The original CoroCoro lottery selected 20 people to receive Mew.
In 1996, Mew was a secret Pokémon hidden in Pokémon Red and Green. It could not normally be obtained through standard gameplay, so Nintendo and CoroCoro Comic announced a special promotion called the Legendary Pokémon Offer.
Readers sent in postcards, and 20 entrants were chosen at random. The winners sent their game cartridges to have Mew uploaded onto them, turning the mysterious Pokémon into a powerful promotional story and a major topic of conversation among players.
Mew was not one of the three starter Pokémon, and it was not simply another ordinary wild encounter. The lottery helped increase word-of-mouth interest in the games, while later events distributed Mew in other ways.