When Pokémon’s 8th Generation hit, there was for some people a bit of a complaint, one that was inevitable, but a few folk got into a rage. Gen 8’s games Sword and Shield would not let you use every Pokémon ever made.  This was obviously going to happen one day given higher demands on Pokémon such as animations in movement and attacks with the sheer increased number of Pokémon.

We are currently at well over 1000 Pokémon, each with 3d models, each playable, each with hundreds of attack options and many with different forms. Look at any beat-em-up game, look at the playable roster, now increase that to over one thousand. The anger some people felt made them very irrational to the point of backing obvious plagiarism, to them justifying it, and to piracy of modern games, which is stupid as Digimon is right there, you could have gone there, lots of good options.

But here’s the thing about the complaint about them not being able to use over 1000 different Pokémon in the same game: this wasn’t and was never the first time this had happened. Back in Gen 3 with large changes to how Pokémon worked you couldn’t gain access to Pokémon from the first 2 Generations of games. Later games were released in the 3rd Gen that let you gain access to those old Pokémon, notably the remakes of the Gen 1 games combined with the GameCube  Colosseum games. But that means getting 6 different Pokémon games just to complete the national dex. That’s not the one I had the biggest issue with… for you didn’t need 6 games to complete it… you needed 7… and then there were 3 more Pokémon that you just couldn’t get without a bit of postcode lottery.

Back in Gen 1 there were 150 Pokémon, starting with Bulbasaur and ending in Mewtwo. But you see, that’s a bit of a lie there were in fact 151 Pokémon in Generation One. In the burned out mansion in Cinnabar Island you learn a bit of Mewtwo’s history and you hear another name, Mew. It told of how on an expedition away from the Kanto region they found a new Pokémon named Mew, how it gave birth and they named the child Mewtwo. Mewtwo could be found after beating the main game and going to a closed off location you only gained access to after becoming the champion. This location had the highest level wild Pokémon in the game, and at the bottom was Mewtwo, who was the strongest Pokémon in the game by far. But where was Mew? Mew was the secret 151st Pokémon, placed into the game late on after finding a bit more space. But this meant there was no proper appearance in the game.

As word got out about a secret extra Pokémon people went mad trying to find it. You got tales of it being hidden under a van at the port which you can’t gain access to because you needed Surf which you only got after SS Anne left; nope people could trade a Pokémon with Cut over, then come back later with Surf, but nothing. Maybe you needed to beat the Elite 4 a number of times or with restrictions? Nope. 

It could be made to appear because of a bug in the game, one of Gen 1s many legendary bugs though.

Mew made its big screen debut in the first Pokémon movie which would start a trend of what would become known as Mythical Pokémon appearing in them. But rather than be released with the movie, the movie came with special promo Pokémon cards. Mew made other appearances such as in the opening of the anime and as a surprise final challenge in the Original Pokémon Snap. Mew even made an appearance in the first Smash Brothers game, when having thrown the Pokeball item, it had an extremely low chance of being the one that appeared, it didn’t do anything, floated about before leaving, but after the match you got a very large amount of points for its appearance. Finally Mew could be used as a Rental Pokémon in Pokémon Stadium’s second harder round, one of the final trainers in the Prime Cup used one. However despite the game having special rewards, like giving you more copies of one off Pokémon, a Psyduck with a move it didn’t already have, or giving the Pikachu from Yellow Surf, Mew remained unobtainable.

In truth the only legitimate way to get it was for it to be transferred to you at an event, sometimes as a reward for beating an IRL player. In the Nintendo Official Magazine you would see entries of people facing their own Master with the reward of Mew if you beat him, lists of teams shown, mind you this was Gen 1 so most matches came down to whose Mewtwo won. Still the mythical reward of the 151st Pokémon was there.

Mew abilities wise wasn’t some all powerful being. While its stat averages were high, much like that of the legendary birds, it was lower than that of Mewtwo. But it had two unique elements to it. All its base stats were at 100, others would have some higher and some lower, but Mew was 100 all around. Mewtwo if you added its base stat total would be higher notably its special  and its speed were higher, worth noting Special would later be split and replaced with Special Attack and Special Defence, but in Gen 1 it was just a solid Special stat, one of the reasons Psychic types were broken in that first game. The other far more unique element was that Mew could learn every TM and HM. This gave it an extreme level of versatility in what you could do with the Pokémon. It wasn’t Mewtwo levels of broken, but it was still a very powerful asset to have, especially given the lack of any true counter to Psychic types in that First Generation.

Now if you are reading this in Orkney you may have already realized a big issue with anything released in events in stores or any location. We never got them here. Even the Pokémon cards released with the movie never made it to Orkney. People asked the local papers of the time as children were disappointed only to find out how long it took to get the film here, the distribution was over. I was a child at the time, and through partial internet access or through reading magazines I knew about these cards and what was new as well. I wanted those new cards and was one of the children disappointed to find out we weren’t getting them. This was long before the big problem of Pokémon Scalping we have today, something that keeps me from playing or collecting the card game, though I do occasionally check Grooves to see if they have one of the new decks in for a bit of a nostalgic impulse buy.

This was just one Pokémon after all. It was something special. However it was still something in a game with the tagline “Gotta catch em all” that meant you couldn’t “catch em all”.  This leaves a bad presence in the back of your mind, where just because of location, you couldn’t truly complete the game. And things were going to get worse.