I would assume that the names are likely using the null character as a “stop” character. So instead of having it read a certain number of characters in the name, it’s told to read until it gets to the stop character and display everything before it.

Sounds like something TheZZAZZGlitch might be able to figure out.

Didn’t you say 0x00 is also used as a delineator? I’m assuming it’s ether being interpreted as a stop or possibly a new line

IIRC, “# ERROR.” only shows up in textboxen, with # being the ID of the textbox.

I can answer that for Pokemon (and trainer) names, because I was looking into Japanese Pokemon Blue (and others) not long ago. 00 (null) is inserted after names as a terminator, and the code that displays names looks for 00 as a sentinel.

Its funny people thought Japanese devs are god tier programmers. When in reality only the worst worked in game dev(95% of the time), and now you have people fooling around with code. Awnsering questions trying to figure out why they would do something so retarded fixing simple bugs etc etc etc. Plus its really cool to see how old games were made how much of a nightmare it was due to having no real tools. Programmers were truly wizards pre-2000's with some insane skills&logic to figure out problems. Compared to the bloated shitshow we have now.

Imagine how many games have stupidly insane secrets. IIRC Chrono Trigger actually had like 3 endings even official guides never knew about until 15 years later. Imagine what else might actually have an extra ending.

Me neither lmao. I'm suddenly much more invested. Someone should send this to Chris

glad somebody else knows about it :D, I kept hearing the clip when i was using lets plays to sleep

Yeah this is a good line to explore. The pokemon names are always 11 (0xB) characters long and it looks like in the subroutines in pokemon red it copies chunks of 11 bytes of memory to display. Theoretically when the printing routines in pokemon red reach a null character it should print "0 Error", but obviously that doesnt happen.

Semi-relevant to the situration, it does infact print until terminator and not until the intended end of the string, that is why unterminated names(Like glitchnames) can ruin memory because they make the game go out of bounds. Now, why the game doesn't just stop printing when it either gets the terminator OR until the 0B limit is a mystery to me, but it's also Pokemon Gen 1 and the game barely has any bounds checks, so it shouldn't be a surprise that this one is missing.

What you describe is exactly how C handles strings (0x00 string terminator, with all non-null data from the character pointer (i.e. string start) to the first encountered null being treated as part of the string), with the OOB behaviour lpfan described being typical of lazy unchecked strcat/strcpy usage The interesting part is that Pokemon is written in Assembly and not C, meaning (I assume) they made a conscious choice to write the string functions the way they did rather than it coming from misguided use of a standard C library; my guess is that A. they were concerned about how much space the code itself took in the ROM, and B. they just assumed nobody would run into buffer overflow issues (do not I am neither an ASM dev nor a professional C dev I'm just a silly little comp sci bachelors)

Null terminated strings are used a lot because they maintain the nature of strings as pointers while having a mechanism to store length without a struct. The issue comes when people ignore the actual length or forget the null character

@@chonchjohnch and to be fair, they're sort of correct. So far as I know it's never an issue during the actual game, but rather an issue with moving data onto and then off of the n64.

it was driving me absolutely nuts hearing the clip every couple nights while listening to compilations to sleep

Ebay listings go crazy www.ebay.com/itm/175399553260

i mean, they fixed it in 1.1 and 1.2 so.... they already know it?

we got dem dealz in Bellingham

​@@ChromaLockif you ever need any games to test I have a complete N64 set. Im in Mount Vernon 👍

I'm just over the border from you. There's a retro game store in New Westminster, BC called Gamedeals. 10 years ago, I took a look inside. I saw an EarthBound cartridge for $199 CAD (~$190 US at the time). I don't even dare to look at retro cart prices nowadays. DKoldies and Heritage Auction have done irreperable damage to the retro game market by making people think they can get big bucks for their games and thus refuse to cut prices. At least there's /r/shittygamecollecting, FXPAK Pro and a DE-10 Nano N64 core (thanks to FPGA Jedi Master Robert Peip). Too bad the Analogue 3D will be a limited run considering an N64 with HDMI will run you $600+ USD on eBay.

OoO

I picked up stadium and ocarina at a yard sale for $7 for both

Good question

likely what you think will happen. the conversion will replace that space with 0, and it will be rendered in pokemon red as a zero length string, and, without knowing anything else about pokemon or its internals, and this video highlighting that 0s in pokemon red aren't treated as null-terminators in strings, there wouldn't be some arbitrary code execution(ACE), since it'll read the string in full up to whatever null-terminator it uses, sees the 0 as it's rendering on screen, stop there, return from function, process the next statement. If there were ACE, you'd likely see it brought up in this video when the other names got truncated

There might be some obscure forum where somebody noticed this bug, and I assumed that somebody would have looked into it after it happened to a fairly popular youtuber, so it was crazy to find absolutely no information on the internet about it

A similar idea is in PKHeX when creating legitimate pokemon in earlier gens. Trash bytes must be added after a pokemons name. If it's left blank, it means it isn't real. However today such programs are not advisable to use and you need to breed and trade yourself.

​@@vanesslifeygopkhex is actually the only reliable way to check if the pokemon you were traded is legal, so still advisable

Good idea! I should definitely do that so that this can be documented with other changes like the color skin change for Jynx xD

SURFING. RAICHU. Surfing Pikachu and Raichu's animations were SICK to see, and I was so happy that Alolan Raichu was pretty much homage to the Surfing Raichu animations, with the tail surfing. Also the Academy in Stadium 2 pretty much taught me everything about how moves interact, and its challenges walked so that XD's Battle Discs and RSE's Contest combos could run.

🤞

This is actually a fantastic question

didnt know about this. will definitely include this in the follow-up vid!

Glad you like it!. Is your version of the game from the USA? Wonder if its different across regions. There's also always the possibility of bootleg carts but seems unlikely.

@@ChromaLock Oh, my mistake! My original version was 1.1, not 1.2. I just did a quick test using Project64 and mGBA, and can confirm that the glitch occurs in 1.1, so it seems that it wasn't until 1.2 where the glitch was fixed?

@ShadowMario3 Interesting. I must have mixed up my roms when testing. Ill pin a comment to clarify 😁🫡

@@ChromaLock Sounds good! This helps answer my question on what the different revisions did as well (which is why I tried to get every US revision back then). 1.1 is where they changed Jynx's skin color from black to purple. I had no idea what 1.2 fixed, but now it makes sense that it would be the nickname bug.

@@ChromaLock Another note that you might want to make is if you encounter the bug in 1.0 or 1.1, then swap the Pokemon around in 1.2, the glitch is fixed as well! Oddly enough, doing the same thing in Stadium 2 doesn't fix it.

Its name is formatted as MR.MIME without a space in the first two generations, coincidentally preventing the bug.

thanks i just switched from Kdenlive to Davinci Resolve 😄

225 now

1.2 is the one that no longer has the issue, and it fixes Pokemon that were affected by the issue as well.

Project64 3.0 and up should be fine.

Video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/irR-dq9_tbHWqXU.html Timestamp where they finish their break: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/irR-dq9_tbHWqXU.html?t=275

It does fix the bug! Only thing is most people probably wouldn't hunt down a 1.2 copy for this for something you could change with PKHeX or the Name Rater.