1998 Nintendo Power 'MARIO' Mew Distribution

[Gridelin]

Full Documents Related to the Distribution, the full copy of Pokemon Power Volume 6 is attached to this post:

Spoiler

In the Fall of 1998 Nintendo Power held a contest to “Win Mew for your Pokémon collection!” 151 winners of this contest would be given the chance to mail their cartridge into the Nintendo Power Headquarters and receive it back with a brand-new mew on their game save. Contest winners were notified by mail by 2/28/1999 that they had won the contest, making this the earliest known Mew distribution in the west.

Recently while browsing reddit, I ran across a post from Th4tGuyUKn0 showcasing his Original Red cartridge that was one of the lucky recipients of this contest. After scrolling through the thread, Th4tGuyUKn0 stated that the battery on the game had not yet dried out; upon reading this I immediately messaged him explaining Project Pokémon and asked him if he would be interested in dumping his game save. Luckily, he was all for it! The only problem was he could not remember which of his five Pokémon cartridges he left the mew on, and did not want to risk draining the more than two decades old cartridge battery by checking. Th4tGuyUKn0 graciously decided to send me all of his cartridges so that I could backup the saves and hopefully find the mew.

With the amazing research done by @suloku on these save files, we are confident that we have found the Mew in question. In the Pokemon Blue game save we discovered a Mew with the TID 51273 (the same Mew ID# printed on the back of the cartridge) and the OT ‘MARIO’. Suloku has concluded that this Mew is definitely legit. It shares the exact same DVs as the YOSHIBA Mew, matches Mew machine distributions data-wise, and has the same OT Nintendo character naming convention that several forum posts from 2000~ reference. While this does raise questions about what distribution the supposed ‘NINTEN’ Mews are a part of, this Nintendo Power Mew is most certainly legit. Suloku was also able to find the Mew in the red save file as a deleted Pokémon (moved or deleted pokémon can be found in box savedata if it was not overwritten by another pokémon being stored in the same slot).

Attached is the the .pk1 of the 1998 Nintendo Power 'MARIO' Mew. Thanks very much again to Th4tGuyUKn0 for sending and trusting us with these cartridges and Suloku for all of the great research, none of this would have been possible without them. Happy holidays and enjoy!

151 - MEW - C23C.pk1

Pokemon Power vol 6.pdf

Edited March 29, 2020 by Gridelin

[wo0ts]

I like how the age question on the contest entry form has "18-24" oldest possible response. ri

[Sabresite]

Great job everyone and thank you to /u/Th4tGuyUKn0

[Guest]

Wow! Amazing! Great job guys.

What’s really great about this is that this pretty much confirms that the existence of the マリオ OT Name among others must be true, which just btw. were distributed at Space World 1997. The software for distributing MARIO Mew obviously was a localized version of the one they used in Japan and that explains the same DVs and choice of OT Names. Other OT names I heard about are クッパ -, ピーチ and just recently I learned aboutドンキー.

Edit:
Meanwhile all of the Nintendo Space World 1997 OT names are confirmed.
マリオ, ルイージ, ヨッシー, ピーチ, ドンキー & クッパ

[Deoxyz]

I'm very happy to see that we've been able to preserve quite a handful of unique Gen I and II events over the last few years. The fact that most events of this era have already vanished with dying batteries makes this a crucial time to preserve them within these few remaining years of their lifespan. It seems that Reddit has been a very good place to find these, since in January we had the YOSHIRA Mew distribution cart savefile dumped, now this MARIO Mew, and hopefully if all goes as planned we'll very soon have a SpaceWorld97 ヨッシー Mew. It's something suloku and HaxAras brought to my attention a few months back, but due to real life priorities of the cart owner, messages between me and him so far are few and far apart.

Thanks a ton to Gridelin, suloku, and Th4tGuyUKn0, seeing rare events preserved is one of the few things that keeps me interested in the franchise. It always feels like a great success. Hopefully future generations will appreciate these preservation efforts decades after we're no longer involved. Often times the goal surely isn't easy to achieve.

[Gridelin]

25 minutes ago, Deoxyz said:

I'm very happy to see that we've been able to preserve quite a handful of unique Gen I and II events over the last few years. The fact that most events of this era have already vanished with dying batteries makes this a crucial time to preserve them within these few remaining years of their lifespan. It seems that Reddit has been a very good place to find these, since in January we had the YOSHIRA Mew distribution cart savefile dumped, now this MARIO Mew, and hopefully if all goes as planned we'll very soon have a SpaceWorld97 ヨッシー Mew. It's something suloku and HaxAras brought to my attention a few months back, but due to real life priorities of the cart owner, messages between me and him so far are few and far apart.

Thanks a ton to Gridelin, suloku, and Th4tGuyUKn0, seeing rare events preserved is one of the few things that keeps me interested in the franchise. It always feels like a great success. Hopefully future generations will appreciate these preservation efforts decades after we're no longer involved. Often times the goal surely isn't easy to achieve.

