Thought: The Mew Trick
Long ago in the misty haze that is 2002, I was searching the Internet for Pokémon cheats and, as so often before, stumbled upon a ridiculous fake cheat. I sneered to myself. According to this cheat, you could actually fly away before a trainer noticed you in Red, Blue and Yellow, which would cause the exclamation mark to appear above his head to appear while you're flying away, and if you then battled a particular trainer and walked into the route with the first trainer, your start menu would randomly pop up, and if you then pressed B, a level seven Mew (what a stupidly random level) would attack you out of nowhere. Just to put the cherry on top of the obvious fakeness, the person added, "I SWEAR THIS WORKS!!!"
And this was the inspiration for making a section on my website called "Site Stuff I Hate" which ranted a little about websites with fake cheats, especially when people claimed they worked, citing that site I had once seen as an example.
And time passed until April 2003 came along, at which time a person called TheScythe at the GameFAQs Message Boards posted that very cheat, claiming he had found it somewhere, tried it and it had worked. Of course no one believed it. But then a couple of people tried, and strangely, they said it worked too... and suddenly there was an explosion of confirmations. The cheat spread over the Internet like wildfire, and Pokémon fans worldwide suddenly experienced just about what people would feel if they were suddenly told that the Earth wasn't round after all. Countless people had for years been tirelessly going around explaining to the newbies that it was impossible to obtain Mew aside from going to a Nintendo event or using a GameShark - and suddenly the Mew trick was staring them right in the face.
I heard about it too from the PokéMasters forums, and indeed confirmed myself that it worked and put it on my website. It was only a while later that I began to realize that the trick had sounded familiar, and soon I realized with dread that I had waved off the real Mew cheat, long before its revolutionary discovery.
I could have been the one to rediscover the Mew trick.
And yes, much headdesking ensued. I could have become practically the most famous person in the entire Pokémon community, and I was stupid enough to dismiss this marvel of a glitch without even considering that it could be real.
...Then again, I suppose I wouldn't have wanted my site to have exploded in popularity like that while it was still called Butterfree's Pokémon Site and had an eye-hurting layout.
Page last modified October 15 2007 at 02:51 GMT
