Twitch Plays Pokémon

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Commands identified by the game engine shown on-screen (right of image) are applied to the player character in Pokémon Red (left)

Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a social experiment and channel on the video game live streaming website Twitch, consisting of a crowdsourced attempt to play Game Freak's and Nintendo's Pokémon video games by parsing commands sent by users through the channel's chat room. It holds the Guinness World Record for having "the most participants on a single-player online videogame" with 1,165,140 participants.[1]

The concept was developed by an anonymous Australian programmer and launched on February 12, 2014, starting with the game Pokémon Red. The stream became unexpectedly popular, reaching an average concurrent viewership of over 80,000 viewers (with at least 10% participating). On March 1, 2014, the game was completed after more than 16 continuous days of gameplay; Twitch estimated that over 1.16 million people participated, with peak simultaneous participation at 121,000, and with a total of 55 million views during the experiment.[2] On December 5th 2014, Twitch Plays Pokémon received a Game Award in the "Best Fan Creation" category.[3]

The experiment was met with attention by media outlets and staff members of Twitch for its interactivity, its erratic and chaotic nature, the unique challenges faced by players due to the mechanics of its system, and the community and memes developed by participants. Twitch as a company used the experiment to explore how they could make streaming more interactive for viewers and expand their offerings. Following the completion of Red, the broadcaster continued the channel with many other games in the Pokémon series along with unofficial ROM hacks. The broadcaster has plans to continue with other Pokémon games as long as there remains interest in the channel. The success of the experiment led to a number of similar Twitch-based streams for other games, and led Twitch to promote more streams with similar interactivity with watchers.

Premise[edit]

Inspired by another Twitch-based interactive game, Salty Bet (a website where users can wager on the outcome of randomized M.U.G.E.N. matches)[4] and described as a social experiment, the system used by the stream was coded by an anonymous Australian programmer, colloquially known as the "Streamer", consisting of an IRC bot written in Python and the Game Boy emulator VisualBoyAdvance. The script captures specific case-insensitive messages (directional commands, "B", "A", "select", and "start") sent into the stream's chat room by users, and sends them to the emulator as button input, thus controlling the game. An additional web app coded using JavaScript is used to display a live tally of moves that are shown within the stream. The Streamer chose Pokémon Red and Blue for the project, citing nostalgia for the early games,[5] the fact that "Even when played very poorly it is difficult not to make progress in Pokémon",[6] and because its current control structure "[wouldn't] work with any genre that isn't a JRPG", particularly targeting its "forgiving" turn-based structure and lack of reaction-based gameplay, compensating for the large amount of input lag between the game and the stream. The Streamer used an edited version of the game, which claims to make all the original 151 Pokémon accessible, in hopes of making completion of the Pokédex a possibility. However, the edited version used was unfinished and has no gameplay differences when compared to the original game.[5][7][8][9][10][11]

The erratic nature of the control scheme has made the game longer and harder to play than under normal circumstances; an Ars Technica writer commented that "(Red) gets stuck in corners. He walks in circles, compulsively checking his Pokédex and saving over and over again. Commands stream in from the chat channel faster than the game can possibly process them, making progress difficult-to-impossible even without the lag factor or the 'help' of gleeful trolls." Recurring difficulties have occurred with areas of the game involving mazes and ledges (areas with the latter taking as long as several hours to navigate due to users intentionally sending "down" commands to jump off the ledges), the accidental release (permanent deletion) of several Pokémon (including an incident referred to as "Bloody Sunday," where a total of twelve Pokémon were accidentally released whilst trying to obtain a Zapdos from the PC),[12] and users repeatedly sending "start" commands to open the pause menu, often followed by opening the character's inventory to select random items.[4][13][14] A system to throttle inputs on the Start button was added to mitigate this particular effect.[15]

Despite the seemingly erratic process of playing the game, players have attempted to collaborate and strategize through various means, including infographics and a user script which hides command messages from the chat window to allow conversation. This was necessary for the players to progress as several areas of the game require coordinated actions to gain Pokémon with a specific skill needed to clear obstacles in Red's way, and earlier attempts without such coordination resulted in missing out on specific opportunities early on in the playthrough. In essence, the majority of players have attempted to counteract trolls trying to impede progress.[4][13][16] A computer program was even created to automatically identify these trolls.[17]

The Streamer has since collaborated with others to continue preparing tools for the games for the Twitch channel. This group had added live commentary on the games as they were played. As a result of intra-group hostility from some of the collaborators, the Streamer stepped down from his role as lead for Twitch Plays Pokémon on 22 November 2017, and gave control to another collaborator.[18]

Progression and further games[edit]

