You’re standing in Cinnabar Island. You’ve just talked to a grumpy old man in Viridian City who showed you how to catch a Weedle for the hundredth time. Now, you’re surfing along the jagged eastern coast of the island, right where the water meets the land. Suddenly, the music cuts. The screen flashes. A pixelated nightmare appears—a glitchy, backward-L shape that shouldn’t exist. This is the world of Pokemon Blue cheat codes, or more accurately, the world of manipulating a game that was held together by digital duct tape and prayer.
Game Freak probably didn't intend for us to find these. In 1998, we didn't have GameSharks in every pocket; we had word-of-mouth playground rumors that felt like forbidden magic. Some were fake. Some were real. Most were somewhere in between, born from the fact that the Game Boy’s memory was incredibly easy to trick if you knew which buttons to press.
The MissingNo Glitch is the King of Pokemon Blue Cheat Codes
MissingNo isn't a Pokemon. It’s a "Non-existent Number." Basically, the game tries to look up data for a wild encounter in a place where no data exists. To pull this off, you head to Viridian City and let the Old Man demonstrate how to catch a Pokemon. During this scripted scene, the game temporarily overwrites your player name in the RAM with "OLD MAN." To save your actual name, it stuffs it into the data slot normally reserved for wild Pokemon encounters on the current map.
Then you fly to Cinnabar Island. You surf on the very edge of the shore. Because that specific strip of "land-water" doesn't have its own encounter data, the game looks at the last place it stored encounter data—which happens to be your name. If your name has certain characters in the 3rd, 5th, or 7th slots, you’ll trigger a fight with a level 140 creature or the infamous MissingNo.
The real prize? The sixth item in your bag. It gets boosted by 128. If that’s a Rare Candy or a Master Ball, you’re basically a god. You can hit level 100 in minutes. Just be careful; MissingNo can scramble your Hall of Fame data or mess with your sprites. It’s a literal ghost in the machine.
How to Get Mew Without a Nintendo Event
For decades, we thought Mew was a myth. We pushed the truck near the S.S. Anne. We tried every "trick" in the book. Nothing worked. Then, the internet matured, and we discovered the "Trainer Fly" or "Long-Range Trainer" glitch. This is the most legitimate way to get the 151st Pokemon using Pokemon Blue cheat codes that aren't actually codes at all, but memory manipulation.
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First, you need a trainer who can see you from a distance—the most popular is the Gambler on Route 8 or the Jr. Trainer in the grass near Nugget Bridge. You walk into their line of sight and hit Start at the exact same micro-second. If you do it right, the menu pops up before they can "!" you. You use Fly or Teleport to get out of there. Your buttons won't work properly because the game thinks you’re in a battle.
Go fight a specific trainer—usually the Youngster with a Slowpoke on Route 25. Their Pokemon’s Special stat determines what you encounter when you return to the original route. If that stat is 21, a level 7 Mew appears. It’s not a hack. It’s not a prank. It is a genuine Mew that you can trade, use, and even transfer to the Pokemon Bank if you’re playing on the 3DS Virtual Console version.
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The GameShark Era: Breaking the Game for Real
Sometimes, you don't want to dance around glitches. You want to walk through walls. You want to catch a level 100 Charizard in Pallet Town. That’s where the actual Pokemon Blue cheat codes for GameShark come in. These work by directly injecting values into the Game Boy's hex code.
- Walk Through Walls: 010138CD
- Infinite Money: 019947D3 (plus two more lines to max it out)
- Master Balls in the first PC slot: 010111D1
Using these is risky. If you walk through a wall into an "out of bounds" area, you might get stuck in a void where the game crashes. If you use a code to encounter a specific Pokemon, you might find that your save file gets "corrupted" if you don't turn the code off before the battle ends. These are heavy-duty tools. They aren't subtle.
Why We Still Use These Tricks in 2026
You might wonder why anyone bothers with 25-year-old bugs. It’s about the speed. Speedrunners use these exploits to finish the game in under 20 minutes. Collectors use them to get "legit" Mews that the world forgot about when the 1990s ended. There’s something deeply satisfying about breaking a game that defined your childhood. It turns a linear RPG into a sandbox where the rules are suggestions.
The beauty of Pokemon Blue cheat codes is that they reveal the bones of the game. You start to see the code. You realize the "water" at Cinnabar isn't water; it’s a programming oversight. You realize the items in your bag are just numbers waiting to be changed.
Actionable Next Steps for Glitch Hunters
If you're ready to break your copy of Blue, start small. Don't go straight for the GameShark codes.
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- Check your name: If you want to use the Cinnabar glitch, make sure your character name has the right letters. Using "ASH" will yield different results than a custom name.
- Clear your PC: Before trying the Mew glitch, make sure you have a box with space. You don't want to successfully spawn a mythical Pokemon only to realize you can't catch it.
- Save often, but be smart: Never save after encountering a glitch until you’ve checked your sprites and your bag. If things look "blocky" or "garbled," reset immediately.
- Try the 3DS Version: These glitches actually work on the digital versions released for the Nintendo 3DS. They are arguably the most stable way to experience these exploits without worrying about a dying internal battery on a physical cartridge.
The world of Kanto is a lot weirder than the manual led us to believe. Whether you're duplicating Master Balls or hunting the elusive 151st Pokemon, these cheats are the ultimate way to reclaim your journey. Just remember: once you start seeing the MissingNo, there’s no going back to a normal game.