Glitch City Laboratories

This article does not relate to this wiki (Glitch City Wiki), but to Glitch City Laboratories. It is kept here for archival purposes.

The current Glitch City Laboratories logos

Bulbapedia also has an article about Glitch City Laboratories.

Glitch City Laboratories, abbreviated as GCL, sometimes called simply Glitch City is a Pokémon glitch community founded by Abwayax in December 2005, but it is actually the latest in a series of Pokémon glitch related websites founded by Abwayax from as early as November 2003.

It is a reference base for mainly Pokémon glitches, as well as a community where people can share their experiences of Pokémon glitches, discuss Pokémon in general, or discuss more general topics, such as technology, or 'almost anything'. There are also forum games.

Parent network

Glitch City Laboratories is part of the "Monarch Pass" family of sites. The others are Operation Time Capsule (for old Cartoon Network content), Monarch Pass Forge (for 'project hosting') and Monarch Pass Headquarters ('planning area and development server').

Additionally, the websites "Infinitypedia" and "The Thornbush" are hosted by Monarch Pass.

Ancestors chronology

Based on Abwayax's history post:

1. November 2003 - February 2004: Nemesis Temple site opened on Tripod. The site was created before the owner had any working knowledge of PHP or HTML. It was to become a general-purpose Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh site, with emphasis on the "strange" aspects of Pokemon.

Work on the site began November 1, 2003 and extended to January 2004, after which the site fell into disrepair due to a lack of guest activity and enthusiasm on the owner's part, and was superseded by a new site. The name "Nemesis Temple" was reused for a newer, unrelated site in 2005 that had to do with a character "Nemesis".

2. February 2004 - November 23, 2004: Professor Glitch's Lab (forums), the first "modern" ancestor of Glitch City Laboratories, is opened as a replacement to Nemesis Temple. It was hosted on Tripod, using the same account as Temple.

The site documented the first Ditto Trick-related breakthroughs, with short pages on Ditto trick-able glitches in Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow, as well as Missingno. in Yellow and the Ghost/Fossil Missingno. Later special sections such as glitch Unown and glitch items were added. To this day there is content on Glitch City Laboratories that was taken word-for-word from this old ancestor site. Professor Glitch' Lab was actively maintained until June 2004, after which plans for a new site were once again developed.

3. November 23, 2004 - February 13, 2005: The opening of Pokemon Paranormal Research Laboratories (originally Pokemon Phenomenon Research Laboratories). This site had the same vision as Glitch City Laboratories, mainly, to be a dynamic site maintained daily by multiple staffpersons and to receive submissions for research from visitors. It was a subdomain of abwayax.net. It ran on PHPNuke and was not overly successful. The forum engine was originally phpBB integrated with PHPNuke, but switched later to SMF.

During the site's run, some of the content from Professor Glitch's Lab was retained while a new article was written for the regular and Ghost/Skeleton Missingno. Additionally, pages regarding 3TrainerPoké and PokeWTrainer were added. In February 13, 2005, the forum was disconnected from the Pokémon Paranormal Research Laboratories site and combined with the TinyPortal addon for SMF (then in beta stage) to produce Glitch City. The site is offline, but some of the pages were archived.

4. February 13, 2005 - July 2005 - Glitch City, the direct ancestor of Glitch City Labs, is born. This consisted of TinyPortal bolted onto SMF, and glitch content from PPRL and PGL was added in. It retained the pprlforum.abwayax.com URL until April 4, 2005, when the site gained its own domain, glitchcity.net (not in use today). It also featured topsites. During the life of Glitch City, many of GCL's present staff met each other.

Project Melchior was also started here, although the data collected wasn't put to any real use until later. In around June 2005, the site was relaunched, now powered by the Mambo CMS engine, while retaining the forums. Due to Abwayax being in conflict with his host at the time, Ideal-Hosting (now dead as well), as well as a feud with opposing glitch researcher Crystal Mew, who seems to have 'retired', the site "finally kicked the bucket" (according to Izwzyzx) in July.