On 18 February 2014, after encountering major difficulties with a puzzle in the Team Rocket hideout, a new mechanic was introduced in an effort to make the game easier to play, Democracy mode. On introduction it initially made all movements subject to a vote: all inputs received over a period of time (usually 30 seconds) were tallied, and the winning command would be executed at the end of that time. Users could also append their movements with numbers to specify the length of the motion, such as "right3" to mean three consecutive "right" inputs. Many people were outraged over this new system and protest broke out in the Twitch chat, many of them using the command "start9" (which would open and close the pause menu nine times to slow down progress) to fight the system. This became known as "The start9 protests." The broadcaster later reworked the mechanic so that users could vote to switch between two modes: "Anarchy", the previous default, and this new mode "Democracy."[19][20] However, a change to Democracy mode requires a supermajority vote, while a change to Anarchy mode requires only a majority vote, as indicated by an on-screen meter. This change was considered divisive by players, who believed that Democracy mode conflicted with the original concept of the stream and eliminated the potential for randomness which had helped to drive the elaborate narrative and mythology that had built up around the playthrough.[4][5][15][20][21][22]

Following the completion of Pokémon Red, a new game began on 2 March 2014, this time with the second generation game Pokémon Crystal.[23] The developer set a deadline for the completion of Crystal with the plan to start Pokémon Emerald on a fixed date, though the players were able to complete Crystal well before this point.[24] With the change to Crystal also came a change to the voting system; the Democracy mode was automatically activated at the top of each hour.[25] By 14 March 2014, players had reached a major battle on Mt. Silver against Red, a trainer representing the player-character from Red and Blue; however, the game was also modified so that Red's team would consist of the same Pokémon that were used to beat the Elite Four in the Twitch Plays Pokémon playthrough of Pokémon Red earlier.[26] The developer stated that he intentionally changed the game data of Crystal to behave in this way, as it was Game Freak's original intent when creating the game that the player would face Red in Crystal using the Pokémon they had finished Red with.[24] Crystal was beaten on 15 March, with more than 13 days of playtime.[27][28] The developer stated that even though fewer viewers watched Pokémon Crystal compared to Pokémon Red, he will continue the stream with other Pokémon games as long as there remains interest in the experiment.[24][29]

Pokémon Emerald was started on 21 March 2014. With the shift to Emerald, the Democracy mode was initially disabled entirely.[30] Emerald was repeatedly restarted due to its soft reset ability, but was later fixed by the broadcaster.[31]

The shift to Pokémon X—the 1st installment in the franchise for the Nintendo 3DS, brought changes to the stream's setup. As there was no PC-based emulator for the 3DS at the time, the stream was conducted on actual 3DS hardware using a hardware modification known as the 3DS Streaming Console with External Control Interface (3xtDS); developed by Reddit user dekuNukem, also known as Twitch_plays_3ds (who has also designed an automated rig for "chaining" and detecting "shiny" Pokémon),[32] the mod allows direct control of inputs on the device via a USB-based interface, and added the video output required for capturing the screens' content. The change to native hardware also allowed the stream to use the Wi-Fi capabilities of the device; other players of Pokémon X and Y could directly interact with the stream's player via Nintendo Network and the game's internet-enabled features, such as online battles, trades, and O-Powers.[33] Following its release, Pokémon Omega Ruby was also played in the stream.[34]

In honour of the one-year anniversary of the original run, a new playing of Pokémon Red began in February 2015. The goal was to complete the game's main storyline and to catch all 151 Pokémon, the latter which they did in around 39 days.[35][36]

To celebrate the project's fourth anniversary, the channel started a new playthrough of both Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue simultaneously. Players in the Twitch channel can specify which game their command is for, but otherwise commands are issues alternating between the two games, and when the game's democratic mode is on, the command voted on is used in both games.[37]

As the experiment moved into its fifth year, having exhausted all the official Pokémon games, the channel began using more fan-created mods of the Pokémon games.[38]

In honor of running for six years straight, the stream ran a gauntlet of 6 games in a row.

Viewership[edit]

Launched on 12 February 2014 as a "proof of concept", the stream was relatively inactive for the first day and a half of playing.[6] However, the stream quickly went viral after that, reaching a total viewership of around 175,000 by 14 February (when players managed to beat the first of eight Gym leaders).[39] By 17 February, the channel had reached over 6.5 million total views. By 20 February, the channel had over 17 million total views, and was averaging concurrent viewership between 60 and 70 thousand viewers with at least 10% participating. By then, the players had managed to catch 12 different species of Pokémon, and made it past the fourth gym.[9][10][11] On the completion of Red, the channel had reached 36 million total views, with a peak concurrent viewership of 120,000, and an estimated 658,000 had participated.[40][41] The Red stream was eventually recognized by the Guinness World Records for having "the most participants on a single-player online videogame" with 1,165,140.[1] The large amount of activity on the stream resulted in "enormous (and unforeseen) stress" on Twitch's chat system, requiring the site's engineers to move the stream's chat to a higher-capacity server normally used during major e-sports events, while working on improving the infrastructure's scalability.[42] The developer himself said, "I didn't think it was going to be this popular, I thought it would gain only a small group of dedicated viewers and many others would check it out briefly before moving on to other things. It's overwhelming how popular it has become."[6]

