Gen 3 - Mystery Mew Collection Complete!

[Guest]

Thanks to all the collected cartridges we learned of many things and determined the exact position of all the Mews and even more details about how they were generated and with this one we also learned about a new initial Seed which has lead us to the Seeds of a couple of more Mews. The Mews that were placed in the Team. I was thinking about reconstructing the missing Mews as we might never get a chance to get them otherwise, but the problem is we never understood about these Trash Bytes and what kind of data they originated from. I'm happy to announce that after a long time I was able to solve the puzzle and with this I was finally able to fully reconstruct the Mews.  
 
Missing Mystery Mews.zip

Edit:

The collection is finally complete! 

[BlackShark]

Is 1 Mew still missing or were there only 5 in the party?

[Guest]

Yes, we assume they generated another one. Unfortunately it might be missing forever.

Edited August 27, 2018 by ajxpk

[xorhash]

Don't leave us hanging, man; how were they generated?

[Guest]

I don't leave anyone hanging. Just busy sometimes. 
About the question of how exactly it was done... it remains a secret, but yes they were generated. Wished I could say the same for the last Mew, but I just don't have the seed. Unless someone shows up who has received it as the first in line or someone who has the complete cartridge...
I'm afraid there is no chance we will ever see it.

Edited August 27, 2018 by ajxpk

[Cecillia]

4 minutes ago, ajxpk said:

I don't leave anyone hanging. Just busy sometimes. 
About the question, how exactly it was done remains a secret, but yes they were generated. Wished I could say the same for the last Mew, but I just don't have the seed. Unless someone shows up who has received it as the first in line or someone who has the complete cartridge...
I'm afraid there is no chance we will ever see it.

Kind of sad news, still glad the other 5 are generated.

[Invader TAK]

I can think of a couple of possibilities for the empty spot:
1. They never generated a sixth party Mew because it's impossible to have a completely empty party after you get your starter.
2. They released that non-Mew Pokemon then generated the last Mew before cloning the save to the carts that were sent out.

Either sounds possible considering none of the carts seen in the wild have been untouched. Regardless, it's still absolutely amazing that you managed to generate these five with those pesky trash bytes intact.

[Guest]

We know that they had a Blastoise in Team and that they released it after they generated the first 5 Mews.
The 5th Mew of the first batch remained in the Team until the end in the 1st Team Slot.

Edited August 27, 2018 by ajxpk

[Invader TAK]

2 minutes ago, ajxpk said:

We know that they had a Blastoise in Team and that they released it after they generated the first 5 Mews. The 5th Mew of the first batch remained in the Team until the end.

So that points to the second possibility I listed. Wouldn't make sense to leave that last party spot empty when they could easily fill it with one more Mew.

[Sabresite]

They definitely generated a 426th Mew. We may never find it. We know exactly how they filled it and in what order. Even that they filled it vertically and swapped two of them out of place.

I think we did pretty well. Thanks @ajxpk!

[Deoxyz]

So I wanted to provide a general overview of how Nintendo/GF originally created the savefile that was used on these FireRed carts. It's been said in the past that they filled a completed FireRed savefile with 426 Mews, and then copied the save to hundreds of retail carts to send to Toys R Us stores across the country to use for the distribution. This is true, but what hasn't been said publicly is how the Mews themselves were generated.

I decided to share this visual that I had made about a year ago, which helped me better visualize what we had learned from the data about the generation process.

Spoiler

Basically what they had was a very similar version of the pokemon distribution software/rom that we all know from 10ANNIV, etc. This software however completely filled the party with Mews, rather than just generating one at a time. (This is likely similar to what we saw with the Shroomish/Barboach test distributions in the German Debug Ruby rom.) They started with only one pokemon remaining in the party (possibly the over-leveled Blastoise seen in the Hall of Fame), then ran the distribution software which generated their first group of 5 Mews. The "Blastoise" was then released, and the first 4 Mews were placed vertically, top to bottom on the bottom right side, in Box 14.

The distribution software was ran again, then the next group of 5 Mews were moved to the PC in the same order, with the 5th Mew on top of the previous column. This process was repeated many times until every single PC box was full. working backwards from Box 14 to Box 1. When the final group of 5 were generated, the 3rd Mew from that group was move to Box Slot 1,1 to fill the last hole in the PC. The 5th Mew from the first group generated remained in the party the entire time. And while trivial, for whatever reason, the first two Mews from the third-to-last group were shifted upwards two slots in Box 1, with the 5th Mew from the second-to-last group placed in the middle of the column rather than at the top.

The distribution software was ran one final time to generate a Mew to fill the last empty slot in the party. Since this last Mew was generated by itself, there's no relative data to reference, therefore impossible for us to recreate it. The other 5 party Mews were able to be recreated based off data from the Mews generated in their same group of 5. Though what wasn't possible until a few days ago was recreating them to also include their trashbytes.

While trivial, trashbytes are important for legality and preservation purposes. That's why the 5 recreated party Mews weren't public until now. Thanks a bunch to @ajxpk for successfully cracking this case. Every time we think we've gotten as far as we ever will regarding Mystery Mew, somehow we get lucky and gain another step forward. Who knows if Mystery Mew #426 will ever surface...

It's possible someone who attended the original distribution in 2006 still owns a cartridge with Mew #426, but it's unlikely they'll ever know they have the most important Mew from this event.

