>>36012358>some story about an old collector dying and he had the demoThat was just some bullshit someone made up.
The complete history of the rom up to its full leak as far as I know it
The ROMs just showed up in a chat under a download link that stopped at 20 downloads. Someone happened to download it, checked out what it was, and started forming a crew of people to figure out what to do with it. Eventually, the group was formed and at some point they decided not to release it to the public until it was fully documented and translated. I believe the group was affiliated with TCRF and another scene, I'm pretty sure it was Hidden Palace. Also the game was unplayable as a rom and it had to have a couple of bytes changed so it would boot. It would also need further changes to allow for encounters outside of the demo area and for the demo mechanics to be stopped as well.
Not sure how much time passed after that, but someone in the Discord took some screenshots of the rom and posted them on the Lost Media Wiki Discord to let people know that it was on the way. They then deleted their pictures shortly after that since someone in their Discord cracked down on them for leaking elements of the rom. Then, someone who was on the LMW Discord (me) posted these screenshots on /vp/. Pic related was created in one of these threads to compile all that was known. Also, another person other than me posted the Pichu sprite on /vp/. After a couple days, a completely different person (who apparently had blackmailed someone into giving them the rom) officially leaked it into one of the /vp/ threads after posting some more screenshots. After that, the Discord group had to give in and did an official release on TCRF.