Community[edit]

An active community of players also emerged on communities and social networks such as Reddit, which have liveblogged the proceedings and developed memes and other works around occurrences in the game. One item in Red's inventory from the start of the game was the Helix Fossil, which was used later in the game to revive Omanyte, but is otherwise functionless. The Helix Fossil was selected so frequently that it became an inside joke among players, and at times humorously calling it a deity which the player-character was constantly consulting for advice, and it quickly became the players' "religion". Players went as far as treating the fossil as a symbol representing a sect which supports Anarchy mode, while treating its counterpart, the Dome Fossil (which revives Kabuto), as a deity to those who support Democracy mode.[4][13][22][40] Fans published "bibles" for the Helix religion.[43][44]

Certain Pokémon captured by Red during the gameplay have also gained fan followings. Two Pokémon that were obtained early in the game, and then later accidentally released were the Charmeleon and Rattata, "ABBBBBBK(" and "JLVWNNOOOO", further nicknamed "Abby" and "Jay Leno".[4][13] The team's Pidgeot, one of the highest level Pokémon in the group and often successful in battles, was named "Bird Jesus" by the community; concurrently, the team's Zapdos was nicknamed "AA-j" but referred to as "Archangel of Justice" or "Anarchy Bird".[4][13][45] Their Flareon was dubbed the "False Prophet", as players had accidentally obtained it instead of Vaporeon, which was needed so they could teach it the "Surf" move needed to travel on water, and it had later caused the release of the Charmeleon and Rattata.[46] During the eleventh day of the event (23 February), which fell on a Sunday, the players inadvertently released a dozen of the captured Pokémon, effectively deleting the creatures from the game, an event that later became known as "Bloody Sunday".[47] The practice of nicknames continued into Crystal, which included a new Pidgeot nicknamed "Brian", and a Feraligatr nicknamed "Lazorgator".[45]

Reception[edit]

Media outlets have described the proceedings of the game as being "mesmerizing," "miraculous," and "beautiful chaos," with one viewer comparing it to "watching a car crash in slow motion."[4][13][14] Ars Technica felt that it encapsulated "the best and worst qualities of our user-driven, novelty-hungry age," providing hours of arguable time-wasting entertainment through a word-of-mouth viral distribution.[4] The stream has been compared to the infinite monkey theorem in that effectively random input to a game still ultimately comes out with forward progress in the game.[48][49] Twitch vice president of marketing Matthew DiPietro praised the stream, considering it "one more example of how video games have become a platform for entertainment and creativity that extends WAY beyond the original intent of the game creator. By merging a video game, live video and a participatory experience, the broadcaster has created an entertainment hybrid custom made for the Twitch community. This is a wonderful proof of concept that we hope to see more of in the future."[9]

Legacy[edit]

Twitch Plays Pokémon has also inspired imitators with other video games, such as Pokémon Blue, QWOP, Tetris (including one which used the actual command inputs from the original Twitch Plays Pokémon stream),[6][50] Street Fighter II,[9][10][13][21][51] Halo: Combat Evolved (itself made significantly difficult by its nature as a first-person shooter),[52] Metal Gear: Ghost Babel,[53] Dark Souls,[54] Fallout 3,[55] PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds,[56] Teamfight Tactics,[57] The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,[58] Pokémon Go (which used location spoofing to simulate the movement of a real person in response to viewers' commands),[59] and Microsoft Flight Simulator.[60] Similar Twitch Plays have been used for taking care of a virtual pet Tamagotchi,[61] and installing Arch Linux onto a virtual machine through text commands entered one letter at a time.[62] Inspired by this last application, another experimental "Stock Stream" was started in May 2017 to allow Twitch viewers to vote every five minutes on the trading of stocks on the New York Stock Exchange from an initial $50,000 fund provided by the stream's developer, placing some rules to avoid triggering any financial regulations.[63] A similar approach using Twitter, with the Twitter's user icon serving as the game's output and user commands taken from tweets sent to the account, was launched in January 2021 using Pokémon Red.[64]

The term "crowdplay" has been ascribed to similar games where the actions of the crowd directly influence the gameplay.[65] tinyBuild used the "Twitch Plays" model to release Punch Club, holding back release of the game until either a preset date or completion of the game running via a public "Twitch Plays" stream.[66] Punch Club later added the ability for viewers to bet on in-game fights using virtual Twitch currency, following a similar betting model used by Oxeye Game Systems for Cobalt.[67][68] Telltale Games premiered a new "crowd play" feature for its adventure games starting with its 2016 Batman game, allowing stream viewers to vote on selected decisions within the game.[69] In January 2016, