The cloning tricks in Pokemon games are such a blast, and they are the things that EVERYONE wants to know how to do. I was one of the hundreds, maybe thousands, on that bandwagon, especially when Pokemon Gold, Silver, and Crystal first appeared.
The cloning glitch was simple. You had the Pokemon you desired to clone in your party, went to the PC, switched to an empty box, then let the game save. After that, one proceeded to choose the Pokemon you desired to clone, deposit him, her, or it into the empty box, switch over to an entirely different box, then…
You merely don’t let it save. Shut off your game in the middle of the game saving the data; usually three rotations of your save ‘circle’ would do nicely. When you turned your game back on, you could look in your party and there would be the Pokemon you wanted to clone. You looked in the PC box in question, and oh! There it is! Another copy of your other Pokemon! Simple eh?
Well, I thought so too. However, I was told cloning your Pokemon was impossible in Crystal version. I was, what, nine, maybe ten, years old? I didn’t believe that bull. I believed if you could do it in Gold and Silver, Crystal could do it too. There wasn’t much of a difference, was there?
So, with my prized Meganium in my team, I proceeded to the Pokemon PC box and began the cloning process, making sure that every, little detail was precise, not wanting to mess-up on making a carbon copy of my darling in fear of losing him forever. I was excited, yet nervous. Could I trick the game into thinking that it could indeed clone?
I turned on my purple, translucent Gameboy Color once more. I pulled up the START menu, and clicked on “POKEMON”. Look, my baby was still there! Adrenaline was pumping rapidly through my body now, unable to keep my euphoria contained within my little body. I continued to enter the PC and click on the box where my cloned….
There was nothing.
I glared at my game. It WAS going to clone this Meganium whether it liked it or not! By the end of my attempts of cloning my prized starter, which was three attempts later, I was furious and frustrated. I didn’t understand! Why did the doppelganger cheat not work?! I sighed heavily and continued to look at my game. I scrunched up my lips into a crooked pucker, thinking hard about what to do. It’s not like I did any of the steps wrong, if I was to do this on my Silver or Gold, it would work. And I had tried it in between my first and second try with a different Pokemon on another game. On Silver, it worked just fine. After my contemplations, I decided to try it one last time. If my Crystal version absolutely REFUSED to clone my dearest Meganium, I would just have to let it.
So, I started up the PC again, entered Bill’s PC, and retraced my tired steps of the entire cloning process. Slightly disappointed, I shut off my Gameboy and sighed once more. It probably wasn’t going to work…
The Gameboy Color ‘on’ jingle rang, Crystal version’s opening began [which I pressed “A” to skip], and I proceeded to reach the start screen. I hit START, brought up my save file, and let it load with a defeated spirit. I looked at my team, with Meganium still in the first spot. Hope began to start up again in the pit of my stomach, making it feel as though it had fireworks popping within. I logged onto the Pokemon Center PC, got into Bill’s network, and dropped my game on my grandmother’s plush blue carpet.
I was frightened by what I saw. It was almost as though something came through and wrecked that entire box in which my successfully cloned Meganium lie. Hesitantly, I picked up my portable game system, and had the desire to figure out what happened. I clicked on him, and then clicked on the “SUMMARY” option. I looked at his name, and it was all question marks, just like what the rest of the box was filled with. I swallowed before continuing to see what his moveset was. It was no lie, he was cloned to a T….minus his name. The only thing you saw throughout that entire box was question marks. Nothing more, nothing less. I had flipped through other boxes, and they were not infected with the question mark curse. Only the box in which I overrode Crystal’s internal abilities by cloning that Meganium had the endless amount of question marks. No one, not a single person I knew or have known since, has been able to do what I had done. I’ll admit, I was scared beyond belief. I had never in my life run into a ‘glitch Pokemon’ nor did I know anything of the sort. I heard only brief murmurs of MissingNo. and M’ block back then, but all the same, no one had run into what I had that day.
At first, I had saved and turned off my game in a frenzy of fright, running into the next room where my older cousin was playing his Pokemon Silver version. He was 12 or 13 then, and even at that point, he was interested in what I was babbling about. I told him all about my question mark flooded personal computer box, and he asked to see the Meganium in question. I told him that it was in the other room if he wanted to look at it, I didn’t want to touch it.
