Pallet Town. Oh, and I've set up a glitch alarm that will say "glitch alert" if I ever use a glitch, so we will be able to easily spot and avoid them. Great. Well, first of all, I don't know about you, but I feel the Oak's speech was a little long. I don't want to sit through that again if I happen to reset the game due to encountering a glitch. Let's just save the game now so that we can avoid that.
GLITCH ALERT!
So... after saving the game... my menu isn't going away. It's just... sitting there. What's going on? Well, it was because I held down the A button while saving. When you do this, the menu does not vanish until you let go of the A button. That's a glitch.
Time to reset and try again. And you have to keep this in mind EVERY time you save the game.
Okay, I reset the game, watched Oak's speech again, saved my game properly and am now ready to actually start the game. Let's choose a starter.
Actually, nah. I don't want to do that. I'm just gonna leave the lab without picking one. I think everyone has done this, just because it's fun to see Oak yell at you when you attempt it. It's harmless, really?
Or is it?
Leaving the lab without a starter once or twice is fine... but if you do it enough times... eventually... Professor Oak will turn invisible, as will the middle Poké Ball on the desk. After this occurs, you can press Start to bring up the menu, and then a bunch of glitchy text appears on-screen. You can simply exit the menu to remove the text and restore visibility to Oak and the Poké Ball. Everything goes back to normal. But... this is still a glitch and requires a reset.
Okay, no more goofing around. I'm just taking a Charmander and moving on. And then we have our first rival battle! Our rival has Squirtle and we have Charmander. Let's go for it!
Charmander used Scratch!
Charmander's attack missed!
Wait... what?
How can Scratch miss? It has 100% accuracy. Welcome to the 1/256 glitch. Every move (except Swift) has a 1/256 chance of missing, due to a glitch. So if you ever use a 100% accurate move and it misses, you just encountered a glitch and have to reset (unless your accuracy fell or your opponent's evasion rose, in which case, you're fine). Every time you attack in this game, there's a chance that this glitch occurs. And it's not just "attacks", it's any move, including Growl and Tail Whip and such. So there's not really any way out of this.
Oh, and as if this weren't bad enough, your opponent can trigger this glitch with their moves too, so you also have to pray that they don't trigger the glitch either.
(sigh)
You see how hard it is to play this game without glitches? Time for another reset...
Okay. We FINALLY made it through that rival battle (whether we win or lose, I don't really care).
Now, let's go ahead and catch some more Pokémon.
...
Oh, right. I don't have Poké Balls yet.
Uh, okay, take care of Oak's Parcel and what-not, get the Pokédex. Now we're good to go. You can buy Poké Balls at the Viridian City Poké Mart. However, little-known fact about this game: you can actually get five free Poké Balls from Professor Oak if you talk to him after defeating your rival on Route 22 if you have no other Pokémon besides your starter at that point.
Despite the difficulty in winning that second rival fight with only a single starter, I tend to go for this every time, because I find the free Poké Balls to be worth it, since money is scarce in the early-game. So yeah, gonna get some free Poké Balls from Oak before proceeding.
Oops. I just triggered a glitch.
When Oak gives you these Poké Balls, the dialogue box that pops up with his dialogue is actually glitchy. When advancing through his dialogue, it overwrites the text already in the text-box without clearing it out first, resulting in overlapping messages.
Time for another reset.
I guess we just have to buy the Poké Balls ourselves. Oh well.
So, from here, we can just go through the Viridian Forest and reach Pewter City to reach Brock, the first gym leader. We're meant to fight him, but I don't really feel up for it. I mean, I chose CHARMANDER. That's the worst choice to fight Brock with. So I'm just gonna leave Pewter City without the badge. I'll come back for it later.
...Or not.
Turns out there's an NPC that stops you from leaving. Well, there's a way to get past him. All you have to do is press Start to open the menu as you're talking to him, save the game, and then close all the dialogue boxes with the B button. Then reset your Game Boy and you'll find that this NPC has disappeared, and you are free to move on without facing Brock.
