You are actually underselling the difficulty of this fight. Hideki has semi-random AI; it can randomly choose any of the moves, unless they fail, then he will not pick the move. That being said, if it picks Foresight, it cannot pick Foresight again, and same for Focus Energy. The ideal fight is Foresight into Focus Energy into get range and kill. Machop will be picking Low Sweep way more often than you led on.

Doesn't seem like an error to me. Hideaki was just prepared to kick the player's ass.

We were all warned about the threat of a top percentage Rattata, but we didn't see the top percentage Machop coming.

it's hilarious to me how this trainer, in all normal circumstances, is nothing to worry about. just in speedruns.

Funny how a level 13 Machop gives Speed runners a bad time, but casual gamers just go to town with their Ralts and Tailow or their newly evolved Dustox/ Beautifly.

Honestly single mon trainers having stronger stuff makes sense.

"My Machop's in the top 1% of Machop!"

I know it's annoying to the speedrunners, but I love stuff like this. Just one random guy who didn't play by the "it's a videogame" rules and went out and busted his 28 across the board IVs Machop because he loved it and wanted to train it up. He truly believes that might is right!

I've never been exposed to a Pokemon speedrun before, the idea of the optimal early-game strat being a Mudkip screaming endlessly is so funny to me

Let me shed some light on how this programming error came about. The developers assigned a "difficulty value" to each trainer. When read in 8-bit binary, it was intended that the LEFT 5 bits be read to determine the IVs, but instead the RIGHT 5 bits are read. We know this is a mistake, because it makes much more sense for IVs to get higher when you face more prominent trainers, but instead they seem pretty random. Here are some examples of how the error manifests: Black Belt Hideki, difficulty value 120 (01111000) - intended left 5 bits: 01111 (15 IVs), actual right 5 bits: 11000 (24 IVs) Leader Brawly, difficulty value 160 (10100000) - intended left 5 bits: 10100 (20 IVs), actual right 5 bits: 00000 (0 IVs) Elite Four Drake, difficulty value 200 (11001000) - intended left 5 bits: 11001 (25 IVs), actual right 5 bits: 01000 (8 IVs) Champion Steven, difficulty value 240 (11110000) - intended left 5 bits: 11110 (30 IVs), actual right 5 bits: 10000 (16 IVs)

The guy was training his Machop all his life, pay respects.

Finally, a trainer who lives up to their intro dialogue. "Might is right!"

Not an error, Machop just locked in

Might as well snap the player characters neck after they lose cause that save is absolutely getting deleted lmao

I love how a single random trainer just becomes a problem like this, all due to a funny error

It's a mercy that this happens early on in the game. So ending a run isn't as devastating as it would be later.

Man decided to train his Pokémon against human opponents. They aim for the balls, always. Sounds like it’s intentional.

Interesting enough, there’s that hiker spinner just outside of azalea town, with a machop, that WILL end your speed run if challenges you.

“i’m not mathematically literate” “sqRt (-1)” manz str8 imagining things

Hideki is truly the great equaliser, with both OR and AS runners sweating. He also keeps the runners humble, as casual players normally just sweep him due to extra grinding, having more 'mon and better team coverage, etc.

This kinda reminds me of one if the very silly questions about pokemons gameplay systems you can have. Pokemon breeding produces a lot of mons you dont use and will probably just dismiss from the box. If those pokemon get released into the wild, theres surely some where a kid gets lucky and picks up the equivalent of a god machop, thats only slight blemish is that they have the wrong nature or something. I honestly wouldnt be suprised if this was a legitimate reason that villain teams have so many of the same pokemon. Someone out there wanted the optimal version of that pokemon and left a horde of super bidoof in their wake, and all they had to do was bribe the guy releasing them to just give them to the team.

I’m obsessed with speedrun ending trainers because in any other kind of playthrough you blow past chumps like this and the second rival battle

"Pokémon is for kids, it's sooooo easy" Hideki's Machop:

Says "Might is right!" & has insane IVs. Lol. Anyway, neat analysis video! Thanks for uploading!

