By Professor Thaddeus O. Birchwood, Department of Cryptozoological Glitch Studies, Viridian City University (Unpublished Memoir, 2004)
The truth, I believe, is more melancholic. In the final, stable build of FireRed , the squirrel was erased. Its cry (a mix of a chirp and a crackle) was reassigned to the move “Sweet Scent.” Its sprite data was overwritten by a placeholder tree tile. But the 0x1636 index remained, a digital fossil. It’s what programmers call a “ghost in the machine”—a remnant of an idea that was too strange for the final product: a squirrel that survived a fire in 1636, only to be deleted in 2004. 1636 pokemon fire red squirrels
When I activated the 0x1636 glitch using a GameShark, my Game Boy Advance screen flickered. The usual battle music warped into a low, humming drone. And there it stood on the virtual grass of Route 1: a Squirrel. Not a Pikachu. Not a Sandshrew. A pixelated, orange-furred squirrel with a single stripe down its back and eyes that glowed like embers. Its Pokédex entry, a garbled mess of Japanese characters and English phonemes, read: “This Pokémon fled the burning forests of 1636. It hides in the time-between-frames. It knows only the move ‘Ember Cache.’” By Professor Thaddeus O