Obviously this is a glitch, so we're not gonna be doing that.
Guess I'll just have to resort to grinding up my Charmander...
Okay, Charmander is now really overleveled and I can take on Brock. Excellent. We got through that without a problem. Now we have our first badge, the Boulder Badge! Awesome.
More importantly, it means that we can go on to Route 3 without using glitches. Let's go through it now.
Lass wants to fight!
Lass sent out Pidgey!
Go Charmeleon!
Charmeleon used Scratch!
Enemy Pidgey used Sand-Attack!
Charmeleon's accuracy fell!
GLITCH ALERT!
Oh come on! What happened there? I've been hit by Sand-Attack by loads of Pidgey before now. What makes this one different? Well, the difference is that now I have a badge. When you have certain badges, they raise the stats of your Pokémon. In the case of the Boulder Badge from Brock, it raises Attack. Well... due to a glitch... whenever ANY of your stats are raised or lowered, the game recalculates these badge boosts, thus giving you a further increase. So... my Attack is now higher than it should normally be. That's a glitch, and I'm now required to reset.
So... to recap... I'm not allowed to EVER raise or lower any of my stats and I'm not allowed to have them be raised or lowered by an opponent either. Yikes. This playthrough is gonna take a while if I have to reset after EVERY time that this happens. Basically I have to pray that my opponents only ever use damaging moves from here on out. Oh, and remember that I am simultaneously praying that neither side runs into the 1/256 glitch. So yeah... this is pretty god damn insane.
All right, it took a lot of resets, but I finally made it through Route 3 and onto Route 4. There's a Pokémon Center on this route, and THANK GOD for that. See, I've been catching a lot of Pokémon in this playthrough, and I'd like to change my team up a bit. Give some fresh faces a chance to shine, y'know?
Okay, great. I swapped my team out and... huh?
"Red blacked out!"
What just happened?
Well, when I was depositing and withdrawing my Pokémon, I accidentally forgot which ones are fainted and which ones aren't. Pokémon sent to the PC aren't automatically healed in this generation. That's only a thing from Gen 2 to Gen 7, it's not in Gen 1 or Gen 8 (note that when I say "Gen 7", I am referring just to the 3DS games, the PC also does not heal your Pokémon in the Let's Go games). By the time I was finished withdrawing my Pokémon, I had a team of only fainted Pokémon.
So what's the problem? A black out is the expected outcome of having only fainted Pokémon, right? This isn't a glitch at all. Well, the glitch is that you don't black out immediately, you get to still survive until you take one step. That's a glitch, and that requires a reset.
All right, made it through Mt. Moon, and I have reached Cerulean City. Let me explore the city for a bit and... wait... why is the text in my game going faster than normal?
Yeah... if you talk to the Bike Shop owner before you receive the Bike Voucher, and then exit out of it without attempting to purchase the massively-expensive Bicycle... then the text that appears on-screen will always display all at once, rather than one character at a time, until you obtain the Bicycle for real. This is actually a very useful trick in speedrunning, but since it's a glitch, we're gonna have to reset and avoid it.
Let's just fight Misty.
Enemy Starmie used Water Gun!
GLITCH ALERT!
Oh, come on! What could have POSSIBLY happened there?
Well... I'm using a Charmeleon, so it took a lot of damage... in fact, it's down to 11 health out of 71. That's not allowed. That puts its HP in the "red zone", and we're avoiding glitches. So in addition to not having a 100% accurate move miss, and not getting our stats lowered/raised, we ALSO have to avoid ever having red HP.
Why? Because the game plays a sound effect to let the player know about the red health, namely that annoying beeping. Well, when this occurs, there's an unintended side-effect. It speeds up the rest of the sound effects and animations, so that's a glitch.
Oh, but hope is not lost yet! I still haven't seen any animations or heard any sound effects, so I can just use a Potion on this turn to no longer be in red health and then I can avoid a reset, right? Wrong. Going through the dialogue boxes to use a Potion is, in fact, an animation, as the dialogue boxes will disappear and reappear. That's animation.