So, my cousin’s curiosity came over him and he proceeded into the room where my slumbering game was, turned on my game system, and brought it into the opposing room with him. I wanted to protest, but my curiosity was just as high as my cousin’s, let alone my fear surpassing his wonder. He was quite bewildered at my Meganium, who was still residing within all of those question marks, and asked if he could have it. Proud at the fact that I was the one who conquered Crystal’s wall of anti-cloning codes, I told him that he wasn’t allowed to take it from me.
In disappointment, he returned my Gameboy Color to me, and my eyes once more beheld my boredom’s creation. Still holding my childish fear that my game was haunted, I changed the current box’s name from “BOX 14” to “HAUNTED!!!”. I ceased to play the game for the rest of the day.
However, my fascination with the cloned Meganium gained control over my body and mind, driving me to find out more about him. I added him to my team, and in which the entire team window was filled with question marks, somehow, someway. My fear was softening, but I still was cringing or shivering every so often when I saw the mass of curved and dotted punctuation marks littering my screen. When sent into battle, the question mark Meganium had only question marks as long as his Health Point bar, which is still more than normally allowed, but not a screen-murderer. Once more, everything else worked just as if he was any other Pokemon.
The question mark thing was getting out of hand for me. I got irritated with it, and it kept freaking me out. So I felt it was time to visit a Name Rater and straighten this situation out. I traveled to Lavender Town, quite fitting for the occasion, and asked the Name Rater to ‘rate’ my question mark loving friend’s ‘nickname’.
I really couldn’t wait to get rid of the name, I just really couldn’t. But that’s when the Name Rater said that his name, which was the one filled with that damn questioning punctuation mark, was a lovely name, and that he should keep it. I was mortified. There was no way of deleting that name from him, no way at all if the Name Rater couldn’t do it. I clinched my teeth in frustration at the situation that my pushing of cloning had done to me.
So, the last frontier for ?????????? to enter, was Pokemon Stadium 2, where I could find out his true nature for myself. I heard if you transferred a MissingNo. or an M’ block into the Stadium games, they either turned into Dittos or they would turn into the Substitute dolls, and I was afraid that this would happen to my glitched Meganium. After entering a Free-For-All Stadium battle with my Meganium of question marks in tow, I figured out that in there, he had absolutely no name. There was merely a space where his name would be. Like Victor Frankenstein to his wretched creature, I was unable to give my cloned specimen a name and I sometimes was afraid of him, even if he was merely a character in a video game made of the binary code and other codes too.
He remained on my Crystal for months, and I hardly used him, mainly leaving him in his “HAUNTED!!!” box, previously known as BOX 14. Sometimes he had a friend, like my Jynx, sometimes he was left alone. I would switch over to that box every-so-often, and cringe as I saw the screen overflowing with those question marks.
After those months had passed, my cousin asked me once more if he could have the Meganium that gave me the chills. I hesitated, knowing that he was mine and, being the person that I am, usually have a connection with all of my Pokemon, despite the fact that the one in question scared me for a long time. But, I gave in to his request at last.
I had asked for a Graveler which would turn into a Golem once traded over since I didn’t have a Golem and I had been desiring one for awhile. And as I loaded him into my party to be traded, I noticed my cloned Meganium has his original in the party with him. I frowned at this sight. The original Meganium, nicknamed [I don’t remember his nickname as of now, sorry!] and glitch free, juxtaposed to his clone, full of bugs and a name that was obnoxiously long and hard to look at, un-nicknamed, unable to be fixed. Me and my cousin hooked up our Gameboys and began to enter the trade center.
We selected the Pokemon we desired to trade when our connection was severed.
“What in the…?” my cousin said, confused as to what was going on. “Why did our connection stop?”
I was confused too, so I just stared at my dull screen and clicked buttons when a dialogue box appeared.
“…You…” it began. “You want to be rid of me…?”
“B-B-Breeecckk…..?” I stuttered to my cousin, scared of what my game was doing.
