Does MISSINGNO. actually destroy saved game files?

The effects of the MISSINGNO. glitch in Pokemon Red and Blue have well-documented at many sources. Encountering MISSINGNO. corrupts Hall of Fame data, causes temporary graphics glitches, and sets the most-significant bit of the 6th item in the player's inventory.

That said, there are also a lot of rumors about MISSINGNO. and its origins. There are many sites online that claim that MISSINGNO. can delete saved game files, but I've yet to find any actual verifiable claims that support this.

Are there any verifiable reports of MISSINGNO. actually deleting saved game files or otherwise rendering an existing save file unusable? Or is this just another urban legend?

Thanks!

Solution 1:

As directly quoted from the MissingNo. page on Bulbapedia:

"Missingno.'s appearance in-battle allows the item duplication glitch, which increases the number of items in the 6th Bag slot by 128 unless the number of items in the slot already exceeds 128.

Encountering Missingno. has been known to interfere with the save game data in various ways, such as adversely affecting the Hall of Fame saved data and (if its stats are viewed) messing with some graphics until the stats of a non-glitch Pokémon are viewed. When a Trainer battles with Missingno. in their party, both the Trainer sprite and their Pokémon's sprites will be scrambled, and all other sprites will be reversed. Viewing the stats screen of a non-glitch Pokémon will remove the effects. In Pokémon Yellow, capturing Missingno. will cause multiple player sprites to walk around the screen. "

Nintendo has an official description of Missingno. listed in their Customer Service troubleshooting section. A direct Nintendo quote:

MissingNO is a programming quirk, and not a real part of the game. When you get this, your game can perform strangely, and the graphics will often become scrambled. The MissingNO Pokémon is most often found after you perform the Fight Safari Zone Pokémon trick. To fix the scrambled graphics, try releasing the MissingNo Pokémon. If the problem persists, the only solution is to re-start your game. This means erasing your current game and starting a brand new one."

TL;DR: No, it just messes with your save files, permanently messing them up, but not actually deleting them.

Solution 2:

After a bit of research I have found a lot of information with little verifiable proof.

MissingNo is created by an error handler which replaces any unknown pokemon ID with MissingNo. MissingNo is commonly confused with 'M' or 'M-Block' but is not the same pokemon, nor the same glitch.

From Missingno. Master/Glitch Rumors:

Seeing or capturing Missingno. will wreck your game.

FALSE

Probably the oldest rumor out there. It still holds strong amongst newbies, as in this day and age, the old Red and Blue versions are conking out due to old age and people are quick to blame Missingno. for this. Missingno. scrambles the sprites and screws over the Hall of Fame, sure, but the first is easily fixed and the second is actually entertaining. This is the extent of Missingno.'s damage to the game.

That being said. As the game shows the same corruption across saves this proves that the game save itself is corrupted. The two main corruptions known are the garbled display (which can be easily fixed), and corruption in the Hall of Fame (which can't). Even if the save is corrupted in a non-chaotic fashion, there is no way to verify that the savedata will remain stable across the rest of the game without re-running the entire QA process on the new corrupted save.