So... yeah. You just have to avoid EVER getting your health this low.
At this point, I'm ready to pull my hair out over how impossible this glitchless run of Pokémon Red is sounding. But... it is still theoretically possible... so let's continue. A few resets later, we can beat Misty, and move on to our next Gym, Lt. Surge's Gym in Vermillion.
Except... now we have the fishing rod, since the Old Rod is obtained in Vermillion City. This lets us fish in any body of water. You can also fish in the statues here in the gym, but that's a glitch, so don't do that.
All right, Lt. Surge's gym badge obtained. Oh and I also cleared out the SS Anne and got HM01, Cut. That's our first HM. Now, from here, we need to head east of Cerulean to reach Route 9.
Just a sec, it's been a while since I saved my game, so I'm gonna do that now.
Oops, I saved on a tile that a Cut tree used to be on before I cut it down. Now when I reset, I'm standing on the tile and the Cut tree is still there, since it respawns when you reset. That's a glitch. So now you have to also, for the rest of the run, be careful about which tiles you save your game on.
In the meantime, I'm just gonna train up my Diglett a bit, and-
GLITCH ALERT!
What did I do wrong that time?
Well, I'm using it against a Jr. Trainer (Female)'s Oddish. And I used Dig. When you use a move that deals neutral damage to a dual-typed opponent due to the fact that it's super-effective on one type and not-very-effective on the other, then the game will, correctly, deal neutral damage, but the wrong message will be displayed. In this case, it displays a "It's super effective!" message despite being neutral.
Whoops. Guess I need to reset.
So yeah, keep that in mind if you are using a dual-type, or having a dual-type used against you. You're not allowed to use moves that deal neutral damage due to the types cancelling each other out.
All right, made it through Route 9, Route 10, and the Rock Tunnel. This game is becoming a glitchy minefield with all of the nonsense that I've been having to avoid. You know you're doing a scary run when LAVENDER TOWN is a sign of relief.
Anyways, we can ascend Pokémon Tower and...
Ghost appeared!
Darn! The Ghost can't be ID"d!
Oh right, I don't have the Silph Scope yet. Well, that's fine. The Ghost is just... a ghost. Easily avoidable. I can just press Run and...
Oh, oops. i accidentally hit "Pokémon" instead of "Run". And because I'm mashing A, I'm now just looking at my Charmeleon's stat screen. Haha, silly mistake. Oh well, no big deal. I can just exit out of this and...
...now the Ghost is a Gastly. Yeah. If you view ANY of your Pokémon's summaries while in a fight with a Ghost, the the sprite of the Ghost will change to be whatever the Pokémon that you're fighting ACTUALLY is. Though note that this is just a visual glitch. The Pokémon still behaves as an unidentified Ghost. Still, visual glitches count as glitches. Time to reset.
Okay, let's just go get the Silph Scope then. That'll save us a ton of trouble. Where is it again? Oh right, the Rocket Hideout in Celadon's Game Corner.
All right, we can clear that out without much problem.
Well... at least I *thought* that there would be no problem. Because in actuality... this happened.
Red defeated Rocket!
Rocket: No!
Red got $630 for winning!
So far, so good. But talking to this guy after the fight has... this happen.
Oh no! I dropped the Lift Key!
Yep. And now we take the Lift Key and can use it. Except... there's a problem. This guy always drops the Lift Key on the tile to his left. So if we talk to him from the left... then he drops it on us. This causes both Red and the key to be on the same tile. That's a glitch.
So... yeah. Can't do that.
Okay. Now we have the Lift Key, so we just need to go to Giovanni and defeat him to obtain the Silph Scope.
GLITCH ALERT!
Yeah, using the Lift Key has the potential for a glitch. The game allows you to enter the elevator and go to ANY floor. This includes the floor that you are currently on. And if you happen to go to that one, it still plays the animation of the elevator moving, even though the elevator does not move. This is a glitch.
