You’re standing in Cinnabar Island. Your thumbs are probably a little sore from that clunky D-pad, and honestly, you’re just tired of grinding levels in Victory Road. We’ve all been there. Back in 1998, nobody really cared about "game integrity" or "fair play" when it came to a single-player RPG that took forty hours to beat. We wanted those 99 Rare Candies. We wanted to see what was behind the S.S. Anne. Using cheats for Pokemon Red Gameboy wasn’t just about winning; it was about poking holes in the digital fabric of a game that felt impossibly vast at the time.
The thing is, most people remember these glitches through a haze of schoolyard rumors. No, there isn't a Mew under the truck. No, pressing B and Down doesn't actually increase your catch rate (even though we all still do it). But the actual, functional cheats? They are far more bizarre than the myths.
The Glitch King: MissingNo. and the Item Duplication Trick
If you mention cheats for Pokemon Red Gameboy, MissingNo. is the first thing that pops into anyone's head. It’s the face of glitching. It’s basically a programming "safety net" that the game falls into when it doesn't know what else to load. To trigger it, you talk to the Old Man in Viridian City—the guy who needs his coffee—and watch his catching tutorial. Then, you Fly immediately to Cinnabar Island and surf along the eastern coastline.
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Why does this work? It’s not magic. It’s a memory overflow. When you talk to the Old Man, the game temporarily replaces your character's name in the RAM with "OLD MAN." To save your actual name, it stores those data bytes in the same memory address used for wild Pokemon encounters on the "half-land, half-water" tiles of Cinnabar.
When you encounter the pixelated mess known as MissingNo., something happens to your inventory. Look at your sixth item slot. If you had a Master Ball or a Rare Candy there, you suddenly have a quantity indicated by a weird glitch character. It represents 128. You’ve just broken the economy of the game. It’s incredibly satisfying. However, be careful—it can scramble your Hall of Fame data. Seeing a level 154 Golduck in your records is funny, but some purists hate a messy save file.
Finding Mew Without a Pro Action Replay
For decades, the "Mew Glitch" was thought to be a total fabrication. We thought you had to go to a Nintendo event or use a GameShark. We were wrong. There is a legitimate, albeit highly specific, sequence of inputs that forces the game to spawn a level 7 Mew.
You need a Pokemon with Fly. You also need a specific trainer—the "Gambler" on Route 8 who stands facing North toward the door of the Underground Path. You walk toward him, but the second you enter his line of sight, you hit Start. If you're fast enough, the menu opens before he "spots" you. You Fly away to Cerulean City. Your Start button won't work for a minute. That's normal. Go fight the Youngster on Route 25 (the one with the Slowpoke). After that, walk back toward Route 8.
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The menu will pop open by itself. Close it. Suddenly, a wild Mew appears.
It feels like a fever dream. It works because the game "remembers" you were in a battle state on Route 8 but loads the Special stat of the last Pokemon you fought (the Slowpoke) as the Index Number for the next wild encounter. Since Slowpoke’s Special stat corresponds to Mew’s ID in the game's code, the engine literally hands you the rarest creature in the franchise. It’s perhaps the most elegant of all cheats for Pokemon Red Gameboy because it requires zero external hardware.
Walking Through Walls and the Safari Zone "Glitch City"
Sometimes you just want to go where you aren't supposed to. The Safari Zone is the playground for this. By entering the Safari Zone, immediately trying to leave, and then saying "No" to the attendant, you can mess with the game's "step counter."
If you save and reset inside the Safari Zone, then exit, the game gets confused about whether you're still in a timed event. If you time it so your "Retiring" message triggers while you are standing on a ledge or in a different map, you can end up in "Glitch City." This is a map composed of random tiles, houses, and water. It’s mostly useless for gameplay, but for those of us who spent hundreds of hours in Kanto, seeing the world break apart is a rite of passage.
The Reality of GameShark and Action Replay
While glitches are "natural" cheats for Pokemon Red Gameboy, hardware-based cheats were the king of the early 2000s. The GameShark worked by "intercepting" the game's code. Instead of the game saying "The player has 5 Potions," the GameShark constantly forced the memory address to say "The player has 99 Potions."
- 019947D3 - Infinite Money (Maxed out at 999,999).
- 0101xxD7 - Encounter any Pokemon (Replace xx with the hex code).
- 01FF16D0 - Infinite HP in battle.
Using these is a bit of a double-edged sword. Sure, you can catch a level 100 Mewtwo before you even get your first badge, but it kills the tension. The real "pro" use of a GameShark back then was fixing mistakes, like accidentally killing Snorlax or running out of PP in the middle of the Elite Four.
Catching Legendaries: The "A" Button Superstition
We have to talk about the catch rate. People swear by holding Up and B, or tapping A repeatedly. Let's be clear: the code for Pokemon Red does not check for button inputs during the Poke Ball animation. It’s a myth.
However, there is a genuine trick involving the status effects. In the original Red and Blue, "Sleep" and "Freeze" are significantly more effective at boosting catch rates than "Paralyze" or "Burn." If you’re hunting Articuno or Zapdos, don't bother with Thunder Wave. Use Sing or Sleep Powder. The math in the original Gameboy titles is notoriously buggy—sometimes a Great Ball is actually more effective than an Ultra Ball depending on the Pokemon's current HP and level. It’s a mess, but that’s why we love it.
Actionable Steps for Your Next Playthrough
If you're digging out your old Gameboy or booting up an emulator, don't just play it straight. Try these specific maneuvers to see the game's guts for yourself:
- Prep the Mew Glitch early: Don't fight every trainer. Leave that one Gambler on Route 8 alone so you can trigger the Fly-away glitch later.
- Duplicate your TMs: You only get one TM13 (Ice Beam) or TM24 (Thunderbolt). Use the MissingNo. trick to get 128 copies so you can kit out your entire team with the best moves.
- Ignore the Bicycle: Use the "Speed Hack" by playing on an emulator or using a GameShark code to increase walking speed. The original walking pace is agonizingly slow by modern standards.
- Verify your Save Battery: If you are playing on an original cartridge, your "cheats" won't matter if the internal battery is dead. Check if you can save before you spend three hours hunting MissingNo.
The beauty of Pokemon Red is its fragility. It’s a masterpiece held together by digital duct tape. Experimenting with these cheats isn't "ruining" the game; it's participating in a decades-long tradition of finding out exactly how much we can break before the screen turns white. Over twenty years later, the search for every last secret in Kanto continues.