How Mew Saved Pokémon Red and Blue

lizacr7

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Aug 6, 2020
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Fans know how important the first Pokémon games were to the franchise. However, what they may not know is that the game's sales were lower than expected.

"I remember that the initial number of units that would be shipped was less than I expected. With that number of units, I imagined that they would fly out of the stores and that the stock would run out very quickly. But unfortunately, that was not the case," he revealed. Tsunekazu Ishihara in a 2009 interview.

Pokémon Red and Blue were the first Pokemon games released in North America and Europe. That interview took place in preparation for Pokemon HeartGold and SoulSilver and revealed more about the early games. Not just sales.

The interviewer, Satoru Iwata, pressed on this relatively slow start and what Ishihara and Shigeki Morimoto attributed to it.

Mew as "protagonist" of Pokémon Red and Blue
Ishihara believed that it was due to several reasons: a combination of word of mouth, the power of the CoroCoro comic, and how fun Pokémon is.

The president of Pokémon Company also revealed another reason: "There was also the little matter of Mew, the Pokémon that Morimoto-san came up with as a kind of joke." He went on to say, "There is no denying that Mew's existence played an extremely significant role."

The well-known Pokémon number 151 was not intended as an inclusion in the original game. The story of how it got there in the first place is pure Pokémon lore.

"We put Mew right at the end. The cartridge was really full and there wasn't room for much else in there," Morimoto revealed. It was only because the debugging features were not included in the final version of the game, that Mew could fit.

With the strict testing procedures that games go through today, something like this would only have been possible back then. This was after being told not to alter the game once the debugging process had finished.

This could have theoretically broken the game, but thankfully it didn't. Instead, the legend of Mew propelled Pokémon Red and Blue into gaming history for all the right reasons. The first mythical species of Pokemon could not be found in the game without exploiting a technical issue or cheating.

Other versions of Pokemon
https://lisanilssonart.com/pokemon-ultra-violet-rom/

https://lisanilssonart.com/pokemon-jupiter-rom/

https://lisanilssonart.com/pokemon-silver-rom/

https://lisanilssonart.com/pokemon-crystal-rom/

https://lisanilssonart.com/pokemon-soul-silver-rom/

https://lisanilssonart.com/pokemon-ruby-rom/

https://lisanilssonart.com/pokemon-white-rom/

https://lisanilssonart.com/pokemon-emerald-rom/

https://lisanilssonart.com/pokemon-leaf-green-rom/
 

Lord_Darius

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Heh, I can still remember the supposed "Use Strength on the dump truck and Mew will be in a pokeball underneath" rumor
 

erasmus-kun

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Aug 8, 2020
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I only know of the first two in that list; had no idea there were two more lol
 

Tomanadi

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That glitch letting you catch mew was lit AF. I remember playing pokemon red using the emulation add-on on my N64 in Pokemon Stadium at triple speed to grind levels using mew and mewtwo:cool: