It would have been the second one. While looking through my CT folders (looking for the retranslation patch) I found a text file with the address mappings, which I remember manually adjust the values to get high stats( I don't really like battle, its more about the story for me). Most Emulators have utilities to do so, so it seems like it fell within the acceptable actions.
In other news, I found a leak of CE that is dated to the April build, which is close to the one that FW played during the walkthrough. Only difference is that the during the start, the debug room only appears for a second, and then the game starts automatically in Prologue.
FW, if you could, estimate where this places it in relation to the alpha and the beta that you played. I don't want to play it only to get stuck at the worst part (Marle alone) like the alpha.
I can provide the location if you guys ARE trying to close down the leaks.