99.99999999% of players, just beats him with no trouble and doesn't remember him. Speedrunners: ANYTHING BUT A SLIGHTLY BUFFED MACHOP

IVs are in 5-bit chunks within the pokemon's data.14 in binary is 01110. If Machop was supposed to have straight 15s, then its IV line would look like "011100111001110011100111001110" If this data was put in wrong so that the game 'clipped' the first bit off, you would instead have "11100111001110011100111001110?" that is, it would read five bits at a time and get 11100 as each IV except possibly the last (which I believe is Speed). As such, its IVs would come out as 28 across the board, with the possible exception of Speed which could be 28 or 29, depending on if the next bit after falling off the end of the data was 1 or 0. The mistake of putting the data in a single bit short, or having the data be read somehow a single bit off from where it was supposed to, suddenly makes the Machop extremely beefy. While I am not sure if these are the exact internal values being misread, the example does seem to suggest that such a mistake is entirely reasonable - if I had to guess, I would suggest that the pointer to the memory address that this specific Machop uses was typoed to be 1 more than it should be, so it starts reading memory one bit 'late'. If this were an older game that used bytecodes like the old NES and such, it's the kind of thing that could probably be fixed with a single Game Genie code, being the result of a single byte of ROM being altered - as it's a 3DS game, no idea.

For half of the video I wasn't paying much attention and thought he was saying Garchomp. Nah, this is just a Machop

seeing mudkip so much is making me happy. I love him

From a wordbuildig perspective I like the idea of same "difficulty" trainers having some seemingly randomized variability between their values by, like, a couple points in either direction, and even of the occasional random trainer mon being a very well IV'd mon, just because, hey, that'd logically happen every now and again, other people can also get lucky. Heck, I's even accept IVs on trainer mons being variable by save file, personally. But, all that said, 100% see how what I've said above is increasing hell for speedrun doers.

For what it's worth, 50 is a perfectly acceptable sample size for this! Damn you, jacked Chop.

Due to the law of large numbers, 50 fights is more than sufficient for you to get a statistically significant sample (30 or so would have done). That’s a brutal right nonetheless. 8:43

I thought the title was implying that the programming error turns the gym trainer into one of the Pokémon 🐸

Ya know, I swept him like nothing on a casual run. I did not realize he was crouching tiger, hidden menace like this.

I like to think Hideaki was intentionally designed that way by a dev who just hates speedrunners. I doubt that's true, but that's a very funny conspiracy in my head.

Steven's Cradily anc this single Machop were the bane of my Swampert only run. Before you explained the Machop, I knew what was coming...

Seems "ain't nothing but a funky beat-down" is at play with this Hideki..

This is amazing timing. I just started a semi blind run of Omega Ruby. Haven't played this in ages, relying on vague memory and general pokemon knowledge. I don't know wtf I'm walking into. This dude almost wiped me, and took down two of my team out of nowhere.

It's almost as though this fight wasn't meant to be fought with just a low level mudkip.

I appreciate how engaged you are with your community. Probably something that won't last as you grow, but it's still really nice to see since even a lot of the smaller youtubers I've seen barely interact with their viewers. Also you're doing a superb job with your content, can't wait to see more.

I like the topic and your presentation but I felt like overall the video was missing some impact without an in depth explanation of either 1) the mechanics of why this Machop is so jacked (I know you said you don't understand them but I still want to know) or 2) what time concessions runners have had to make to deal with the machop; conversely, how the run could be faster or more consistent without the Machop Looking forward to the next one!

You really upsell that 28 IV, but it only raises its stats by 1-2 points. Brawleys level 14 Machop is more powerful stat-wise.

I don’t know much about ORAS speedrunning, but are any items used during the run? I was thinking either an Oran berry to increase survivability against Low Sweep, or grabbing the Silk Scarf in Dewford to give a 20% boost to Echoed Voice, decreasing the risk of a 4HKO requirement.

Just found your channel! Can't believe you only have less than 5k subs your content is so good! Definitely subbing and looking forward to the future of your channel!

If there's ever an Emerald remake, Hideki would 100% be the new gym leader.