All right. Now we're done here. My item inventory is getting a little low though, after making it through that long dungeon. So I need to replenish it. Luckily, there's no better place in the game to do so, we're in Celadon City, home of the Department Store!
Time for a shopping spree.
Okay, I bought as much as I could afford and- oh, shoot. I forgot. I still need to have some money for a drink for the Saffron City guards. Well, fortunately, it's no big deal. I managed to hold onto exactly $231, and since a Fresh Water only costs $200, we can just get that one. We're unable to get a Soda Pop ($300) or Lemonade ($350) though.
Breaking news: I lied! Turns out if you have at least $200, you can still purchase a Soda Pop or a Lemonade (but it still deducts $300 or $350 from your wallet, leaving you with $0). This is a glitch... probably. It's also possible that they intended for you to have the option to become a thief and steal stuff, but... just to be safe, we'll call it a glitch and disallow it from our glitchless playthrough.
While we're in Celadon, let's check out the building in the southeastern corner. It's a hotel that serves no purpose in-game. The interior is remarkably similar to a Pokémon Center. If you go to where the PC would be in a Pokémon Center, though, there is no PC there. Or so it would appear. While they did indeed delete the PC graphic, they left all the code intact, so you can still walk up to where the PC was and just use it as normal. It's an invisible PC. Yeah, that's a glitch. Just... avoid this building entirely during your playthrough. Or, if you do go in, just... don't press the A button on the tile that's facing the PC.
As we're in the mid-game now, I think my team could use an upgrade. So let's catch some more Pokémon.
GLITCH ALERT!
Wha-?
All I did was throw a Great Ball!
Yeah, that's a glitch. The game assigns the wrong value to Great Balls in the capture formula of this generation. So... to avoid glitches, we're not allowed to use Great Balls. Ever. We're limited to just normal Poké Balls for now, until we get to the point where Ultra Balls become available. So that's annoying. We'll have to be sure to really weaken our opponents in order to catch them with a normal Poké Ball.
GLITCH ALERT!
Oh yeah, another thing: you can't weaken an opposing Pokémon too much. If it is ever at or below one-third of its health, then the formula also miscalculates stuff. So be sure to avoid this.
At this point... maybe it's better to just not catch Pokémon. Well, luckily, that doesn't mean that I can't OBTAIN any Pokémon. We're in Celadon, after all, so we can get a free Eevee here. Awesome! I love Eevee.
We should train it up though. Since it's a freshly-obtained Pokémon, our best bet is switch-training. I haven't used my Onix in a while, so I can switch it with that and then they'll both gain the levels they need. That's a good idea.
Eevee grew to Level 26!
What? Eevee is evolving!
Eevee evolved into Vaporeon!
What the hell!? What just happened? Well, if you have a Pokémon that evolves by stone, and it gains a level in a battle, but the Pokémon that you have out at the end of the battle has an ID number that corresponds to the stone's ID number in the game's code, then it will trigger the evolution. In our case, Onix corresponds to the Water Stone. If you are curious, the full list is Onix for Water Stone, Growlithe for Thunderstone, Psyduck for Leaf Stone, and Exeggutor for Moon Stone. The Fire Stone corresponds to a glitch Pokémon that you wouldn't obtain in a glitchless playthrough anyways.
Depending on what Pokémon that a player decides to include on their in-game team, this is a glitch that you may have discovered on your own, actually. It's pretty easy to accidentally stumble into this. I wonder how many people mistakenly thought that some of the stone evolutions in Gen 1 were actually level up evolutions because this is how they discovered them.
All right, I think we're done in Celadon now, so now we begin the long trek to Fuchsia City.
Excuse me! Wait up please! No pedestrians are allowed on Cycling Road!
Oh yeah, I totally forgot to get the bike, lol. I guess I was scared off from that Bike Shop glitch that we saw way back in Cerulean.
