Glitch City Laboratories Archives

[li]Play Red version. Blue and Yellow have potential non-glitchy methods to escape this.[/li]
[li]Get a Pokemon early on that has Growl.[/li]
[li]Play the game normally until you can perform the Mew Trick, making sure to defeat every Trainer and pick up every item. However, do NOT do the SS Anne or enter the Safari Zone.[/li]
[li]Perform the Mew Trick, using Growl six times to get a level 1 Mew, and then use EXP underflow to get Mew to level 100.[/li]
[li]Keep playing until Silph Co, continuing to pick up items and battle Trainers. Teach Mew three TM moves that deal no damage, like Reflect.[/li]
[li]In Silph Co, you can get the Selfdestruct TM. Get it, then battle every NON-OPTIONAL trainer in Silph Co, without fighting your rival. Teach Selfdestruct to Mew, overwriting Pound.[/li]
[li]Go back and make sure you've gotten every freebie. Then throw away all of your items you can, waste your money and throw away whatever you bought with it. Get all of the free coins in the Game Corner, then release the Pokemon/sell the items you buy with them. Release Eevee. Fight every single trainer you can except for those on the SS Anne & your rival in Silph Co.[/li]
[li]Release everything except Mew.[/li]

So this is a bit of an unusual puzzle I've set myself, and I figured the knowledgable folks at this forum would be able to help. After watching a bunch of YouTube videos about Pokemon softlocks, I came up with one of my own, featuring the Mew Trick. The steps are as follows:

[li]Play Red version. Blue and Yellow have potential non-glitchy methods to escape this.[/li]
[li]Get a Pokemon early on that has Growl.[/li]
[li]Play the game normally until you can perform the Mew Trick, making sure to defeat every Trainer and pick up every item. However, do NOT do the SS Anne or enter the Safari Zone.[/li]
[li]Perform the Mew Trick, using Growl six times to get a level 1 Mew, and then use EXP underflow to get Mew to level 100.[/li]
[li]Keep playing until Silph Co, continuing to pick up items and battle Trainers. Teach Mew three TM moves that deal no damage, like Reflect.[/li]
[li]In Silph Co, you can get the Selfdestruct TM. Get it, then battle every NON-OPTIONAL trainer in Silph Co, without fighting your rival. Teach Selfdestruct to Mew, overwriting Pound.[/li]
[li]Go back and make sure you've gotten every freebie. Then throw away all of your items you can, waste your money and throw away whatever you bought with it. Get all of the free coins in the Game Corner, then release the Pokemon/sell the items you buy with them. Release Eevee. Fight every single trainer you can except for those on the SS Anne & your rival in Silph Co.[/li]
[li]Release everything except Mew.[/li]

Mew cannot do any damage without killing itself. You have tossed all of your TMs and cannot afford more, so you can't teach it anything new. You can't access the damaging HMs, because Surf and Strength are locked behind the Safari Zone (which you can't afford entry to), Cut is on the SS Anne (which requires you to beat your rival), and Fly requires Cut to access. You'll never be able to use Struggle because Mew will blow itself up before it can run out of PP. Since this is Red, there's no wild Meowth with Pay Day, and you don't have any kind of access to Metronome to potentially roll Pay Day with that. You can't catch any more Pokemon, because that requires Pokeballs, which you can't afford. You can't play the slots to get a new Pokemon because you wasted all of your coins and - say it with me - can't afford to buy any more. Getting Lapras requires you to beat your rival in Silph Co, which isn't going to happen. You can't get to Cinnabar, so no fossil Pokemon. With no trainers left, you can't get more money from winning battles. And of course, Mew can't get any level-up moves, so even if you can win a wild battle you won't get anything out of it.

After I came up with this puzzle, I started wondering if it's possible to escape it without trading or external cheating. I figure there has to be some glitch in Gen 1 that would allow escape, but I can't imagine what it could be. Duplicating key items with Missingno via Trainer Fly to use item underflow could work, but that's easily avoided by just not giving Mew the Teleport TM (since you tossed Dig and can't get Fly or an Escape Rope).

And so, I come to the clever people of this forum, who might be able to devise a manner in which someone could escape this trap using a glitch. No trading or external devices are allowed (which includes homebrew apps on the 3DS which could affect the VC version of Red). Assume Mew does not have Teleport.

You've not said anything about what language/version to use, either, meaning version-exclusive stuff is on the table. Can't you get expanded pack with one with basically no setup on the Japanese version?

EDIT: How far does the Lift Glitch reach? Example shows Pokemon corruption, but it's very much undocumented on this page.
(Can you see where this is going?)