A pet fish in Japan was able to discover a glitch in Pokemon Sapphire that no one has ever seen since the games launch 18 years ago.
No, you did read that correctly, it was a fish who found it.
In Japan, a Japanese YouTuber by the name of Mutekimaru has often streamed his pet fighting fish, a quartet of fish who take turns playing Pokemon Sapphire. Of course, the fish don't actually press any buttons on their own, but Mutekimaru devised a system where he divides up the fish tank into sections corresponding to the different parts of the games controls. He then sets up a camera to film the fish, and as they swim around on certain movements, Mutekimaru will have the games controller scheme automatically convert their position in the tank into controller inputs.
It is a fish version of Twitch Plays Pokemon, essentially, with Mutekimaru streaming his fish's adventures. The fish have been successfully going through Pokemon Sapphire ever since, with the first major milestones coming in July of this year when they defeated two gyms on their own. But it was only a few days ago when Mutekimaru discovered something no other player has ever seen before, a particular glitch in the game.
The glitch was found in the Seafloor cavern, in a section where the player has to use the HM Strength to solve a puzzle by pushing boulders. The puzzle is normally fairly easy to do, but Lala, the betta/Siamese fighting fish who was playing at the time, discovered a glitch in-game where one boulder multiplies if pushed in a certain pattern! The boulder in question actually halts your progress in the puzzle, making it impossible to continue.
The glitch was so out of nowhere that Mutekimaru actually took over the stream to replicate the process, and discovered that the glitch was not, in fact, a one off occurrence, but something that could happen to any player.
As far as anyone is aware, the glitch found by Lala is an undiscovered one that has never been seen or recorded before, nearly two decades after the release of Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire. There are also so many questions to ask regarding this discovery as well; for example, is it a Japan only glitch, or one also found in the international release of the game?
At the end of the day, we can thank Mutekimaru for discovering something hidden by playing Pokemon with his pet fish.
