Pokémon Red/Blue - analysis of basic crash types

We all know that Generation I is glitchy, and the game might crash as a result of all that glitchiness. Turns out, there are a lot of patterns in the types of crashes you can encounter. Let's investigate!

[@TheZZAZZGlitch]

i'm apparently not dead lol

[@rdgfb]

alive!

[@yalta5060]

Reminds me of a

[@megustajugarleagueoflegend140]

Yoooo you are back.

[@averytubestudios]

Apparently.

[@billabobyt]

i love you

[@wingedmirage4226]

Sounds like “look at normal Pokémon before attempting glitch” is a good idea in general, not just for dealing with faulty emulators.

[@JetFalcon710]

Yeah, ZZAZZ posted a video a while back showing off a "make your own trainer" glitch where you could change ZZAZZ trainer 0xFC's first roster using glitch Pokemon. He stressed that you should always look at a non-glitched Pokemon's sprite before encountering 0xFC, because if you don't, its entire party will be level 255 Charizard 'Ms

[@kinkytheslinky]

kinda hilarious how common "overwrite the entire memory" is in these games

[@cmyk8964]

It just needs an accidental infinite loop :P

[@Humaricslastcall]

@@cmyk8964 Which is like 2/3rds of how a crash occurs.

[@JetFalcon710]

​@@cmyk8964 Yeah lol, all it needs is a write command inside an infinite loop

[@uzundeprem5743]

Tactical handwarmers for optimal pokemon gaming

[@ThatGamerBlue]

Welcome back! You've been a massive inspiration for me to learn reverse engineering and programming and I'm glad to see your videos again.

[@nixietubes]

Same

[@Esth.1]

Same!

[@TechSY730]

This here is my answer to questions of the kind "Why are you wasting your time digging into old video games?" Because these can serve as excellent "toy"* models for learning skills like assembly level debugging, understanding memory corruption, and reverse engineering. All of these are immensely useful skills of real world computer science. Plus, the "old video games" have a nice, fun incentive for you to learn about these skills, until you start to find the skills themselves to be interesting and motivating enough in their own right. * or rather, real architectures, but simpler than modern counterparts which are much harder to understand when learning from scratch

[@tomyyoung2624]

Yes a big deal, just reset

[@tomyyoung2624]

Yes only can they

[@renakunisaki]

More nerd stuff, explaining the STOP instruction: The actual opcode is just 10. However, there's a bug in the GB CPU (might be fixed in GBC?) where it will read the byte following this opcode twice. So if you did something like "stop; inc a", it could increment twice; if you put a multi-byte instruction there, it would be read incorrectly. The official fix for this was to pretend "10 00" is the opcode for STOP, since repeating a NOP is harmless, and "10 xx" where xx ≠ 0 is undefined behavior. This also applies to HALT. That's sometimes called the "double halt bug" since if the instruction immediately after HALT is another HALT, it can get stuck there forever.

[@CasualPokePlayer]

That's not entirely correct. In the usual case, the second byte is entirely skipped and not executed at all. You can have an invalid instruction in the second byte and the GB would run fine usually. In some cases it is executed, but generally that won't happen (and there is never a "double read" here). The "double read" you refer to only applies to halt, stop does not have this issue. Also, the "double read" only occurs when halt mode is entered while an interrupt is already pending due to rIF and rIE (although ignoring IME here). It's also in reality not a "double read" but rather an extraneous decrement to the PC (so when IME is disabled, it "double reads" the next byte, but when IME is enabled, it instead causes the return address of the interrupt to point to the halt rather than the opcode after halt, the latter case being rare of course given that means rIF would have to change at the exact cycle you enter halt, that or IME is enabled on that cycle (nice for testroms given ei's delay)). Also, of course, due to this, halt after halt doesn't mean it will always be stuck forever (just "can"). You can check more info on STOP on the pandocs here (which includes details on the quirky cases): gbdev.io/pandocs/Reducing_Power_Consumption.html#using-the-stop-instruction

[@Curioust2020]

HALT? Are you talking about the Doors HALT?

