Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire come equipped with more than just bug pokemon, in fact they come with their very own pokemon bugs, as many Japanese gamers have been finding out.

The glitches in the game are caused by malfunctions in the cartridges internal clock. According to reports, time-dependant dates -such as the lottery tickets and berry growing, are being affected by the malfunction which occurs sometime after a year has passed in the internal clock.

Nintendo has asked Japanese gamers to send their cartridges into the nearest Nintendo service centre for a free repair. Deleting saved games will NOT help to negate the problem as it is an internal error.

No news whether or not this will have a similar effect on European gamers, but Nintendo has said that there are no problems with Pokemon Colosseum as a result of this glitch in the Game Boy cartridge.