[Guest]

BIG UPDATE

All of the 426 Mews are finally together and even the mysteries about their placements are solved thanks to @Sabresite's newest findings.
A completely new Set of 5 Mews was discovered with the initial seed 0x5E2B. In fact it appears Mew #1, #2, #4 and #5 of the Seed 0x6065 (which I reconstructed earlier and we believed them to be in the Party) were deleted in order to generate the new Set. This leaves number #3 of Seed 0x6065 (to be found in Box 1, Slot 1) the only Mew of its Set that was actually traded/distributed, so from now on the rest of the Set will be moved to the category of "Unreleased Events". This was confirmed by Sabresite based on some old collected data and while all 5 Mews of the new 0x5E2B set were traded, 4 of the 5 0x6065 Mews weren't, so they were not on the save file when it was ready for the Distribution.

The most confusing part to me is "WHY?" but then I came to the conclusion that it must have been because of how the software works. It was edited with minimal effort and otherwise works much the same as the newer Multi Boot software we know. Before the generation it checks how many Pokémon are in hand and if it's greater than 5 it returns false without generating anything with the respective error code. For Mystery Mew they changed it to greater than 1 and in addition they returned from the modified GenerateMew Subroutine (Mystery Mew is basically Hadou Mew btw...) with the loop inside and after the return they add 5 instead of 1 to the Team Slot. When I reconstructed Mystery Mew for the research I was thinking too complicated first and wanted to do it in a way that is smart, convenient and works smooth and dynamically, but from what I see now having analyzed different revisions and code from NOA they like keep it simple. Where the loop starts and where it ends was a big question to me as it could have been in or outside of the main function, but it is definitely within the function. The srand function is in it and this would result in a reseed everytime you call it, so it is very clear that the loop starts after the srand() call and it ends with a recalculation for the Team Slot and i+1 which is checked against the number 5 to end the loop. The most important thing however is the static number 5 being added to the Pokémon Team Count after the return and this can only mean that the check before the generation was changed too, they just swapped the numbers. Obviously the software was planned to generate no less than 5 Mews and this means that they were forced to sacrifice 4 Mews to finally fill all of the 6 Party Slots.

Huge thanks to Sabresite for resolving this. The case was already closed to me, so I'm really happy that he gave it another shot.  

Edited June 23, 2019 by ajxpk

[Sabresite]

Either Mew # 3 in Box 1 Slot 1 was the result of a trade, or they generated 5, moved #3, released the other 4, and generated another 5.
This means there are a total of 430: 426 in the save, and 4 that were unreleased/deleted/unused.

All of them are now on our Github page:
FR - MYSTRY MEW (426) (R) Save
426 MYSTRY MEW (Individual PK3 Files)
Unreleased/Deleted MYSTRY Mews

[Invader TAK]

I just checked the save in PKHeX and it still only has 425 Mews.

[Sabresite]

The one I linked to? I'll check it and see if I renamed the wrong file. The gallery needs updating still, but GitHub should be correct.

[Invader TAK]

Just now, Sabresite said:

The one I linked to? I'll check it and see if I renamed the wrong file. The gallery needs updating still, but GitHub should be correct.

Yes, the GitHub one.

[Sabresite]

Thank you, I replaced the file. Try it now!

[Invader TAK]

There it is!

[Sabresite]

I think we should start finding a way to restore the save back to its original state.
I found that the Pokemon Trades stat should be 82. Next I am going to try and see if steps and time should be reverted.
One thing I am not sure is how the "Previously on your quest..." works.
But that would be key to reverting the save back properly.

Edit: Saves should be 240.
Steps and TIme will be hard.

[Guest]

Sadly I think it’s impossible to reconstruct it 100% the way it was before. But at least we have all the Mews now which is most important.  

[XxPhoenix1996xX]

Thanks for your amazing work guys! @Sabresite @ajxpk

[3rd Gen Expert]

Okay, now this topic has been addressed before in regards to distribution cartridges (actually just being development cartridges), but this is literally just a normal game cart with a bunch of mews on it right?

What is stopping someone from flashing their game cart with this save and posing the game as an original cart? Any way to actually tell an original?

Like this guy here...who has THREE for sale...

https://www.ebay.com/sch/pokeg-15/m.html?item=293761734761&hash=item4465905869%3Ag%3AFXsAAOSwf2hfdRod&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2562

[theSLAYER]

2 hours ago, 3rd Gen Expert said:

but this is literally just a normal game cart with a bunch of mews on it right?

from the look of it, yes.

The Mew is generated on distro, sent to the cart, then when the cart is full it is cloned.

2 hours ago, 3rd Gen Expert said:

What is stopping someone from flashing their game cart with this save and posing the game as an original cart? Any way to actually tell an original?

Nothing. ><
 

[Urt1]

Does this essentially mean that said Mew would be considered legit and thus transferable via gen 4 pal park and gen 5 transfer through transporter and bank?

I wouldn't be complaining but a lot of people try and make 6IV good nature Mew with max EVs without any in-game effort.  

 

[theSLAYER]

9 minutes ago, Urt1 said:

Does this essentially mean that said Mew would be considered legit and thus transferable via gen 4 pal park and gen 5 transfer through transporter and bank?

I wouldn't be complaining but a lot of people try and make 6IV good nature Mew with max EVs without any in-game effort.  

 

It’ll be legal according to Pokémon Bank; whether the save is injected by Nintendo Staff or by some kid is irrelevant to it. There would be nothing to tell them apart.

It’ll matter when someone asks you about it, for example, if someone asks how you got it, and your reply was “eBay”. You will get lots of doubtful looks.