Turns out, though, the bike isn't necessary. If you hold the Left button as the guard is talking, you can take an additional step to the left, which is past the point where he will try and stop you, enabling you to walk through this building and onto Cycling Road without a bike. If you do this, though, then your character will automatically be on a Bicycle when they emerge from the other side, despite the Bicycle not even being in your inventory!
And now we beat Koga and obtain the Soul Badge, along with TM06, Toxic. And now here's a glitch that sees actual competitive usage! Toxic inflicts a different type of poison than normal. Normal poison does a set amount of damage every turn, but with Toxic, the poisoning, known as "bad poison" will accelerate over time. Each turn it does a little bit more. But it turns out that the variable that keeps track of the bad poison and increments over time is the same variable used for Leech Seed's damage calculation. So if you end up hitting an opponent with both Toxic and Leech Seed at the same time, then Leech Seed will also accelerate, and since the healing from Leech Seed is proportional to the amount of damage done, it means the healing will also accelerate. I think that every Gen 1 competitive player knows about this, but nonetheless, it is a glitch, so we have to avoid this. Oh, and just a small glitch on the side, but... if the Pokémon faints due to the Toxic poisoning, it will still subtract HP from Leech Seed anyways (and heal you by the appropriate amount) even after the Pokémon is fainted.
Just... don't use Toxic and Leech Seed together if you're avoiding glitches. It produces problems.
Okay... so, we're almost through this game now. Just a bit more to go. But the enemy Pokémon are getting to be significantly harder to deal with. At this point, my team is entirely fainted, save for one single Electrode, and it's down to low health (well, low-ish health. It's still in the yellow zone since I'm not allowed to go into the red). It'll probably die soon. Well, if I go down, I'm taking you with me!
Electrode used Selfdestruct!
Critical hit!
Red is out of usable Pokémon!
Red blacked out!
Yeah... it always did bug me how, in every Pokémon game, if you get a drawn match, it counts as a loss for the player. But hey, nothing you can do about it.
GLITCH ALERT!
Oh great, what now?
Well, when you end up in a draw in Gen 1... you do lose as you're supposed to, but it plays the music that's supposed to play when you win. This is a glitch, and it's playing the wrong song. We have to avoid ever getting into a draw. Yet another thing to add to our list of things that we need to carefully avoid during this run. As I said, this game is a minefield.
All right. Now we reach Cinnabar Island, home to the seventh gym. Let's go take it on.
The door is locked...
Oh yeah, you have to go through Pokémon Mansion first to get the key. Forgot that. Well, that's no big dea-
GLITCH ALERT!
What the hell!? Why is there an old man on top of the Gym's roof!? What caused that?
Well, that's what happens when you are not on Cinnabar Island, and then you approach Cinnabar Island from the east side, and then attempt to enter the gym without the key. It's a sprite displacement. The man appears in the wrong spot, in this case, on a roof.
Let's... just ignore this and move on.
Going through Pokémon Mansion, my Charizard learned Slash. This is a great move, since it has a high critical hit rate. In fact, I'll use a Dire Hit to make the critical hit rate even higher! Then it'll almost always get a critical hit. That'd be great. After all, these Dire Hits that I've been picking up have just been clogging up my inventory this whole time. May as well get rid of them.
And... that's a glitch. Reset the game.
What happened? Well, I used a Dire Hit. When you use a Dire Hit, the game is meant to multiply your critical hit rate by 4, but it actually divides it by 4 instead. The same is true if you use the move Focus Energy, making Gen 1 Focus Energy literally the worst move that Pokémon has ever had. Yes, it's worse than Splash. Congrats.
All right, we got our seventh badge, now we just fly to Viridian to get our eighth.
Now for the most boring part of any Pokémon game: grinding your team to a respectable level before Victory Road and the Elite Four. You usually use the Exp. Share to make this go faster, but this is Gen 1, so held items don't exist. Luckily, the spirit of the Exp. Share does exist in Gen 1, in the form of the Exp. All.
