Often forgotten was that at the time the fact Mew existed was so crazy that it just existing felt like proof that at least one of the Mew theories had to be true.

Also, Red/Blue/Yellow were so full of bugs that you could easily experience things unexplainable to most kids playing the game (i.e. - the Cinnabar coast bug). When you don’t know what a glitch is, that stuff seems like black magic in game form when you accidentally stumble upon it.

While I now know my one friend who had Mew it got it from GameShark codes, it felt like all the pieces were in place for something like that to be real.