[@WinVisten]

halt and catch fire

[@dpterminusreal]

@@Curioust2020 there is no saving humanity

[@Mizu2023]

​@@Curioust2020 "There are approximately 1,010,300 words in the English language, but I could never string enough words together to properly express how much I want to hit you with a chair." -Alexander Hamilton

[@Shadowfiendd2jsp]

Oh wow, I remember back in 2007 when I first saw videos on the TMTRAINER effect that I was spending countless hours trying to figure out a way to not make it crash and I discovered that you could do that glitch in the seafoam island cave east of cinnabar island without it crashing. At the time, it seemed to be the only area that it worked but now I know that it's because there are no NPCs in that cave. Thanks for the info

[@lakotacorff4012]

TheZZAZZCycle 1: Upload video 2: "not dead lol" 3: Dissapear for 8-16 months 4: Repeat

[@camwoodstock]

Have been re-watching your videos and somehow manifested a new one! Also FINGER REVEAL AND ZZAZZ ISN'T A SKELETAL AERODACTYL IRL WHAT???

[@TRDario]

We had a hand reveal in the lua script video if I recall correctly

[@icarusmarioFAN]

Hey, I'm not the only one!

[@BetterCallBigShotAutos]

The hands and feet are human, the arms and legs are Aerodactyl bones and the rest of the body is RST 38 stripes

[@justsomeguy5628]

That RST 38 crash fills me with an inexplicable amount of dread.

[@greenknight9000]

Honestly, Game Crashes just intrigue and fascinate me; just seeing the game fall apart or react in a different way due to an unexpected event is so much fun and I love it when crashes are explored in depth as to what's happening behind the scenes. I'd *_love_* for more Game Crashes (maybe not even just Pokémon, but in other games) to be explored as to what happens, how they happen and what the outcome could be

[@brightcolorsarecool279]

Stryder7x has tons of stuff like that.

[@AhnafAbdullah]

I feel the same way, subscribed to both channels. If anyone knows channels like these, please let me know

[@JetFalcon710]

​@@brightcolorsarecool279 Can confirm, and I can't wait for when he uploads again. His last video was like three or four years ago

[@llSuperSnivyll]

5:44 I lost two VC saves from mishandling glitch items due to this. Good, if a little late, to know there's actually a way to prevent that.

[@GuysIDontHackFr]

RELATABLE

[@that_one_shiny_eevee]

i tried doing yami shop glitch at the celadon dept store(yes on a 3ds vc on red), but even though i did the steps for it correctly, my game still crashed and save data actually just got erased entirely. Luckily, even though i didnt like my save being erased, that meant i could do the save corrupt glitch (or whatever its called) to get myself champion in 1 min lol

[@MrCheeze]

That aside about corrupting a _different_ game's SRAM sounds fun... particularly if there's any games that don't notice the corruption and actually treat it as valid data, somehow. Though like you said there's a lot that could make the whole idea not work at all.

[@caseyleenb]

that's what makes the paper mario ACE/ASE work, so there's absolutely potential.

[@Kali_Krause]

Crystal_ did something similar a few years ago

[@reddodeado301]

Isn't that a strat for Mario Land 2 or something?

[@Gameboygenius]

@@reddodeado301 no, it's just work RAM that's being corrupted in that strat, not save RAM. Save RAM is harder because there's typically a checksum or similar so the game can detect a dead battery.

[@tomyyoung2624]

Yes only can they c save data!

[@Christer2222]

16:11 turning your entire memory into the start menu is the ultimate form of Start9

[@ToastNova]

StartOver9000

[@Frewition]

There was a technical analysis shaped hole in my heart.

[@MissingnoXpert]

That's really freaking cool! Very nice to be able to explain why some outcomes are more dangerous for the game than others are

[@derikJoy]

yo your also alive! i hope your still doing fine

[@S3lvah]

"In fact, some types of crashes have been given specific names by the community, just because of how common they are." Game Freak: *monkey puppet meme*

[@pazkallan]

It always warms my heart to see another ZZAZZ video. Can never associate the Lucky Channel OST with anything else in my head after all these years

[@averytubestudios]

11:21 I love how you can hear the great harmony for Pallet Town really clearly here. This has nothing to do with the video, I just thought it was neat.

[@Arvo-1]

The RST 38 glitch at 8:10 was so melodius :') Can we have a musical glitch episode ? It would be interesting 😁

[@drdca8263]

Maybe check out “chip furnace” they have music created from corrupting the memory in video games.