“You were the one that MADE me!” the game’s text screamed at me in anger. “You CLONED me! I’m just a SHADOW compared to HIM!”
The cursor that was previously on my question mark Meganium moved by itself down to my other Meganium.
He continued, “You left me ALONE in THAT FUCKING BOX for countless months, countless hours, and now, YOU WANT TO TRADE ME TO SOME OTHER IDIOTIC CHILD with another SICK, TWISTED, SENSE OF HUMOR?!”
“What’s happening cuz?!” Breck inquired, baffled. “Is your game acting up or something?”
I could only squeak. I was frightened beyond all reason, so shook up by what was occurring, that I wanted to cry the tears of a three year old. My cousin tried resetting the connection, which made my screen lock up from the terrible messages for a moment before they started to type themselves and scroll at an unbelievable speed.
“You’re nothing more than a STUPID, BORED, THOUGHTLESS, CHILD with NOTHING better to do than WRECK creations that you yourself brought into being! Well TOO BAD. I’m not GOING ANYWHERE…”
I was brought into a battle screen, with my question mark Meganium going up against me. It wasn’t listed as “Wild” it was listed as “Enemy”. My only Pokemon? The original Meganium that I cloned him from.
My cousin began to get frustrated. “Terra, seriously, I thought we were going to trade! Now you’re BATTLING?! Who are you going up against?”
I couldn’t speak once more. But after a couple minutes, I said that it was my glitch Meganium. My cousin was confused, but didn’t push the subject.
“Now let’s see who is better…” The text dialogue stated. “The original or the clone…”
I chose the move for my Meganium to use, although it wasn’t of much use since both of them were Grass-type Pokemon. I decided upon Giga Drain as the move to use against his wrath.
The clone went first, and he used a move not even in his original moveset, nor was it a move that I taught him. He chose to use Hypnosis. I was confused as hell for I knew that Meganiums could not learn Hypnosis. So how did he…?
Even though the chances were against him, the cloned Meganium put his original self to sleep. I bit my lip, knowing that if he could use Hypnosis, that there was no telling what else he could use…
When it came to the original’s turn, it said that “Meganium is in a deep sleep.” I paused at that statement. That dialogue was not the regular message, for it would usually say that the Pokemon is “fast asleep” not in a “deep sleep”…What was going on here?
“Hehehe…” The dialogue started up again from my glitched opponent. “There’s no escape you pitiful fool…Your Meganium won’t wake up for the rest of the match…No…for the rest of it’s existence. I’m not stopping until all of you are DEAD.”
I flinched and grasped my Gameboy so hard that my hands were shaking, not only from my tight grip but from my fear of what was going on.
“Enemy ???????? used NIGHTMARE!” That message let me know that, once more, the Meganium of my cloning was warping his moveset. The graphics for Nightmare appeared like normal, but then the next part of the dialogue sent my head spinning. “The NIGHTMARE made Meganium scream in agony!” The cry my Meganium let out at that instant was utterly gut-wrenching, since it was the sound that they make when they faint, but the pitch was changed to such a high level that it made one nauseated.
“Do you want to know why you couldn’t erase my name…?” The text box was at it again with messages from my deranged Meganium. “Well…DO YOU?” And that’s when a “YES” or “NO” box appeared, and, out of mere curiosity, I clicked “YES”.
The question marks disappeared and something else took their place. When I looked at what it said, my brain went numb as my body turned freezing cold…
“YOU’RE DEAD” was what the name turned out to be.
I couldn’t stand this any longer. I turned off my game, threw it down on the ground, and ran into the bathroom, locking the door behind me. I sat on the floor of the bathroom between the wall and the bathtub, my knees gathered up to my chest, and my head buried in between them. My breathing was heavy and my body started to have the shakes as I almost began to cry. I then heard my grandmother asking my cousin what was wrong with me, but he just said that I didn’t feel well. But that’s when I heard my cousin turn my GBC on. I freaked out and ran out of the bathroom and into the room where I was only moments before. My cousin looked up at me with a questioning look.
“Terra,” he spoke to me in a “you’re such a little kid” tone. “Your game is perfectly fine.”