5. ??? 2005 - March 2006 - Glitchcity.net now redirects to Team Zero Hideout. This is the backup forum Abwayax established to reconvene and plan to re-establish Glitch City. Most of the planning for Glitch City Laboratories was done here. Initially the forum was powered by OvBB (which was very buggy at the time), but later was converted to MyBB.

On November 2005(?), the idea for a "network" of glitch sites that share one forum was put up, and Team Zero Hideout became the forums of the Super Glitch Alliance. Glitch City Laboratories was established in December 2005 and revealed to the public later. However, the Super Glitch Alliance itself never took off and in early 2006 the forum became simply the Glitch City Laboratories forum. In March 2006, the MyBB forum was deactivated and all members were referred the new forum - that is, Glitch City Laboratories' current forum.

6. December 2005 - now: Glitch City Laboratories was launched.

Forums (GCLF)

The Glitch City Laboratories forums is an active forum run on SMF (Simple Machines Forums) with at least seven boards, referred to as 'Labs', each with a Greek letter following them.

• Lab α: The Lobby - For announcements and site feedback.
• Lab β: Glitch City Labs Projects - For discussing site projects. Currently Project "Palette Town" and Project "Gotta Document 'Em All" are the only boards.
• Lab γ: Video Games and Glitches Discussion - For discussing video game and game glitches.
• Lab δ: Tech - For discussing technology. Topics include computers, programming/scripting/development/web design, tech help, emulation and ROM hacking.
• Lab ζ: Le Café de Chrysacier Accroché - Includes boards promoting recreation not necessarily related to Pokémon, technology or video games. Examples include "Creative Moments" and "Forum Games". In addition, "Calender Events" falls under this board.
• Lab σ: Higher Access - Includes boards available for special usergroups only, such as the "M.A.S.K. HQ", a GCL discussion board about site moderation.
• Lab Ω: Archive Building - Includes two archive boards; "Archives" which are referred to as "Boards that have outlived their usefulness and are kept here for posterity" (though this is not entirely true) and "The Dumpster Out Back", where deleted posts can be found. Not all of the child board links found under archives work.

Instant messaging

There are official Glitch City Laboratories Discord and Matrix groups.

Glitch City Laboratories also has an official IRC chat, which is #glitchcity on irc.rizon.net

Projects

Glitch City Laboratories has/had various projects.

• The Big HEX List - Lists the identifiers in decimal and hexadecimal for Pokémon/Trainers, moves, item and letters.
• Project Melchior: Aimed to collect information on glitch Pokémon species, glitch items, etc. (incorporated in the Dexes). Melchiors were numbered for each individual project.
• Project Balthasar: This project aimed to finish a second version of the GlitchDex.
• Project Caspar: Aims for the coverage of non-Pokémon glitches.
• Project "Phoenix": Aims for the transition of the main site into a wiki (which is powered by MediaWiki, and is related to matters of improving/maintaining it.
• Project "Ebullient Emolga": This was a semi-private beta test for users to test Glitch City Laboratories after maintenance starting from December 10, 2010. It was launched on August 8, 2011. Users who participated were promoted to Member+.
• Project "Palette Town": Aims to change grey scale Pokémon screenshots on the wiki to have Super Game Boy palettes. The project may have finished. It was introduced to the public by Photon-Phoenix on August 26, 2011.
• Project "Gotta Document 'Em All": A project to update the wiki with most of the newer glitches and glitch research, and to create 'master' glitch lists on the wiki. It was introduced to the public by Torchickens on November 16, 2016.
• GlitchBattle: A Pokémon battle simulator featuring glitch Pokémon, which had planned support for online play and "extendable Pokémon, attack, and type databases that can be modified at will". Development seems to have come to a halt and links are broken.
• Pokémon GCL Version: A Pokémon fan-game project about glitches and Glitch City Laboratories. Development seems to have come to a halt.

Dexes

Dexes, based on the "Pokédex" in the Pokémon games list variation of glitch things (such as glitch Pokémon), and cover their specific details.

