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Glitch Pokemon have appeared in many different Pokemon games throughout the years. Believe it or not Generation 6 has the most glitch Pokemon out of all the games which is crazy to think about! The thing about the glitch pokemon in this generation though is you can only see them using cheating devices, whereas glitch Pokemon can appear without cheating devices in Generation 1, 2, 3, and 9. So in this thread we will talk about different ones. We're going to start with Generation 1 since it's the one I'm most familiar with and also it makes sense to start where the franchise began after all!
What causes glitch Pokemon in generation 1? The game can read up to decimal 255 since it's a 8-bit game. The hex equivalent of this is $FF or you might see it depicted as FFh. Only 190 of those slots go used. So when the game attempts to read data between 191-255 in certain situations Glitch Pokemon appear. Missingno. is another Glitch Pokemon but it's a placeholder Pokemon, left in the game and was most likely used for debugging purposes. It fills the other valid Pokemon slots.
What causes glitch Pokemon to look different depending on the language of the game? When the devs needed to translate the game, they needed to rebuild the ROM. When the game was rebuilt, data got shifted around which causes Glitch Pokemon to not only look different but behave different as well in some cases. It's also the reason why Glitch Pokemon are completely different in English Yellow version compared to English Red and Blue versions. The updated sprites, the addition of Pikachu, a new trainer, and new rosters really shifted things around. They also patched out some glitches and oversights that appeared in English Red and Blue. (Which is based on Japanese Blue, the original games Red and Green are different. They have different sprites and again a few glitches exist in this version that don't in Japanese Blue/English Red and Blue.) For a quick example, take a look at the Glitch Pokemon that occupies slot $00. (I've attached images of them in this post.)
Can you get these glitch pokemon without a cheating device? Yes you can! A few can be obtained using the Trainer Fly glitch. It's a easy trick that many people used to call it the Mew trick back in the day. You can also obtain glitch Pokemon by using the International Fossil Glitch as well as ACE. (Arbitrary Code Execution.) The most simple way of getting Glitch Pokemon is using a cheating device though such as a Gameshark. Pretty much every emulator these days have a cheat tab which allows you to use Gameshark or Game Genie codes.
What causes glitch Pokemon in generation 1? The game can read up to decimal 255 since it's a 8-bit game. The hex equivalent of this is $FF or you might see it depicted as FFh. Only 190 of those slots go used. So when the game attempts to read data between 191-255 in certain situations Glitch Pokemon appear. Missingno. is another Glitch Pokemon but it's a placeholder Pokemon, left in the game and was most likely used for debugging purposes. It fills the other valid Pokemon slots.
What causes glitch Pokemon to look different depending on the language of the game? When the devs needed to translate the game, they needed to rebuild the ROM. When the game was rebuilt, data got shifted around which causes Glitch Pokemon to not only look different but behave different as well in some cases. It's also the reason why Glitch Pokemon are completely different in English Yellow version compared to English Red and Blue versions. The updated sprites, the addition of Pikachu, a new trainer, and new rosters really shifted things around. They also patched out some glitches and oversights that appeared in English Red and Blue. (Which is based on Japanese Blue, the original games Red and Green are different. They have different sprites and again a few glitches exist in this version that don't in Japanese Blue/English Red and Blue.) For a quick example, take a look at the Glitch Pokemon that occupies slot $00. (I've attached images of them in this post.)
Can you get these glitch pokemon without a cheating device? Yes you can! A few can be obtained using the Trainer Fly glitch. It's a easy trick that many people used to call it the Mew trick back in the day. You can also obtain glitch Pokemon by using the International Fossil Glitch as well as ACE. (Arbitrary Code Execution.) The most simple way of getting Glitch Pokemon is using a cheating device though such as a Gameshark. Pretty much every emulator these days have a cheat tab which allows you to use Gameshark or Game Genie codes.