[@Arvo-1]

@@drdca8263 Indeed, not bad but it's only lightly corrupted. I prefer completly new music from hard glitch (for exemple the cursed musique in the japanes version of pokemon green when you mess with the professor Oak's package and you exit the Map through a glitch in the wall)

[@JetFalcon710]

​@@Arvo-1 That sounds like the Dokokashira Door Glitch

[@Darkshadows9776]

I'm gonna call those programmer arm socks and nobody can stop me

[@mystifoxtech]

I don't think anyone is gonna stop you at this point

[@elliot_rat]

the femboy allegations are seeming truer than ever

[@ionic7777]

I’m pretty happy the video was slightly more beginner friendly as while I know a small amount of programming and video game tech, I don’t know anything about low-level programming languages or where hex value data goes. Giving an explanation of what certain hex values do what helped a lot!

[@Stormshine]

Delighted to see another upload from you!! This is a fun one, I genuinely love hearing about specific reasoning behind glitch stuff like this. (And how the VC emulator being terrible is still relevant...)

[@Walrus-yq6uh]

Just when the world needed him most, ZZAZZ returned.

[@meganai3555]

14:05 The reference to Ace Attorney had me rolling Fascinating video as always! Glad to see you're back :]

[@Zuudo]

it took me several rereads to spot it, you have eagle eyes

[@MezephelesArt]

The miracle never happen!

[@meganai3555]

@@MezephelesArt But maybe it was never meant to, because a "miracle" doesn't exist... LOL

[@astracrits4633]

Holy crap, I thought I was the only one who saw that! It took me a few seconds to realize that yes, it *was* in fact an AA reference and not just a typo.

[@Voxelroguery]

I always love seeing zzazz in my notifications. I always learn something new and usually interesting

[@MezephelesArt]

Apparently I'm so into Pokemon glitches that I'll watch someone crash a game for 16 minutes!

[@arhneu]

Another amazing and insightful video! Glad to see you back! 💪

[@remigiusznowak7277]

Siema arhon uwielbiam twoje filmy

[@millabasset93]

Welcome back, ZZAZZ. You're a legend and an inspiration to glitchers everywhere, including myself when I first got into RB glitching 5 years ago. You rock, dude.

[@BottomOfTheDumpsterFire]

Oh, man, I remember being a kid and just learning about glitches while everyone was trying to figure out how stuff worked. And now, I get to actually understand everything that's going on and keep up with every technical bit that's mentioned, while people that spent years researching the Game Boy figure out exactly how the glitches work in Pokemon. Even the fact that we can have a memory editor is a massive technical breakthrough.

[@LeafyJolt]

Welcome back! It’s kinda nice testing all kinds of errors/glitches the old Pokémon games had :)

[@azzarox6661]

"Infinite sleepy time" is both hilarious and terrifying terminology.

[@riantwoninety]

I always have silksong levels of hype for your videos

[@reimuhakurei3311]

It's pretty amazing to see that you're still around. I remember watching your videos wayyy back in the day. Missingnoxpert is long since gone but you're still holding up. Keep up the good work! 👍

[@omegahaxors9-11]

7:20 "No no no, bad. You'll lose your save file. Do this instead."

[@SanJo2MD]

I noticed the Phoenix Wright reference, barely caught it because "never happen" turns on my brain cells.

[@Bluebuu2k]

I feel like you're the only one that puts good editing in these kinds of videos. Usually glitch channels record on source 480p and add some text on a black background. The only thing missing off of yours is voice over and i can fully binge watch them

[@S3lvah]

This is an interesting topic that I've thought about many times in the past 20+ years. Great to see a video about it, and by the master no less

[@LycanWitch]

Need a video on "fixing" crashes, where the game crashes but with a memory editor either remove the erroneous bit of code that caused the crash or repair it then we can see the game can keep running beyond the crash. If I am not mistaken, I believe you did similar before with one or more of the glitch pokemon or was it glitch move/item, but would be nice to see more.

[@ryanj4274]

Well, it would depend on the type of crash. But rarely is just a memory editor going to be enough to recover the CPU, you're going to have to modify the registers and the stack----which would probably require the use of an emulator.

