Glitch City is a map loading glitch in Pokemon Red, Blue, and Yellow.
Instructions[]
- Go to the Safari Zone and pay $500 to enter.
- Once you enter, turn back around and return to the entrance.
- The attendant will ask you if you want to leave. Refuse; you will be taken back to the Safari Zone.
- Once you've re-entered, turn back around and return to the entrance once again.
- Again, the attendant will ask you if you want to leave. Refuse once more; you will be taken back to the Safari Zone.
- Save the game. Turn your console off, and then back on.
- Return to the entrance building.
At this point, the attendant will ask you if you want to pay to enter the Safari Zone, even though you are already in the Safari Zone. Refuse. Exit the gatehouse, and once at Fuchsia City, go to any other map, and walk around. After you have walked about five hundred steps -- the normal "time" limit for the Safari Zone -- the P.A. will sound, even though you are not in the Safari Zone. After the P.A.'s dialogue ends, you will find yourself in the Safari Zone gatehouse. When you exit, you will probably find yourself in a very badly-corrupted version of whatever map you were in when the P.A. sounded.
Characteristics of Glitch City[]
Visually, Glitch City is a gigantic mess. The terrain consists of random combinations of whatever eight-by-eight-pixel tiles happen to be in memory (such tiles including text characters and bits of terrain). The characteristics of different tiles appear to be entirely random; while most are walkable, some are "traps" that can be walked on but not walked off. Pressing Start seems to randomly change some tiles in Glitch City. In some cases, opening the menu may change the tiles themselves; in at least one Glitch City, walking a precise sequence of steps and opening the menu changes otherwise-unwalkable tiles into Surf-able water.
Walking too far in any direction will crash the game. This is because you are in a corrupted copy of an otherwise normal game map; the map has retained its size but not all of its walls, so walking too far in one direction will result in you exiting the map boundaries.
Viewing the Town Map will reveal that you are in the map you were in when the P.A. sounded. Performing the glitch in Yellow will heavily glitch Pikachu's overworld AI, causing the Pokemon to run around randomly.
The only way to exit Glitch City is to have a Pokemon that knows Fly or perhaps Teleport. Glitch City itself is harmless, and saving while inside of it will not damage your game. Again, however, you cannot exit Glitch City without Fly. If you save inside of Glitch City without a Pokemon in your party that knows Fly, you will not be able to leave without erasing your save file.
"Inherited" characteristics[]
Glitch Cities are merely heavily-corrupted versions of normal maps (see below). As such, they retain several of the properties possessed by their "source" maps.
- The map's size is preserved. Walking too far in any direction will cause a player to exit the map boundaries and crash the game.
- The map's actual identity is preserved, which is why Glitch City shows up on the Town Map as a normal location.
- Wild Pokemon data remains unchanged.
- It is a myth that MISSINGNO. always appears in Glitch City, though it can be made to appear there by performing the Old Man trick and not walking on tiles with Wild data until the P.A. sounds.
- While in the Cycling Road Glitch City, the player will walk downward uncontrollably. Attempting to use the Bicycle yields the message "You can't get off here."
- If the P.A. sounds while exploring Rock Tunnel and if the player has not used Flash, then the Safari Zone gatehouse will be bathed in darkness. If the player pays to enter the Safari Zone (instead of exiting into Glitch City), they can explore the Zone in total darkness. The effect does not persist when entering Glitch City, however.
- In Yellow, the Route 13 Glitch City will teleport the player to Saffron City if they take a step in any direction after leaving the Safari Zone Gatehouse.
"Lost" characteristics[]
- Map links (see below) are not preserved. Normally, walking off of some boundaries (such as Cinnabar Island's northern edge) would bring a player to another map; this is not the case in Glitch City. (Walking too far north of Cinnabar Island Glitch City will take a player past the map boundaries without processing a map link, crashing the game.)
- Signs cannot be read, doors cannot be used, and small trees cannot be Cut while in Glitch City. This is because the necessary one-tile objects aren't loaded due to the extensive corruption that occurs in Glitch City.
Explanation[]
In Pokemon, different maps are connected using objects called map links and warps. A map link is a shared boundary between maps (such that walking off the edge of one map takes the player to the edge of another). A warp acts like a teleporter; it occupies a single tile, and can lead to any other warp (identified by number) on any other map. Warps are used for doors, cave entrances, and similar structures.
When one enters the Safari Zone's gatehouse, the two warps at the top (forming a set of double doors) will always lead to specific warps in the Safari Zone. The bottom two warps (forming the exit), however, will lead to the previous map, or (if you are exiting the Zone) to whatever map you were in before you entered the Safari Zone. In fact, these bottom two warps lead to a specific warp (warp number 4) on the map you were in before you entered the Safari Zone.
When the P.A. sounds on a non-Zone map, these warps therefore lead to Warp 4 on whatever map the P.A. sounded in. If that map actually has a Warp 4 (like Viridian City, for example), then no real problems occur; the player-character will simply materialize at that warp in that map. The problem, however, is that not all maps have a Warp 4. When the player enters a warp that points to a non-existent warp (which is what happens after the P.A. sounds in maps without a Warp 4), the game is unable to load the target map properly. A "Glitch City" -- a heavily-corrupted copy of the target map -- results.