I shuddered as he handed my game to me. He was right. I was back in Goldenrod City with my party unaltered. It went back to before I added my glitched, clone Meganium to my party Pokemon. I sighed deeply and my cousin told me that he was going to get something to drink and that I should go and get my Meganium ready to trade.
As much as I didn’t want to get the Meganium, I told my cousin that I would as he walked out of the white room. I headed into the Pokemon Center, and then, everything glitched up once more. A text box appeared and it said “The NIGHTMARE made Meganium scream in agony!” Once more, I heard that high-pitched screech that I heard previously as I dropped my game and put my hands to my ears in attempts at blocking out the sound. After the sound ceased, the “bink!” sound that let me know a text box appeared had caught my attention. I turned my face to look at the screen.
“Meganium has fainted…”
I opened my party and I realized that it was altered from before I entered the Pokemon Center too. It was back to the party containing my Meganium and the cloned one. The cloned Meganium’s name had changed once more and it read “Hahaha…” As much as I didn’t understand, I was too afraid to click on the cloned Meganium. I opened up the “SUMMARY” screen for my original Meganium and where his sprite would have been, it was empty. No sprite whatsoever. And once more, that terrible, horrifying screech sounded when the screen had appeared. He had no HP at all. It was listed as 0/0. And instead of his status being “FNT” it was “DIE”. I bit my lip and flipped over to the next page, where the Pokemon’s stats are shown, and everything there was 0 too. Then, on his move-set page, there wasn’t a single move listed. It was absolutely empty.
I felt like I was going to do more than throw up, I felt like I was going to literally faint right then and there. I backed out of that page and then my Meganium was gone. The only Pokemon there was the cloned Meganium. His name now read “Click Me”. I hesitated, but still did as he desired. I opened up his summary page. His sprite was now utterly different. His eyes were red, his skin black, and the flower was now an eerie cyan and blue mix, with blood specks on the petals. Also, upon his face was a creepy smile that showed his white, jagged teeth.
Once more, his name had changed to “REVENGE”. I flipped to the next page where it changed once more. “IS”, it said. The last page read where his name was, “SWEET.”
My cousin returned and my Gameboy suddenly turned itself off. I just sat there, staring blankly at the grey screen, while Breck stood over me with a glass of milk in his hands for me.
“Terra?” he had asked of me once more. “You okay…?”
“Yeah,” I replied to him, slowly growing out of the strange state that befell me. “I’m fine…You still want that Meganium?”
“Sure!” He had a grin on his face.
“Then get it set up.”
I turned my game back on, and suddenly, my party was back to normal. I had all of the ones I had before, including the glitched Meganium who’s name returned to the 10 question marks. I was wondering why he changed his name back, but I decided to not click on him and find out. My original Meganium was back too, but, to be safe, I wanted to look at the summary page. He had some red scars on his sprite, but, he was otherwise back to normal, including his cry. So, my cousin and I hooked up the trading cables, went into the trading center, and set up our trade. The Pokemon to be traded were the same; Graveler for the glitched Meganium.
As the “goodbyes” were said, some extra text appeared on mine. The glitched Meganium was in a spotlight. “I’m sorry,” it began. “I can’t promise to change on your cousin’s game, however, I’m sorry for what I did to you. You’re merely a child. But…for him…he’s thirteen. Things could very well be different for him. If he treats me terribly…I will undo everything he’s ever done.”
I saw the flash of the ‘revenge is sweet’, demonic, Meganium, then it flashed back to the regular Meganium sprite before transferring itself over to my cousin’s game. I’m pretty sure I cried just a bit before he continued onto my cousin’s game and I received the Graveler, who soon after turned into a Golem. But, after the trade was over, I wish I never traded that Meganium. I haven’t heard back from my cousin on what he’s done with that Meganium ever since, and that was almost nine years ago, but all the same, it makes me wish I still had him. [Although, he would have died with my Crystal…For now my Crystal no longer saves the games it has.]
But, one day, whilst roaming through my PC, inside the “HAUNTED!!!” box, I swore I saw two sentences…
“I undid everything he’s ever done. Do you miss me as much as I miss you…?”
And that’s when I whispered aloud…
“Yes.”
