Super effective move AI flaw

Miscellaneous glitches of Pokémon Red and Blue and Pokémon Yellow

Amazing Man (Red and Blue only) | Cable Club escape glitch | Celadon looping map trick | Champion Blue music muting glitch | Coastal Flooding | Confusion and Substitute glitch | Cooltrainer move | Cycling based glitch maps | Escape sprite handling glitch | Evolve without an evolutionary stone (Red and Blue only) | Evolving Raichu (Red and Blue only) | Expanded item pack | Expanded Pokédex | Focus Energy glitch | Get stuck in a wall | Ghost Bicycle glitch | Glitch encounter system | Glitch City RAM Manipulation | Infinite Blaine Door | Introduction Nidorino glitch (Red and Blue only) | Invisible PCs (Red and Blue only) | Invisible tree glitch | Item stack duplication glitch | Mute the music in the Pokémon League | Partial trapping move link battle glitch | Pokémon Tower Pokédex glitch | PP underflow glitches | Recovery move glitch | Rival's effect | See a Ghost without a Silph Scope | Selfdestruct and Substitute glitch | Silph Co. PC Glitch | Slot machine glitch | Stand on a tree | Statue behavior glitch (Red and Blue only) | Super effective move AI flaw (Red and Blue only) | Super Glitch | Surf down glitch | Swift miss glitch | Transform assumption glitch | Transform Empty Move Glitch | Trick Zone | Vending machine purchase glitch | Walk around with only fainted Pokémon (Red and Blue only) | Walking lag glitch | Walk on water through Surf | Walking Pikachu happiness glitch (Yellow only) | Wild appeared! | ZZAZZ Glitch

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File:AI glitch.png

A normal dragonair under the effect of the move AI glitch

In the Generation I Pokémon games, there is a slight bug in the formulae which decide which move the enemy Pokémon will use.

The game would ensure that if the enemy Pokémon has a move which is super effective or neutral to its opponent's type, it would use that move over a move that its opponent resists. This effect would always be applied, so the super effective moves would always be used until they ran out of PP. This also meant that if the opponent's only neutral or super effective move was a status move, the opponent would be forced into using it.

This is a problem notably with Psychic-type moves such as Barrier, Light Screen and Agility (which was a Psychic-type move until Generation III.) For example, a Rapidash's high Special Attack stat would make it relatively easy to defeat a Golbat of the same level with Fire Blast. However, if that same Rapidash also knew Agility, it would never use Fire Blast until Agility's PP was 0. As a result, the Golbat would have plenty of time to defeat the Rapidash.

This glitch was fixed in later generations of the Pokémon games, due to improvements of the opponent's AI.

External links

1. A thread on Glitch City Laboratories Forums concerning the Move AI glitch