[@zelenpixel]

interesting and also entertaining i like how the biggest reason for lockups was just the game trying to divide by zero lmao

[@bottomtempo]

Arm warmers detected???

[@FairPlay137]

Usually if the LCD is turned off outside of the VBI you’ll see a line or two. If left like that for too long I suppose it may cause damage, but if you power cycle the Game Boy quickly after seeing that it’ll usually be just fine. (This effect is only visible on monochrome Game Boys; the GBC screen just goes blank AFAIK)

[@Brain-washed2]

I knew my clock was messed up. setting it back to april 1 now, thanks ZZAZZ

[@moonsweater]

I just wanted to say how much I appreciate you working on this channel. It's so utterly unique and interesting, it's always exciting to see what you've discovered in these games. Thanks so much for all the crazy information!

[@GlennMagusHarvey]

> My whole memory is now start menu. I hate when that happens. At least you won't forget that you need to start!

[@twerdeffan1080]

Love the video! I'm super interested in tech stuff, and you explained everything in a way I could follow along with, despite not having seen any of your videos before. Wasn't expecting the arm warmers, but they were a nice touch !

[@Toblerone5]

Babe wake up new ZZAZZ vid just dropped

[@gayvee16]

YOOOOOOO good to see a new video from you! Love your arm warmers btw :3

[@ipaqmaster]

I love these videos they're highly informative and presented visually well. Glad to see more. Very interested in the corruption of another cartridges SRAM while RST38 is a ctive in a scenario when a game's bank is left vulnerable by default.

[@Hijiri_MIRACHION]

I feel that it would mainly work with older titles, and that later titles would be less prone to RST38. GBC titles especially would most likely be quite immune to the effects, and titles that don't support the original Game Boy would probably only show their respective GBC only screens.

[@llshinda9508]

A new ZZAZZ video is one of the most wonderful, unexpected things to wake up to.

[@mystifoxtech]

1:37 it seems like @TheZZAZZGlitch is part missingno with the stripey appearance from sprite decompression and causing game corruptions. It seems to have read some actual sprite data when rendering though meaning that the sprite data pointer was close enough to real data to render some. Also, the width value used when rendering is correct for the real sprite data it read.

[@daniel-andersson]

Very glad you're still around! Randomly got the urge to look up your channel again, seeing the recent upload was really cool :)

[@shr4pnel]

seeing your uploads never ceases to put me in a better mood, thanks for creating ☺️

[@UntarLaManteca]

The Return of the King

[@Synthetica9]

Finally, the long awaited hand reveal

[@ObbiObbi]

Always nice to see a ZZAZZ video. I've spent a small amount of time every once in a while trying to see what weirdness occurs in glitching things with the 3DS VC, losing many saves in the progress. It was only a few days ago I actually just got my 3DS setup to use Checkpoint so I could at least start backing up my saves. Great job explaining showing and explaining the RST crash, makes it pretty easy to understand.

[@Estellars]

YES. I love learning about funny hex numbers that cause games to go crazy mode!

[@ISSOtm]

Talking to the Brock gym guy from the right without any valid coordinates in RAM feels a lot like those "You move first! No, YOU move first!" situations :P Wb ZZAZZ! o/

[@darkmatterpancake]

I'm glad you're not dead. Your vids are a really interesting peek behind the curtain of code.

[@everetcetera]

welcome back!! this was super interesting and informational, great for the end of a long work day

[@Thomasynthesis]

the legend is back

[@chainswordcs]

can't wait for a needlessly deep analysis of the rst 38 crash 🙂

[@artsycinccino6330]

Always makes my day when TheZZAZZGlitch uploads ^_^

[@MisterVercetti]

It's moments like these that make you appreciate just how (relatively) well the Gen I games managed to function despite being held together with the code equivalent of shoestring and chewing gum. It's a tradition that continues to this very day, though the "managed to function" part seems to be degrading more and more with the more recent generations.

[@CometMedal]

So glad to see you're back, ZZAZZ! My sibling and I don't really share many common interests, but Pokemon glitching and your content in particular is something we can both agree on. Happy to have a new video we can discuss together, and I'm hoping to see more from you in the future! Fantastic video!

[@icarusmarioFAN]

I picked a good time of the year to just rewatch your videos. EDIT: I remember the Pokédex entry at 11:50 from a MissingnoXpert video. Good memories.

