3. Gotta Catch 'Em All. Except One.
Upon its discovery, the fabled MissingNo glitch would have been a source of unrivalled joy for cheating players of Pokemon Red and Blue on the original Gameboy. MissingNo (short for Missing Number) was a sort of Non-Pokemon error-handler that appeared to players when the game attempted to access data for a non-existent Pokemon species. Players could encounter MissingNo in one of three ways due to loops in the programming and capturing the elusive thing inadvertently created mass duplications of the sixth item slot in a players bag. Meaning 99 Rare Candies, meaning a full team of level 100 Pokemon; meaning Elite Four? What Elite four? People went f*cking crazy over this glitch and the widespread effects of it on players have even been studied by sociologists over the years. Its not all roses though, many players, myself included, started to notice the game almost unravelling itself at the seams after they had captured MissingNo. Pokemon could be raised beyond level 100 and turned into super-beings of mass destruction and graphical errors started appearing throughout the world. Eventually, the end result was often that save files became irreversibly corrupted and players lost about 100 hours of their life, which theyll never be able to retrieve. The moral? Shortcuts get you there in half the time, but at what cost? MissingNo, you taught me a valuable life lesson, and for that you have my thanks.