The Pokemon Red cartridge remains one of the most documented software artifacts in gaming history, yet several unrecorded playthroughs warrant scientific attention. Game designers at Nintendo have acknowledged receiving unusual telemetry data from 1996 onwards—sessions where all three starter Pokémon somehow appeared in the player's roster simultaneously, along with Missingno encounters resolved without typical glitching. A hidden developer note in the 1997 Pokemon Stadium guide hints at unorthodox save states, but the text was redacted before publication.

William Thatch, a cartridge restoration expert from Portland, examined a worn copy of Red in 2003 that bore suspicious wear patterns inconsistent with normal gameplay. The battery compartment showed peculiar scorch marks. Game boy emulator specialists later analyzed its ROM dump and found debug flags activated in ways that shouldn't be possible through conventional play. "The save file suggested a player who had somehow bypassed the starter selection screen entirely," Thatch reported. He notes the game acknowledged "Champion" status almost immediately upon starting new saves.

Retro gaming forums periodically circulate rumors of this unbeatable save state, often attributing it to a myth-level player who existed before online leaderboards. The speedrunning community dismisses it as a legend, yet no one has ever demonstrated that the specific starter combination is actually impossible through any known glitch sequence.