[Benry_Gale]

I have a decent programming knowledge, but I've always wondered how classic glitches and bugs work in games. For example...

Fight your way through all of the challengers on Nugget Bridge.
Catch an Abra any way that you can, but don't engage the Jr. Trainer (Marked #7) who hides in the grass on the left of Route #24. This will come later.
Place Abra in your party if it's not already.
Make your way towards that Jr. Trainer, marked #7 on the map on Route #24. He's the one that says "I saw your feat from the grass" when he challenges you.
Save the game at this point.
Stand in front of the Jr. Trainer, just outside of his sight. Move down until he sees you. As soon as he does, immediately press . The exclamation point will not be above his head yet, not until actually Teleporting.
Select your Abra and use Teleport. If you did it correctly, the trainer should have an exclamation point above his head as you Teleport.
For the time being, your menu will not work. This is normal. Proceed to Route #25.
Approach the Youngster (#4) on Route #25, but do not battle or talk to anyone else besides the one Mountain Man (#1). You must battle him from as far away as possible. It is impossible to avoid him, but it will still work if you then head to #4. [After fighting the Mountain Man your start menu will be accessible again, but it is not recommended to access it as it is unknown what may go wrong here. Same goes for the Youngster.]
You must engage the Youngster in battle from far away. Do not walk towards him and talk to him or the game will freeze.
Battle the Youngster and defeat his Slowpoke.
Now walk back to Route #24. As soon as you reach the route, your Start menu will automatically appear.
Press to cancel the menu, and you will instantly be taken to a battle with a level 7 Mew.
Weaken the Mew enough to catch it, and it's yours. Normal Poké Balls will not always work though, so try something stronger.
If fighting Misty is postponed, the Swimmer in the Cerulean City Gym may be used just as the Youngster, without requiring fighting the Mountain Man. After defeating the Swimmer, walking north to the Nugget Bridge will trigger the appearance of Mew as before. Since the Jr. Trainer never has to be battled, you can catch two Mews this way before ever seeing Misty or Bill.

How, on any planet, does that random sequence of events trigger a fight with Mew?

Secondly...how does anyone figure these out? They seem so specific that possibly someone programmed them in on purpose? Thoughts?

Im sure theres tons more examples people can think of. Thread full of weird glitches? Go on then.

[Hotelier]

The infinite caps glitch in fallout 3 and new vegas. MUST have been delibratly programmed. It's to specific to be an accident. It's never been patched either, not in 3 or NV.

[Cryolemon]

Generally, especially like the Pokemon example, it's caused by something causing an overflow in memory locations that cause unexpected behaviour. Most of them would crash the game or cause stuff like the glitch town, but some of them, by chance, do things that can be exploited.

[blindness]

Thought this was a good read

http://lparchive.org/Breaking-Final-Fantasy-VI/

[0lly]

This video explains it a bit - http://www.gametrailers.com/full-epi...--catching-mew

[ags_rule]

Gameboy games were especially susceptible to glitches due to the save data being held on the game cartridge. Like the earlier poster said, too much stuff going on at once with limited memory space.

The reason the Mew glitch works is something to do with binary code, I remember reading. You're essentially forcing the cartridge's hand to send you a particular Pokemon.

[Cryolemon]

Originally Posted by ags_rule

The reason the Mew glitch works is something to do with binary code, I remember reading. You're essentially forcing the cartridge's hand to send you a particular Pokemon.

IIRC it's to do with how the id numbers of each pokemon are stored, and you can force it to give you a specific one by doing odd things.

[cnbcwatcher]

The original Pokemon games are full of weird glitches. Google "pokemon red and blue glitches" and there are loads. One of my favourites is Glitch City: http://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Glitch_City Anyone remember the Missingno glitch?