That SpaceWorld Mew would be incredible, but I can relate all too well to that struggle. I've been in contact with another redditor that had an Australian Cart with an event Mew, but they haven't gotten back to me in a while. 

I really enjoy preserving all Pokemon/Video Game related history, it's how I got involved in the redump project

[InsaneNutter]

Wow great work @Gridelin and thank you Th4tGuyUKn0 for allowing this event to be preserved. It's certainly appreciated by many now and will be by even more in years to come 

Strange to think i'd never even heard of Pokemon when that Mew was distributed, the games and anime had yet to make it to the UK then. Internet access was pretty limited then too and not something most people had at home to find out about it online.

Certainly a great piece of Pokemon history you've preserved there, it's really impressive the batteries in some of these carts are lasting 20+ years.

[Guest]

9 hours ago, ajxpk said:

The software for distributing MARIO Mew obviously was a localized version of the one they used in Japan and that explains the same DVs and choice of OT Names. Other OT names I heard about are クッパ -, ピーチ and just recently I learned aboutドンキー.

From what I know the staff was able to edit the OT with the machine’s hidden options, so the OT is not really a fixed value per machine.
In Europe they changed Mew’s OT in every city they visited, and for Celebi they had different staff member’s names as OT which I always found to be funny.

Edited November 30, 2018 by Guest

[dannydstk]

I usually just lurk and never log in. But I reset my password just to express how awesome this is!

Thank you!

 

[Sabresite]

7 hours ago, Purin said:

From what I know the staff was able to edit the OT with the machine’s hidden options, so the OT is not really a fixed value per machine.
In Europe they changed Mew’s OT in every city they visited, and for Celebi they had different staff member’s names as OT which I always found to be funny.

I have a Mew on a Blue cart somewhere with the OT of a staff (IIRC). It was obtained through a trade with that staff at an event.

[Th4tGuyUkn0]

Happy to help!  For once, holding onto that old stuff paid off.  I hope it brings a lot of people joy.  I know I was excited when I won the contest way back when!  It's crazy to think that Pokemon is still such a big part of people's lives all these years later.  A huge thanks to Suloku and Gridelin for reaching out.  Otherwise this would still be sitting in a drawer.

[Guest]

On 11/30/2018 at 8:55 PM, Purin said:

From what I know the staff was able to edit the OT with the machine’s hidden options, so the OT is not really a fixed value per machine.
In Europe they changed Mew’s OT in every city they visited, and for Celebi they had different staff member’s names as OT which I always found to be funny.

I could still imagine that these were some kind of default OT Names, just because it’s too coincidental how they made use of the names YOSHI and LUIGI in different variations in America. Like YOSHIRA, YOSHIRB ect...

The thing I’m interested the most though are the DVs. Apparently earlier Japanese Mews (before Space World 1997) had random DVs and weren't fix like the Mews we know and I believe that the reason they are fix is a bug and was not supposed to be like that.

Edit:
Meanwhile I know this was intentional.

[jojo12100]

28 minutes ago, ajxpk said:

The thing I’m most interested the most though are the DVs. Apparently earlier Japanese Mews (before Space World 1997) had random DVs and newer were fix and I believe that it’s a bug and was not supposed to be that way.

Random DVs? That means they can be shiny!

Still pray we'll be able to find more cardriges in future, especially NY ones, old gen1/3, Event Hidden Grotto ...

[Guest]

Yeah... especially Gen 3 Events like Mystery Gifts (Egg Presents), a PCNY Disc and some Nintendo Download Play Apps.
Damn, there are so many softwares I would like to take a look at for the sake of knowledge...

[Guest]

Don't forget about the Battle Institution distributions which exist for Gen 5 (several worldwide) and Gen 6 (just one in Japan)!

[Gridelin]

I may be mistaken, but I thought I remembered hearing the space world demo was leaked by a store/seller in Japan that did it in part to prove that they had very rare Pokemon/Nintendo items; so I'm hopeful that some of these distribution devices are still out there!

[jojo12100]

18 minutes ago, Purin said:

Don't forget about the Battle Institution distributions which exist for Gen 5 (several worldwide) and Gen 6 (just one in Japan)!

 

3 minutes ago, Gridelin said:

I may be mistaken, but I thought I remembered hearing the space world demo was leaked by a store/seller in Japan that did it in part to prove that they had very rare Pokemon/Nintendo items; so I'm hopeful that some of these distribution devices are still out there!

 

25 minutes ago, ajxpk said:

Yeah... especially a PCNY Gen 3 Disc and some Nintendo Download Play Apps.  

 

We should make a list of all wanted devices/cardriges (probably in private in order to not make them rarer). And set a strategy to collect them.

[SamuraiBoy356]

Hey so I just downloaded this mew and was wondering if the met date should be changed? Mine showed up as todays date?

 

[Deoxyz]

2 hours ago, Gridelin said:

I may be mistaken, but I thought I remembered hearing the space world demo was leaked by a store/seller in Japan that did it in part to prove that they had very rare Pokemon/Nintendo items; so I'm hopeful that some of these distribution devices are still out there!