I don't speedrun games, but this was interesting to hear about. Thanks for the video. I have done a couple Nuzlockes, including Alpha Sapphire, but I don't recall Hideki being too bad. Guess it's different when you have time to train and prepare, unlike a speedrun.

Along similar lines of stuff with the wrong IVs, Volkner's Electivire in Platinum *would* have had 303 IVs in each stat because of a similar typo, but the game's smart enough to check for values outside the 0-31 range and rerolls, resulting in a weird spread of 4/3/29/18/15/19.

I’m glad the tradition of coding errors making Pokémon crazy difficult has continued into the modern age! Great video.

50 is a totally reasonable sample size. The lowest sample size to get an expectable margin of error is 30. In most statistical tests, this is sufficient enough to make a conclusion with 95% confidence, or 5% error. Of course in the world of Pokemon, this may as well be 50/50 (Looking at you, Heat Wave).

Wow i never knew that thanks mr tortoise

Haha no if you bring Zubat or Ralts during a casual playthrough Hideki is just like butter.

I mean, I assume you have to know what you’re doing to become a gym trainer. Good to see someone taking this job seriously.

me with my main ace ralts in oras against hideki: hold my beer

I would love more trainers (preferably optional ones) with optimized pokemon. Just for that little extra challenge.

You got blessed by the algorithm!

Great video!

You know what, I did actually get messed up by this guy in a casual run. I didn't really think much of it at the time, but it makes a ton of sense hearing it like this.

I got an idea for a rom hack of ORAS: Make the Machop have 0 IVs in all stats to get revenge

I wonder if there is a world where catching/evolving exactly a shedninja is correct to help get past hideki?

Outstanding! 🔥🔥🔥

neat video. subscribed

its a gym trainer being fought on-level without a type advantage or a type that negates fighting altogether and people are shocked that the gym trainer can ko a pokemon in 3-5 turns? there's a reason most speedruns are using the type system to completely negate danger or finishing gym pokemon off in 1-2 turns if you go in to an even match without any advantages on these gym trainers that's what your experience will be its just a coincidence this is the one in or/as which sticks out early enough that players don't have their mudkip 1shot engine online

I think this video really needed a comparison to an “intended” machop to really sell the problem. Because to my understanding, the problem really isn’t because of the programming error, but more so the moveset, and the error only makes it worse. But the video doesn’t spend enough time on the error itself or how those stat changes percolate to making the fight truly an abnormal RNG check because of the error. The framing of the narrative is just a little off and I feel like you give too much credit to the IVs without explaining the impact the IVs have on the damage rolls. Still a fun video, learned something new from both the videos and the comments.

this sounds like an intended wall for an actual challenge during any run.

You looking at the machop and then to your mudkip alright "objective, survive!"

To say that this was a mistake implies that speedruns are of any interest to the developers, which I don't think is true

Great video!! Just wonna put it outt here that I think putting "a singular machop" instead of "gym trainer" in the title is a much bigger draw to the video

something so funny about a trainer with such a powerful pokémon that looks like an alien baby

You make good music and good videos. Glad the algorhythm picked you up judging from your highly varying view counts

Love this 💯💯💯

I always just walled the second gym in ORAS with a quad resist to fighting types like zubat, or the wurmple evolutions, so that machop is virtually nothing to me. It's Brawly's meditite with STAB confusion that gets me since it's such good coverage

Clearly in the next pokemon game Hideki should show up as a newly minted gym leader with an overpowered Machamp.

great video

Good throwback about breathiing

Just my personal feedback… it would’ve been really great to get even a short/simple 10 second explanation as to what happened that affected ONLY this trainer’s IVs. That’s super interesting to me and would’ve been beneficial Also, it’s one thing to say, “these IVs make the fight so much harder”, but another to explain why. Even a few quick damage calcs to show the difference would’ve been really great It was a good video and I enjoyed it for sure!!! Just wanna give feedback because I care about it and want to look forward to seeing more in the future :)

Funnily enough I remembered this guy from a challenge run long ago that had a distinct lack of fighting counters, good to know i wasn't going insane and bros actually stacked

This was a neat video

I actually kinda love this. Running into a random badass with a single freakishly strong Pokémon who wrecks you before you even fight the actual boss is the sort of thing you see in an anime, meant to teach the protagonist how big the world they've entered really is or something like that. They'd probably go on to fight the gym leader and be like: "This isn't so bad compared to that other guy." The fact that it was caused accidentally by a coding error somehow just makes it better: It's like how MissingNo was just a glitch but became memed as some sort of eldritch, reality-corrupting entity.

