1636 Pokemon Fire Red Squirrels ((new)) Jun 2026

Despite—or perhaps because of—its dubious authenticity, the phrase “1636 Pokemon Fire Red Squirrels” has exploded in retro gaming communities. On TikTok, the hashtag #1636Squirrel has over 8 million views, mostly consisting of:

, not in the official game. However:

The prevailing theory among ROM archivists and historians is that "Squirrels" was either the name of the specific release group or the handle of the individual who dumped the ROM. Unlike famous groups like "Eurasia," "Mode7," or "Independent," Squirrels was not a major, high-profile scene group. They appear to be a fleeting entity—a dumper who managed to get a clean, early copy of the US version of FireRed and uploaded it to the wilds of the internet. 1636 Pokemon Fire Red Squirrels

The number "1636" is equally important to the history of this file. In the world of GBA (Game Boy Advance) archiving, ROMs are often cataloged by number. The GoodTools suite, a set of auditing tools created by Cowering to catalog and rename ROMs, assigned specific numbers to games.

However, in the game’s raw hexadecimal memory addressing, (the hex equivalent of 1636 in decimal) points to a very specific location: the encounter data table for the Viridian Forest’s hidden secondary tilemap. In the world of GBA (Game Boy Advance)

Game Freak and Nintendo have never acknowledged this glitch. Attempting to force memory overflows can corrupt your save file. This is for historical documentation only.

However, dedicated ROM hackers have recreated the experience using custom patches. To see the “1636 Fire Red Squirrel” in action: assigned specific numbers to games. However

Buckle up. This is the story of the most bizarre encounter ever hidden (or not so hidden) in a GBA cartridge.

So where did this come from?

Someone then misattributed the hack as a glitch in the original game. The myth snowballed.

Using this precise base file unlocks access to some of the most advanced fan-created games in the community: Pokémon Radical Red