I never actually picked that thing up on Route 15 cause I forgot it was there. Oh well. Let's just grab it now. Okay great. So, let me explain how this thing works. When you defeat a Pokémon with this in your bag, then half of the experience is distributed evenly among all the Pokémon that fought in the battle, and the other half is distributed evenly among the rest.
For example, suppose I kill a Pokémon that gives 600 experience, using a single Pokémon to do so. The Pokémon that fought gets 300 experience, and the rest of my team gets 60 experience each, for a total of 600.
And if I use two Pokémon to kill it, then each Pokémon that fought gets 300 experience (the 600 is split between them), and the other four Pokémon on my team get 75 experience each (the remaining 300 is split into four equal-sized pieces).
Except... that's not what happens. Due to a glitch, each of my four Pokémon that didn't fight will only get 60 experience, not 75. This means that 60 experience is unaccounted for and just goes missing. The game uses the number assuming that you had five Pokémon that didn't fight, regardless of whether that number is accurate or not. This is a glitch, so in order to do a glitchless playthrough, we cannot use the Exp. All.
All right, our team is all set up. It's time to take on Victory Road.
Here, we encounter my arch-nemesis: boulder-pushing puzzles. You know them, you hate them. Here they are. Well, when you push the boulders into the holes and then jump down the holes yourself to follow them, you need to make sure that you're not on a bike. Why? Because you spawn at the lower floor without the bike, but the bike music will still be playing. This is a glitch, so be sure not to do that.
All right. We made it through Victory Road. Onto the Elite Four! We've done it! We've actually beaten the game without glitches!
And to top it off, my Spearow, which was really only used for Fly purposes, got to evolve as a result of the final battle. That's a nice final touch. So, that's it for playing through Pokémon Red without glitches. I hope you enj-
GLITCH ALERT!
Oh boy. So... if you have a not-fully-evolved Pokémon in your party when you beat the game, and it evolves as a result of the final battle with the Champion... then the game will completely kill the music during the final cutscene with Oak and the Hall of Fame.
So... okay. We need to reset the game.
Now I've gone and evolved Spearow into Fearow properly, and can beat the game without incident.
Whew.
That was an absolute nightmare. It required countless resets to avoid all the glitches, but I've managed to do it. I beat Pokémon Red without using any glitches! Aren't I amazing? I recorded the whole thing and spliced it together, and am playing the footage to my glitch alarm now, and it's not going off at all. So that's proof that it IS possible to beat the game without glitches.
You know, if you happen to avoid ever getting your stats lowered, having your health hit the red zone, having your Pokémon level up and evolve at the wrong time, and so forth... it's absolute insanity.
No one would ever in their right mind do this. There's just SO MANY GLITCHES. I hope I've proven to you that this type of playthrough just DOES NOT WORK. The glitches in Gen 1 are so plentiful and prevalent that you just can't avoid them. If anyone does successfully pull this off, they are an absolute madman.
I hope you enjoyed taking a look at this classic game and all of the insanity contained within. This wasn't even close to all of them. There's THAT MANY glitches. Yeah... pretty insane. Anyways, join me in my next thread for... something completely different, probably. I dunno.
Peace out!
GLITCH ALERT!
Wait, what?
How can there be a glitch NOW? The game is over! I did everything right. The glitch alarm never triggered from when I turned on the glitch alarm until I beat the game, and whenever it did, I just reset and undid that. How, in the name of Arceus, is there a glitch? What could have POSSIBLY come up?
Well, remember when I set up the glitch alarm? It was in Pallet Town, at the start of the game. Turns out, we already triggered a glitch before that and didn't notice it until the glitch alarm was reviewing the footage that I filmed.
In Professor Oak's speech at the beginning of the game, he sends out a Nidorino, and it plays Nidorino's cry at this time. Except... it doesn't. The cry that plays is actually that of a Nidorina. Because this is absolutely 100% unavoidable... even if you had the skills of a god and could masterfully tiptoe through this minefield of a glitchy game... you still could not complete Pokémon Red without glitches.