I don’t recall ever having any trouble with this particular Machop. I typically used a Combusken that knew Peck and Power Up Punch and had Speed Boost. I didn’t even really need to use Peck as three turns was plenty of time to make the Attack stat go higher via Power Up Punch and Speed Boost allowed you to outspeed most Pokemon.

Hideki isn't bugged, he just wakes up and chooses violence!

What if GameFreak is just trolling speedrunners by this point? The ""option to skip cut-scenes"" in Let's Go already made me think that.

DAN HIDEKI! BACK AFTER THE ULTIMATE IMPROVEMENT!

Cynthia to her Garchomp: Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power

ORAS is still my favorite. It’s everything I imagined Sapphire to be like if it had 3D models and all the cool immersion stuff i dreamed of as a kid, like petting your pokemon and your bond with it MATTERING.

given the 30/50 failure rate, the standard deviation is 0.07, and as such you can be 95% confident that the true failure rate is between 0.46 and 0.74 Generally 30 samples is the minimum you’d want for statistics, 50 is fine, more is always better “statistically significant” is also usually used when the 95% confidence range does not include the expected case (ie the results are statistically significant and indicate a deviation from normal), there’s not really a usual case (null hypothesis) here tho

I thought my Machop was in the top percentage of Machop

I haven't played this game in years, but i still remember how Hideki sent me back the town over (i forgot to pokecenter) my first go at the gym. I stopped playing for two weeks.

It was no mistake. Hideki and machop are Guy and Lee in disguise.

It's kind of amusing that such a seemingly insignificant change in stats is so impactful. At level 13, a difference between 15 and 28 IVs should only result in the corresponding stat being raised by 2. Yet this apparently does enough for this battle to be a horror towards speedrunners. I almost wonder if the bug is being somewhat exaggerated, and this fight would be a nightmare regardless.

Ok did some math cuz I’m in a stats class rn. First off, your sample size was actually significant; obviously, more would’ve given more precision, but it’s big enough to generalize. Basically, we can be 99% confident that the real percentage of fights lost is between 42.2% and 77.8%. That 99% confidence means that if you were to repeat this experiment a whole bunch, using the same methods every time, you would capture the true proportion every time. So, basically, if you do this fight using the typical run strats, you will lose between 42% and 78% of the time. It’s a wide interval, but even a 42% loss rate is NUTS.

In my "casual" run I'musing dexnav to gather the buffest team of my favorites that there ever was. So I kinda just rolled up to this gym with a 3 star ralts and swept.

In the original pokemon blue of my youth - I recall the macho - guy being on of the few specific foes I had to grind in order to beat. That would predate this bug. Honestly though, I recall him because the pokemon was not (AFAIK) one you could get in the wild - so I can’t really say if he was hard, easy, or just countered my team.

Then again, the second (mandatory) rival fight in Emerald destroys me even when I'm casually playing through the game.

You will think this would get patched when wifi has been commonplace for years when the game were released 🙄

RS Haidiki can’t hurt you he doesn’t exist: This video

I'd love to know how other gym fights stack up to their casual run counterparts. Whitney's Miltank comes to mind.

Sounds like a skill issue. Chad Machop kicking ass.

Hideki is the Sun Tzu of Pokemon speedrunning. Listen to these quotes: “All warfare is based on deception.” “If your opponent is of choleric temperament, seek to irritate him.” “Might is right! Come on!”

I love the genre of "devs made an error in some coding value and players have suffered from it ever since". Another good one is how in Morrowind, the pickpocket skill check is accidentally stacked severely against you to the point that you need high level magic buffs to even have a semi-solid shot at success.

This video hit algorithm like crazy

Hideki knows how to make your pokemon's face hit the deck eeeeeeee!