Nah, I'm afraid. The only reason it says "RAINER" in that screenshot is that I'd shamelessly memory-edited the OT name specifically in order to lengthen it enough to show up despite the stat box being rendered on top. In that particular screenshot the OT name was "<page>RAINERRR<trainer>", where <page> is the new Pokédex page character discussed in the article and <trainer> is the single control character that prints the entire word "TRAINER". In order to change it to that, I had to manually do all of the following:
- First I replaced the actual initial T character in the original name ("TRAINER") with the page character, which as discussed elsewhere in the article would require several different bit flips. This was required in order for the rest of the name to get written out in the position where a Pokédex page would begin.
- Then, despite that the player character's name is limited to seven characters in the naming UI, I lengthened the OT name to the technical limit of ten bytes by duplicating the final R character a few times. This would again require a bunch of different bit flips.
- And then I changed the tenth character to the trainer control character specifically, which would again require a bunch of specific bit flips. If the trainer control character were anything but specifically the tenth byte of the OT name, or if the page control character were anything but specifically the first byte, then what shows up wouldn't be RAINER but rather AINER or INER, etc.
This is an extremely contrived and unrealistic sequence of changes and is not something that would ever, ever have happened on someone's game by chance; my Jolteon was only plausible because it only took one flipped bit from the end string character to the paragraph character. It's an amusing coincidence that the first contrived completely implausible OT name I managed to construct that had the text overflow past the stat box happened to result in the bit of the name that's not obscured being the name of a supposed Pokégod, but there's no way that's the actual origin of the Pokégod's name.
In theory, there could be some other, more plausible glitch that could have resulted in a string with the trainer character in it being partially obscured by other graphical elements drawn afterwards, but I think that's still extremely unlikely to be where Rainer came from - in all likelihood, some kid just came up with Rainer as a not-very-original name for an awesome Water-type, the same way they came up with "Charcoal" or "Doomsday".
Inflammatory or off-topic comments will be deleted; please go to the guestbook for discussion unrelated to this page. You can use BBCode (forum code) to format your messages.
Giving an e-mail address is optional; if it is given, you will be notified by e-mail if I respond to your post. If you fill in a website (this should be your own website, blog or social media profile), it will be linked publicly on your post.
- [b]Bold[/b]
- [i]Italic[/i]
- [u]Underlined[/u]
- [s]Strikethrough[/s]
- [url=http://www.dragonflycave.com]Link[/url]
- [spoiler]Spoiler[/spoiler]
(To add some additional insight to that, the reason it ended up as that specifically is that first I just tried editing the first character to the paragraph character, only for nothing to show up. Then I realized obviously that was because the stat box was rendered on top. So then I tried just lengthening the name with three additional R characters, and still nothing showed up - so I squinted at it again and realized yeah, actually the tenth character goes right where the right-side border of the stat box is, so in fact you can't see any sign of the name getting rendered under there even if you somehow had a ten-character OT name. Then I thought of the trainer character and stuck that on there. If I'd merely happened to think of these edits in a different order, I would've just stuck the trainer character in there instead of the end string character in the first place instead of extending the name with extra R's, and we wouldn't be having this discussion because it would just say INER on the screenshot.)
Nah, I'm afraid. The only reason it says "RAINER" in that screenshot is that I'd shamelessly memory-edited the OT name specifically in order to lengthen it enough to show up despite the stat box being rendered on top. In that particular screenshot the OT name was "<page>RAINERRR<trainer>", where <page> is the new Pokédex page character discussed in the article and <trainer> is the single control character that prints the entire word "TRAINER". In order to change it to that, I had to manually do all of the following:
- First I replaced the actual initial T character in the original name ("TRAINER") with the page character, which as discussed elsewhere in the article would require several different bit flips. This was required in order for the rest of the name to get written out in the position where a Pokédex page would begin.
- Then, despite that the player character's name is limited to seven characters in the naming UI, I lengthened the OT name to the technical limit of ten bytes by duplicating the final R character a few times. This would again require a bunch of different bit flips.
- And then I changed the tenth character to the trainer control character specifically, which would again require a bunch of specific bit flips. If the trainer control character were anything but specifically the tenth byte of the OT name, or if the page control character were anything but specifically the first byte, then what shows up wouldn't be RAINER but rather AINER or INER, etc.
This is an extremely contrived and unrealistic sequence of changes and is not something that would ever, ever have happened on someone's game by chance; my Jolteon was only plausible because it only took one flipped bit from the end string character to the paragraph character. It's an amusing coincidence that the first contrived completely implausible OT name I managed to construct that had the text overflow past the stat box happened to result in the bit of the name that's not obscured being the name of a supposed Pokégod, but there's no way that's the actual origin of the Pokégod's name.
In theory, there could be some other, more plausible glitch that could have resulted in a string with the trainer character in it being partially obscured by other graphical elements drawn afterwards, but I think that's still extremely unlikely to be where Rainer came from - in all likelihood, some kid just came up with Rainer as a not-very-original name for an awesome Water-type, the same way they came up with "Charcoal" or "Doomsday".
So this means Rainer is real??
Maybe it's time for a trip to the old glitch forums to see if there's any credibility to the pokegods. At least Rainer lol. It's too close for that name to be chosen by accident, maybe someone has stumbled upon that name appearing in a real save file before
This was a beautiful essay. The first two generation of Pokemon had a certain magic to them; not just because we were children, but also because the internet had not yet evolved into its modern form and the games were so flimsily coded. Some very strange things could happen while a kid was simply playing the game, and lead to amazing stories like this. I really loved reading this one. So long, Jolteon. Your memory will live on.
That's so sad :(
Great essay. I've always loved your writing (I'm pretty sure that's how I found this site many years ago, by looking for interesting and well-written fanfics). I sympathize with the loss of the original Jolteon. Though I haven't played any Pokémon games in years, at the time I was also attached to my teams in the various cartridges I had.
Similar thing happened playing a legit copy of HeartGold. The button for the radio on the Pokégear disappeared completely after obtaining the expansion card from Lavender Town's Radio Tower. Tapped the spot where it would be and nothing happened. The worst part was I didn't realize it had happened until I went to wake up the Snorlax outside of Vermillion City, since I never thought to check after finishing the Radio Tower shenanigans.
Now I feel the urge to dig through old Discord messages to find out if I took any photos.
BT
NeoSeth