[@smthngbd]

I can't believe Gen 1 breaking was literally just the "divide by zero" meme the whole time

[@kab43]

a non april fools video from zzazz???? i must be dreaming fr tho, this video is really high quality and it was really enjoyable even though i understood nothing

[@jwcgator]

Just started watching a bunch of your videos recently, what a treat!

[@arge7661]

Yooo i missed you lol, finally some quality pokemon glitch content again. Good to see you arent dead

[@gl1tchygreml1n]

When I got the notification on my phone that there was a new video from you I literally said "YOOOO" out loud Welcome back!

[@sixpipz]

so THATS why my vc yellow kept wiping save while i was playing around with offscreen pikachu glitches. this video is going to save me a LOT of time in my new gen 1 adventures!! thought i was going to have to get very acquainted with checkpoint very fast 😅

[@ZettaBlitz]

Great vid as always 😎, the way you explain every part of what's going on is really interesting and helps us understand and and it's really cool.

[@F22C1]

Very appreciative of the work put into the explanations. Thank you.

[@Tsunderebolt]

seeing "unknown opcode" combined with the gen 4 berry noise just gave me missingnoxpert memories

[@DevEd_]

My browser just crashed while I was watching this video. If that's not irony, I don't know what is!

[@AnAshenSpirit]

based arm warmers

[@somemong989]

The building blocks of glitchology lol

[@rebeccabarrett5284]

Welcome back! I would love to see a video on glitch sounds and how the game decides what sounds to play

[@elliotmidgley]

When the world needed him most, he returned

[@Jellycent13]

Welcome back! Please bring back more PMD videos. Im still patiently waiting for them

[@sirswagabadha4896]

Watched all these videos and I still don't understand what a bunch of it is, but i see my childhood game get torn apart from the inside and its fun to watch

[@WishMakers]

Yoooo welcome back!! This was an interesting one. Learning about the potential for RST 38 to have unknowingly caused 4 4's true cry... It seems that mystery will Never truly die and I can't say I blame you. It's fascinating

[@gnostechnician]

Happy to see you back! Great video as always!

[@jeiku5041]

You and MissingnoXpert were my childhood. I hope you two are doing well!

[@vanesslifeygo]

The newest chapter of the Bible just dropped

[@konayasai]

Looking forward to seeing the results of RST 38 cartridge swapping if/when you get around to it!

[@NitroDubzzz]

This is a great step for zzazz. First we see his fingers, in another 10 years we'll see his toes

[@prof.reuniclus21]

this entire thing is all just scp-033 being introduced to the code

[@amyshaw893]

love your arm warmers

[@roberte2945]

I have to wonder if he's a femboy lol

[@amyshaw893]

@@roberte2945 it could be any number of things. They might just be wearing them because it was cold

[@amyshaw893]

Just watching this again, they're definitely a femboy 💜

[@ShadowsCrawlDown]

Bar freezes are the most dangerous?! I have no idea how I haven’t borked by physical Pokemon red and VC Yellow. I do remember constantly looking at my party Pokemon so I’m assuming it’s great luck.

[@yoymate6316]

either i’m way more of a nerd than i think i am or you gave too little credit to how interesting the cross-cartridge sram corruption potential is omg. really tempted to do some experimentation. also unrelated but i like your striped sleeves :3

[@plushy1emily]

This is the 1st time I've heard the phrase "undefined behavior" used when talking about machine code. A vid on when UB occurs would be cool

[@Block57]

hahahaha the arm warmers let's goooo

[@sweetsweetalib4857]

This is literally the definition of the most interesting niche thing that I know a shit ton of effects absolutely nothing but is cool as shit oh my GOD

[@radio_inactive]

I had my 3DS save killed by a bar freeze... Using surf in a glitch city was not a good idea.

[@VinsCool]

I'm interested to see if a different game could get the save data corrupted from a crash lol Also just a moment ago I caused a crash to my atari 8-bit computer tweaking a potentiometer using a screwdriver and got a memory overwriting itself crash, no idea how but I suppose I may have shorted something lol

[@Lassoloc]

the finger waggling had me holding back laughter

[@unlucky_charm29]

welcome back! always a great day when thezzazzglitch uploads :D

[@PlaguevonKarma]

The return of the king