As classic RPGs go, Pokémon Gold and Silver have to be two of the best-loved games out there. After the success of Pokémon Red and Blue, it was perhaps inevitable that sequels would come along before long—and, lo and behold, Gold and Silver hit the shelves in Japan in 1999. Over the next two years, the rest of the world was treated to them too, and the rest, as they say, is history. The Johto region and its inhabitants are still much-loved among Pokémon fans, to the extent that these games got a Nintendo DS remake a few years back. We may now be on Generation VII of the Pokémon video game franchise, but the Generation II games still have a special place in a lot of fans' hearts.

That's not to say that Pokémon Gold and Silver were perfect games, of course. Even the best games have sore points—and, in some cases, straight-up errors! Pokémon Red and Blue were notorious for their glitches and mistakes, but Gold and Silver are just as bad in this regard. Some errors only take hold if you deliberately trigger glitches or hack illegal Pokémon into your game, and frankly, all players should know this is a risky business. However, other mistakes are pretty prevalent throughout gameplay. You've got to how some of these goofs slipped past Gold and Silver's editors.

However, slip past they did, and we Gold and Silver players were left to pay the price. Here are just some of the ridiculous mistakes in Gold and Silver that somehow made it into the final games.

25 Lance's Illegal Dragonites

Lance may be the Champion of the Pokémon League, but he's by no means the perfect trainer. Sure, he comes across as something of a hero when he's helping you to defeat Team Rocket, but a mistake by the games' developers makes him look pretty bad.

There's something fishy about his three Dragonites.

Dragonair doesn't evolve into Dragonite until level 55, but all three of Lance's Dragonites are at lower levels than this. How did they evolve so early? Either Lance has been up to something weird, or Gold and Silver's editors didn't pick up on this inconsistency.

24 What's His Name?

At the very beginning of Gold and Silver, the player character encounters a flame-haired trainer who steals one of Professor Elm's starter Pokémon. As you'd expect, a police officer comes to investigate this crime, and he asks if you got the perpetrator's name. Not many Pokéfans realize that this exchange with the police officer contains a hidden error! If you leave your rival's name blank, the game will automatically name him Silver. The police officer will then say "OK, so Silver was his name." The thing is, your character didn't tell him that. Is the police officer psychic now?

23 An Egg In A Poké Ball

This Gold and Silver goof is pretty minor, but you still have to wonder how it got past the discerning eye of an editor. If you're carrying five Pokémon plus an egg, you're technically only carrying five filled Poké Balls—the egg doesn't get a ball to itself. It presumably just sits loosely in your bag (which is slightly risky, really). However, if you go to a Pokémon Center while carrying an egg, you'll see that six Poké Balls end up in the healing machine. Where has that extra ball come from? It's a mystery... or just a minuscule mistake.

22 Aerodactyl's Rock Slide

Lance, Lance, Lance. As if it's not bad enough that you carry three illegal Dragonites, it turns out that your Aerodactyl isn't entirely above-board either. Does this trainer have no shame? In Gold and Silver, Lance's Aerodactyl knows the move Rock Slide, which is technically impossible. Areodactyl can't learn it naturally, and the Rock Slide TM didn't exist at this point. It looks like Lance has been hacking illegal moves onto his 'Mons! Not cool, Lance. Not cool. Seriously, isn't this guy supposed to be a role model? What is he playing at?

21 Fishing... In A Gym?

This particular Gold and Silver mistake is actually a remnant of a Red and Blue glitch. When your character makes it to Kanto after beating the Elite Four, they'll be able to challenge Cerulean City's Misty in her Water-type Gym. As you might expect considering Misty's type of choice, her Gym houses a pretty big pool.

Weirdly, though, this body of water is populated with Pokémon!

You can go fishing in the pool, and it's no big deal. That shouldn't be possible considering it's an indoor swimming pool, but thanks to a glitch, you can fish away.

20 The Moon Ball Mistake

If you weren't aware that the Moon Ball existed in Gold and Silver, don't worry—it's a pretty niche item. Azalea Town's Kurt can craft this ball if you give him a yellow Apricorn. In theory, it's supposed to make it easier to catch Pokémon who evolve using a Moon Stone. However, this wasn't the case in Gold and Silver thanks to a very frustrating mistake. The Moon Ball was accidentally programmed to increase the catch rate of Pokémon who evolve using a Burn Heal. Spoiler alert: no Pokémon evolves in this way. The Moon Ball is utterly useless.

19 Teleporting Between Regions

While most of us merely know "Teleport" as the move that makes it really hard to catch an Abra, it actually does have a purpose. If you use Teleport in the field, you'll be taken back to the last Pokémon Centre you used. In Gold and Silver, Teleport mostly worked in the way it was supposed to, except in a particular set of circumstances. If you Teleport just after travelling between Kanto and Johto, you won't be taken to the last Center you used. Instead, you'll go to either Vermillion City or Olivine City, depending on which region you're in.

18 The Sinister Firebreather

As the player character travels across the Johto region in Pokémon Gold and Silver, they encounter dozens of trainers. Each trainer fits a specific character mould: they're a Youngster, a Lass, or sometimes a Cooltrainer. Most trainer encounters are fairly ordinary, aside from one notable exception. A Firebreather who battles you in Ecruteak City's Burned Tower is subject to a very sinister glitch. After you defeat him, his sprite seemingly drains of all colour! The poor guy is left standing there in black and white. It's pretty spooky!

17 Crystal's Battle Tower

The Battle Tower is an impressive building that sits right next to Olivine City in Pokémon Crystal. As its name suggests, it's a building you can visit to battle other trainers in a controlled environment. The Battle Tower mostly ran pretty smoothly, aside from a weird error with its trainer text.

