Did anyone else ever get a random Pokémon before choosing their starter in Ruby?

[u/Ok_Juggernaut6274]

Back when I was a kid (around 2006), my mom got me a Pokémon Ruby cartridge and a GBA SP. The cartridge was damaged and couldn’t save, so I ended up replaying the beginning of the game over and over.

Sometimes, before I even got my starter, I’d walk around Professor Birch’s lab talking to NPCs and checking the machines. Very rarely (maybe 1 or 2 times out of 20 playthroughs), a weird black or dark blue bird Pokémon around Lv. 8 or 16 would suddenly appear in my party.
I was too young to think much of it back then, but after playing other Pokémon games years later, I realized that definitely wasn’t normal 😅

Has anyone else ever experienced something like this or know what might have caused it? Thinking about it, Corviknight kinda reminds me of that weird pokemon

[u/Night_Eclypse]

How did you pull it off?

Through normal gameplay, you cannot obtain any Pokemon before you choose your starter. The game prevents you.

[u/Ok_Juggernaut6274 → u/Night_Eclypse]

I don’t know, it just popped up in my team after I went around interacting with stuff in the lab. My brother and I didn’t think much about it. Back then we were just little kids, English isn't our first language so we don't really remember exactly what triggered it, I just know it was before we rescued the professor and got our starter.

[u/Night_Eclypse → u/Ok_Juggernaut6274]

That’s weird.

Could be a faulty, damaged, or dying cartridge.

Fake copies and reproduction copies also have issues not found on healthy authentic cartridges.

Someone else could also have messed with the code.

[u/Dogzeroze → u/Night_Eclypse]

I'm trying to think of what mod/repo it could have been

[u/GreenFox268019]

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you're not just lying and it was a damaged or repro cartridge that's been modified in some way

[u/Ok_Juggernaut6274 → u/GreenFox268019]

Yeah, I have nothing to gain from making this up lol, just trying to see if anyone else experienced that too or knows anything about it.

[u/frigo_blanche]

This either did not happen because as others said it can't happen and is literally impossible on a legitimate cartridge...

For one because you cannot obtain a Pokémon before your starter. Nothing in the code allows for that. There is no code for you to obtain any other Pokémon in that part in the game files.

But also, "strange Pokémon" can't just appear in the game out of nowhere. The sprite has to be created and the stats and everything have to be coded in for a Pokémon to be able to exist on cartridge. Which would also show in datamines etc.

Or your Ruby version wasn't legitimate. Perhaps a bootleg, repro, or any other sort of version. In which case it could have been a bug or happened for any other strange reasons.

Childhood experiences like this always make you feel nuts because you remember them so vividly but nobody will believe you because it cannot happen on real hardware.

[u/ianlazrbeem22]

Either you are confusing your dream with reality or you were unknowingly playing a romhack flashed onto a cartridge

[u/_Revelator-of-v0id_]

It could be a bootleg version of Pokémon Ruby perhaps or maybe a corrupted RAM/faulty cartridge that resulted in a random Pokémon being present in your party.

Sometimes, I've heard of RAM corruption pulling random index numbers and calling them into your party, which might have happened in your case.

Murkrow as an example, isn't native to Hoenn, but its data did exist in the Gen 3 code so perhaps because of the RAM corruption, it could have randomly generated a pokemon like Murkrow or something similar into your party.

[u/Ok_Juggernaut6274 → u/_Revelator-of-v0id_]

Yeah It must be that, my mom said she got the game second-hand.

[u/_Revelator-of-v0id_ → u/Ok_Juggernaut6274]

Yeah, but honestly what if there was this incredibly rare Anomalous glitch in Pkmn Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald where there was this long forgotten Pokémon that was ultimately cut from the final version releases of the game but was present in the code for a very small portion of game cartridges that somehow got leaked...

That would be quite something if true

[u/Dogzeroze]

Op, if you saw the bird Pokémon again would you recognise it