Quote Originally Posted by jcalder8 View Post
I would guess that Nintendo wrote into the code that the game would erase after a set period of time so that you couldn't pass it to all your friends. But that's only a guess.
That seems thoroughly unlikely, especially since it took three months. If that was really the case there would have been a horrible, contagious epidemic of Pokemon carts dying all across the nation!

There is of course a well-established way now for anyone to catch Mew without a cheat device or risking corruption of one's save data.