For some reason, every enemy trainer speaks with female text.

You can't really tell just by speaking to them, but data miners have confirmed that the problem is there! This error doesn't impact gameplay at all really, but it's still weird that it made it into the final game.

16 Level 255 Pokémon

Everyone knows that Pokémon can only grow up to Level 100... Right? Well, not in the world of Pokémon Gold and Silver's glitches! A weird error in these games meant that you could use Rare Candies to take a Pokémon all the way up to Level 255. However, there's a catch: for this glitch to work, your Pokémon had to be at level 101 or higher when you obtained it. Since this is only possible through hacking, not many players managed to exploit this error!

15 The Status Catch Rate Glitch

In pretty much every Pokémon game, inflicting a status condition on a wild Pokémon is supposed to significantly raise its catch rate. It makes sense: a sleeping Pokémon is easier to catch than one that's awake and lively! However, a massive error in Pokémon Gold and Silver basically rendered this mechanic useless. Due to a programming mistake, most status conditions didn't affect a Pokémon's catch rate at all. If you poisoned, paralyzed or burned them, you'd see no change in catch rate when it came to throwing your Poké Balls.

14 Feel The Love (Ball)

The Love Ball was another custom Poké Ball that was introduced in Pokémon Gold and Silver. If you took Kurt a Pink Apricorn, he'd make you one of these handy contraptions. The Love Ball was supposed to increase the catch rate of a wild Pokémon if it was the same species but opposite gender to the player's Pokémon. However, an error in programming meant that it actually increased the catch rate if the wild Pokémon had the same gender as your own 'Mon. Seriously... Did any of these custom Poké Balls actually work in the way they were supposed to?

13 The Bug-Catching Contest

The Bug-Catching Contest was Pokémon Gold and Silver's answer to the Safari Zone. Every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, you could head to the National Park to the north of Goldenrod City and catch Bug-type Pokémon to your heart's content. It was a lot of fun...

Unless you accidentally triggered one of these games' many glitches.

In the Japanese versions of Gold and Silver, if you tried to Fly or Teleport out of the National Park during the contest, the game would create "unstable Pokémon data". This trick could be used to generate Shiny Pokémon, making it a pretty useful error!

12 The Clair Gift Glitch

Ah, Clair. Who can forget the Dragon-type Gym Leader of Blackthorn City who throws a tantrum when the player beats her? While you eventually get your Gym Badge and a TM as a gift, Clair makes you consult the dragon masters in the Dragons' Den first. If you were feeling especially greedy, you could actually use this delay to get yourself two TMs. An error in this section of the game meant that if you "whited out" due to your Pokémon fainting while in the Dragon's Den, Clair would give you the TM twice!

11 Busted Belly Drum

The move Belly Drum can be a pretty powerful status booster—if you're willing to sacrifice half of your Pokémon's health. It raises your Pokémon's attack stat by eight stages but also cuts their HP to half of its original value. If you try to use Belly Drum when your 'Mon's HP is already below the halfway mark, it fails. If you can't take the cost, you don't get the benefits! Except in Gold and Silver, of course, thanks to another error. Even if Belly Drum apparently "fails", your Pokémon still gets their attack raised by two stages.

10 The Pointless Dragon Fang

In every Pokémon game, there are various items dotted around the place that increase the power of a certain type of moves. The Miracle Seed boosts Grass-type moves; the Dragon Fang boosts Dragon-type moves. At least, it should! In Gold and Silver, a programming error rendered the Dragon Fang utterly useless. Instead, a different item boosted Dragon-type moves—the Dragon Scale! This item's main purpose is to cause Seadra to evolve into Kingdra, but it accidentally got assigned this secondary effect too.

9 A Never-Ending Bad Dream

In the Generation Two games, a move called Nightmare faced a pretty major glitch. Nightmare is only effective if the Pokémon that suffers from it is asleep. Makes sense, right?

Nightmare slowly drains away the HP of a sleeping Pokémon.

You'd think that if a Pokémon was woken up by a Full Heal or Full Restore, the effects of Nightmare would stop. However, a glitch in Gold and Silver meant that it kept on inflicting damage, even once its victim was awake. It didn't stop until the Pokémon in question fainted.

8 Present's Unexpected Gift

Delibird's signature move Present is a little bit hit-or-miss, to say the least. It can either deal serious damage to your opponent or actively heal them. There's no way of knowing which effect will prevail. Interestingly, an error in Gold and Silver made Present even more unpredictable! An issue with the algorithm that calculated the damage it dealt meant that Present was either hugely overpowered, or basically useless. Its damage ratio was calculated using a weird method that related to the type of the Pokémon using it. Needless to say, this issue was fixed in future games!

7 The Glitch Egg

Ah, the Glitch Egg. Anyone who illegally hacked a Celebi onto their copy of Gold and Silver will know what this is! One of the only ways to get Celebi in the non-Japanese version was to hatch it from one of these eggs. It took a long process of breeding Pokémon, putting them in into various PC boxes, and visiting the Daycare Man, but with enough patience and effort, a Celebi could be yours. Nintendo probably never imagined that players would figure out the Glitch Egg method, but hey—they underestimated our power.

6 Corrupted Link Battles

In Gold and Silver, playing a Link Battle could be a pretty fragile process. The cable that connected your Game Boy to another device was notoriously easy to knock out, and doing so would corrupt the whole battle.

The effects of this could be varied.

Sometimes, the game would just shut down altogether; in other cases, strange "glitch battles" could be triggered. In any case, trying to corrupt a Link Battle probably isn't for the best—it can lead to loss of save data and other annoying side effects.