Pal Park name encoding glitch
The Pal Park nickname glitch is a glitch that exists in foreign versions of Pokémon that causes OT names or nicknames to become corrupted if they contain characters not in the English language.
Explanation
In Generation III games, when the player gives the trainer a name, or gives a Pokémon a nickname, the character set is restricted to English letters, as well as numbers and some symbols; that is, no characters unique to other languages (such as Spanish) can be used, regardless of the language of the game. (In Generations I and II, this was also true to prevent glitches, and in English versions of Generation IV, this is also true for unknown reasons.) However, despite this, in non-English versions of Pokémon, there are a few default trainer names that have non-English characters, and there are some in-game trainers that trade with the player who have either OT names or nicknames with foreign characters. The programmers apparently forgot about this possibility when programming Pal Park: When any Pokémon with foreign characters in their nickname or OT name have foreign characters and are transferred to a Generation IV game via Pal Park, they will not be converted properly and will corrupt, changing to random Japanese kana. For example, Á will become い (hiragana "i").
List of problematic default trainer names
Note: This list is incomplete.
Spanish
Ruby/Sapphire
[TODO: Work on this.]
FireRed/LeafGreen
Character | Name |
---|---|
Red | Álvaro |
Llamín | |
Leaf | María |
Emerald
[TODO: Work on this.]
French
Ruby/Sapphire
FireRed/LeafGreen
Emerald
Italian
Ruby/Sapphire
FireRed/LeafGreen
Emerald
German
Ruby/Sapphire
FireRed/LeafGreen
Emerald
List of problematic in-game trainers
Note: This list is incomplete.
Spanish
Ruby/Sapphire
[TODO: Work on this.]
FireRed/LeafGreen
[TODO: Look for FireRed-exclusive Pokémon.]
Location | Pokémon | Trainer | Nickname | Glitched name in Pal Park | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Route 2 | Mr. Mime | RÚTEO | MIMI | RつTEO | |
Route 5 | Nidoran♂ | QUICA | NIDRÁN | NIDRいN | Only in LeafGreen |
Cinnabar Island | Seel | GOYO | SEELÍN | SEELコN |
Emerald
None.