Take a wrong step at the edge of a carefully curated virtual world and you find a digital ghost: a scrambled block of static that showers you with infinite riches while threatening to corrupt your save file. This episode unpacks MissingNo, the anomaly buried in the code of the 1996 release of Pokémon Red and Blue, drawing on game histories, sociological research, and vintage strategy guides. The hosts walk through the Old Man glitch step by step: watch the tutorial in Viridian City, immediately use Fly to Cinnabar Island, then Surf along a single line of pixels on the eastern coastline until the game throws you into a battle with Pokédex entry 000, known in Japanese as Ketsuban, or missing number.

They explain the mechanics behind the magic. The Game Boy stashed your player name in the wild encounter data buffer during the tutorial, and bec ...