How the Mew Trick Works

If you're not a geek, you don't wank to read this. :)

When you use Fly to get away from the Gambler, the game somehow "remembers" that a battle is supposed to be taking place on Route 8.  This is what causes your Start button to stop working.  The rest of the trick hinges on a twelve-byte section of memory, starting at memory location CD22 in Yellow (CD23 in Red/Blue), which contains the stats of the last Pokémon you fought.  After you battle the Youngster, it will have these hexadecimal values:

The first byte (8E) seems to be the same for all battles.
The second byte (11) is the enemy's level (17 in decimal).
The next ten bytes are the enemy's stats (HP/Attack/Defense/Speed/Special).  Each stat takes up two bytes.
Additionally, this section of memory is surrounded by eight bytes on each side, which all have the value 07.

The last byte (15) in Yellow memory location CD2D (CD2E in Red/Blue) is the important one.  It is the "least significant byte" of the enemy Pokémon's Special stat; in this case, it means that the enemy has a Special of 21 in standard decimal notation.

When you return to Route 8, the game tries to resume the battle that was interrupted before.  For reasons unknown, it borrows byte CD2D to use as the species identifier for the enemy Pokémon, and the next byte to use as its level.  If the last battle you fought was with the Youngster, these bytes will be 15 and 07.  Since Mew's hexadecimal identifier is 15, you will fight a Level 7 Mew.

How to Catch Any Pokémon

Now that you know how the trick works, you can use it to catch other Pokémon.  Fighting the Youngster will always result in a Mew encounter because his Slowpoke has a Special of 21 (15 in hex).  But if you fight something else before returning to Route 8, it will change which Pokémon you encounter.

Let's say you foolishly choose a starting Pokémon other than Bulbasaur and want to make up for it.  Bulbasaur's hex number is 99, which converts to 153 in decimal.  Now, you could fight a wild Pokémon with a Special of 153, but the only place to find that is on a Level 64 Chansey in the Unknown Dungeon, and those Chansey are quite rare.  Worse, they only have a one-in-sixteen chance of having the right Special.  Fortunately, there is a solution: Ditto's Transform, which copies the stats of the opponent.

This means that you can catch any Pokémon in the game by following these steps:

  1. Catch/raise a Pokémon with the proper Special stat (153 for Bulbasaur).  You can find a complete list of which decimal value is needed for each Pokémon here.
  2. Fly away from the Gambler battle.
  3. Fight any trainer that can see you from a distance and walk up to you.  (This is necessary to both unlock your Start button and trigger the Route 8 battle.)
  4. Find a wild Ditto and let it Transform into your Pokémon with the proper Special.
  5. Beat the Ditto (or just run away) and immediately fly to Lavender Town without fighting anything else.
  6. Enter Route 8, and Bulbasaur (or whatever) will appear.
Note that since only the least significant of the two Special bytes is used for this, you can also add 256 to the values listed above and use that Special to get the same Pokémon.  This is important because there are a few Pokémon, such as Kangaskhan, whose identifying value is lower than the minimum Special that any Pokémon can have.  In Kangaskhan's case, you can find her by using a Special of 258 (2 + 256).

Also note that when you perform this trick, any trainers you fight after the Gambler will be "used up."  Make sure you have enough unused trainers to catch all the Pokémon you want!  Fortunately, the Gambler can be used to initiate the trick an unlimited number of times.

visitors since May 7, 2003

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