Fans of videos games can sometimes pull off really impressive works to celebrate a special day or event. Today is no exception, as it happens to be a special day – Pi Day! Pi (π) is regarded as the most famous number or mathematical constant in all of mathematics for a number of cool reasons, and is an ‘irrational number’ (one that cannot be properly represented as a fraction; its value is roughly 3.1415…). Pi is celebrated on the 14th of March, or 3/14. It is also not to be confused with pie, which is awesome due to its deliciousness.

But how can you celebrate the number pi through Pokémon? One way to do that is to hack – or reprogram – a Pokémon game! In the video below, you can watch what is called a Tool Assisted Run (TAS), of Pokémon Yellow. A TAS run is performed by using a program to input what buttons are pressed and when, naturally at a precision and speed greater than humanly possible. This is extremely apparent when watching this short video – menus fly past extremely quickly, and the game gets glitched in a wonderful way. Try to catch all the references!

So what happened? Why did the screen turn blue and a million items get thrown away? And why is the pi symbol dancing?

The original Pokémon games were glitch-ridden – they were home to the infamous Missingno after all, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg. By resetting upon saving the game at just the right time and then accessing the menu before the game can catch up, the game gets horribly confused about what is happening, and tricked into thinking what Pokémon and items you have access to. By then switching Pokémon and throwing specific items away, the game can be deceived into letting you reprogram everything through the Game Boy. You can do quite a lot… including displaying pi symbols dancing in time to the music.

You can read more about how this was achieved here.  Did you celebrate Pi day today, and what did you think of the video? Let us know in the comments below!

Video by FractalFusion of TASVideos. Cover image by Mariotaro Designs.