These have not been wikified and were imported via an extension. After the September 2014 update (which updated MediaWiki) seemingly broke the extension, meaning the 'formal dexes' cannot be accessed from their wiki pages.

On July 30th 2016, it was announced that the site would experience temporary downtime for a server migration. Abwayax used this time to fix the GlitchDex extension and also an issue in which attempting to save a page on the wiki would save the page but result in an error.

Formal Dexes (found on the sidebar)

• GlitchDex: Covers information about glitch Pokémon in Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow and Pokémon Gold, Silver and Crystal.
• AttackDex: Covers information about glitch moves, currently for Pokémon Red and Blue only.
• ItemDex: Covers information about glitch items, currently for Pokémon Red and Blue only.

Informal Dexes

• UnownDex: A gallery of different types of glitch Unown found in Gold, Silver and Crystal. Done by Photon-Phoenix and Yuzihax.
• OptionDex: Covers glitch options on the start menu in Gold, Silver and Crystal. Done by Photon-Phoenix and Yuzihax
• DollDex: Covers glitch dolls in Gold, Silver and Crystal. Done by Photon-Phoenix and Yuzihax.
• PosterDex: Documents glitch posters in Gold, Silver and Crystal. Done by Photon-Phoenix and Yuzihax.
• RadioDex: Documents certain radio channel dialogue. Done by Torchickens.
• AreaDex (Yellow): Documents location index numbers, including unused and glitch locations. Done by Torchickens.
• PhoneDex (Gold/Silverand Crystal) Documents glitch contacts in Gold and Silver. Done by Photon-Phoenix (and Yuzihax?).

Main site's transition to a wiki

Maintenance page offering users the temporary Glitch City Laboratories and Operation Time Capsule boards on Professor Glitch's Labs.

In February 2009, Glitch City Laboratories wiki was started as a secret project. The wiki was officially revealed on November 14, 2009 and replaced the old site entirely on March 28, 2010.

Glitch City Laboratories was closed for maintenance on December 10, 2010. The maintenance mainly concerned the integration of the forums and the wiki, where the wiki sidebar was added to the forums (see the images below). Variations of Bulbasaur based on ??????????'s "golden Bulbasaur" appearance were added as icons on the board index at some point.

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Operation Time Capsule (another website hosted by Abwayax) went down for maintenance too. On August 8, 2011 users were offered a temporary board for both sites on the Professor Glitch Labs forums.

On August 8, 2011, Project "Ebullient Emolga" was launched, where users could request to 'beta test' the site, and were given a username and password to do so.

On October 24, 2011, the site was finally opened to the public again but until recently^{[clarification needed]} some pages redirect to the 'undergoing maintenance page'.

Mascot

The hooked Metapod in Yellow, as caused by a Super Glitch item.

The hooked Metapod is the 'official' mascot of Glitch City Laboratories.

On January 20, 2008 a Glitch City Laboratories forums poll called DA MASCOT FINALS!!1 was started where members discussed whether the mascot should be changed, but the consensus was not to change it. Other 'contestants' were "The Orange Glove" and "Ploison Decamark".

On June 3, 2009 another poll called "Mascot Elections 2009: Tie Breaker Election." was started by Photon-Phoenix. The hooked Metapod won again. Other contestants were "Desu Mario" and "The Orange Glove". The former was criticized by Abwayax for being non-Pokémon related. He also said the latter was "a shitty 4chan meme", but in fact The Orange Glove was made into a GIF by Newo after someone thought it was a glitch.

Origin

In the Pokémon games, hooked Metapod can be caused by a Super Glitch item at a certain position on the map with a 50 tile. Specifically, D059/8 must be changed to 7C and D05F/E must become a non-00 value. Whether this happened to the user who introduced it is unknown.

In English version, with a Super Glitch item, when D059/8 is corrupted the hooked Metapod seemingly always happens because the corruption depends on screen data after opening the menu, and normally a border tile is always at the relevant coordinate, which is at BGB coordinates x=0A, y=0C. Furthermore D05F/E is changed by part of the menu too.