That was apparently made up while it was being leaked on /vp/

This is as much that is known in relation to the real story, according to Sanquii and his group: https://iimarckus.org/spaceworld/

However, we can speculate the possibility that the SpaceWorld97 Mew software may have leaked alongside the GS beta demo, since they were held at the same place and time. That's not guaranteed, but fairly reasonable to consider the possibility. I wish it was known, exactly WHO was the one who posted the GS beta demos in Sanquii's discord, how they obtained them, etc.

1 hour ago, jojo12100 said:

We should make a list of all wanted devices/cardriges (probably in private in order to not make them rarer). And set a strategy to collect them.

While we do have an idea of what we would like to obtain in regards to research, it's WAY easier said than done. When it comes down to it, it's just insanely hard to find the collectors that have these roms/software, and the majority refuse to share or even talk about what they own. Also considering, we have no idea how many remaining roms/carts have actually leaked from Nintendo-related sources, and are still not in the hands of any private collectors. It's unfortunate, but that's how this undertaking has shown itself to be for us over the past couple years. Not to mention, when we do find something we can actually obtain, it's usually been like "give me 3000 dollars for a copy of this rom lol".

Edited November 30, 2018 by Deoxyz

[ICanSnake]

1 hour ago, SamuraiBoy356 said:

Hey so I just downloaded this mew and was wondering if the met date should be changed? Mine showed up as todays date?

 

Are you placing it in a gen 7 save file through PKHeX? Please don't. Since the Mew is a .pk1, it can only be traded through gen 1 and gen 2 games, no Virtual Console releases either. Gen 3 was designed differently and didn't have backwards trading compatibility, so there's physically no way to get a gen 1 Pokemon into a gen 7 game. Placing it in gen 7 will make it illegal.

[SamuraiBoy356]

Aww, I see thank you didnt know that

 

[coltonsmogon]

On 11/29/2018 at 6:54 PM, Gridelin said:

In the Fall of 1998 Nintendo Power held a contest to “Win Mew for your Pokémon collection!” 151 winners of this contest would be given the chance to mail their cartridge into the Nintendo Power Headquarters and receive it back with a brand-new mew on their game save. Contest winners were notified by mail by 2/28/1999 that they had won the contest, making this the earliest known Mew distribution in the west.

Recently while browsing reddit, I ran across a post from Th4tGuyUKn0 showcasing his Original Red cartridge that was one of the lucky recipients of this contest. After scrolling through the thread, Th4tGuyUKn0 stated that the battery on the game had not yet dried out; upon reading this I immediately messaged him explaining Project Pokémon and asked him if he would be interested in dumping his game save. Luckily, he was all for it! The only problem was he could not remember which of his five Pokémon cartridges he left the mew on, and did not want to risk draining the more than two decades old cartridge battery by checking. Th4tGuyUKn0 graciously decided to send me all of his cartridges so that I could backup the saves and hopefully find the mew.

With the amazing research done by @suloku on these save files, we are confident that we have found the Mew in question. In the Pokemon Blue game save we discovered a Mew with the TID 51273 (the same Mew ID# printed on the back of the cartridge) and the OT ‘MARIO’. Suloku has concluded that this Mew is definitely legit. It shares the exact same DVs as the YOSHIBA Mew, matches Mew machine distributions data-wise, and has the same OT Nintendo character naming convention that several forum posts from 2000~ reference. While this does raise questions about what distribution the supposed ‘NINTEN’ Mews are a part of, this Nintendo Power Mew is most certainly legit. Suloku was also able to find the Mew in the red save file as a deleted Pokémon (moved or deleted pokémon can be found in box savedata if it was not overwritten by another pokémon being stored in the same slot).

Attached is the the .pk1 of the 1998 Nintendo Power 'MARIO' Mew. Thanks very much again to Th4tGuyUKn0 for sending and trusting us with these cartridges and Suloku for all of the great research, none of this would have been possible without them. Happy holidays and enjoy!

151 - MEW - C23C.pk1

Shouldn't this Mew be added to the gallery? Izza back after a hiatus.

[Sabresite]

6 hours ago, coltonsmogon said:

Shouldn't this Mew be added to the gallery? Izza back after a hiatus.

I already added it to GitHub. I assume @theSLAYER will add it to the site gallery soon.

[theSLAYER]

47 minutes ago, Sabresite said:

I already added it to GitHub. I assume @theSLAYER will add it to the site gallery soon.

Yeah I already plan to add it, when time comes around.

edit: done

[Deoxyz]

6 hours ago, theSLAYER said:

Yeah I already plan to add it, when time comes around.

edit: done

By the way, you're still missing the FINLAND Mew from suloku and the four Spaceworld 99 Makuhari Mews. Not to mention the tons Japanese Gen III events. I think we may have discussed the Gen III events a while back though, so understandable if you haven't had the time yet.

Also @Sabresite, the github is still missing all the YOSHIRA Mews from the Red distribution cart savefile. Also, the github's YOSHIRB Mew is mislabeled as "YOSHIBB". The YOSHIBA is correct though.