Bad egg is a children's playground ball game played in Great Britain and other countries.

One player is chosen as the 'bad egg' and turns their back to the other players. 'Bad Egg' then asks the others to each name something from a particular group (for example, each player is to name a colour, or a sports team, etc). Once each player has answered, the 'Bad Egg' throws a tennis ball over their shoulder, and shouts out one of the answers that had been given by the other players. All players, except Bad Egg, run in different directions and the person whose answer was shouted out has to run after the ball, and calls 'stop' when they retrieve it.

On hearing 'stop' all players, including the one who went after the ball, remain stationary. All players, except the one with the ball, stand with their legs apart. The player with the ball then attempts to roll it under the legs of one of the other players. If successful, that player becomes 'Bad Egg'. If unsuccessful, the player who retrieved the ball becomes 'Bad Egg'.

As with most informal games, the detailed rules vary with Location. For example, in one variation the ball retriever may take an agreed number of steps towards their chosen target.

External links

Look up bad egg in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Estonian analysis of the game

A Bad EGG is a (possibly deliberate) glitch found in the Advance Generation of Pokémon video games. It is the result of using a cheating device and corrupting the Pokémon inside the EGG, but it also can occur from normal save file corruption as well as from a transfer error. A Bad EGG is not an egg and may have never been one, but due to the 16-bit checksum value and how it works in Pokémon video games, it appears as such.It is rumored thad bad EGGs can be made by leaving eggs in the pc for a long time, evidence that it was not originally a missingno.-like glitch.

If a player walks around with the Bad EGG until it hatches (over 10,000 steps), it will freeze the game, erase the save file, or hatch into a ? or ??????????. In rare cases, it will either hatch empty (a black rectangle) or hatch into a random Pokémon. Sometimes, if a Bad EGG is placed in a box, it will duplicate if moved into another box.

Some believe Game Freak deliberately added the Bad EGG to Pokémon Ruby/Sapphire to stop people from using a cheat to get any legendary Pokémon, such as Jirachi or Deoxys<!-- or capturing other trainers' Pokémon. -->. This "feature" also exists in Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen as well as Pokémon Emerald. Others believe that it is simply to prevent the game from crashing, like Missingno. <!-- Should there be another period here? -->

Bad EGG, when stats are checked, has the status condition "FNT", although it has been said that its status can be "Pokérus", a beneficial virus.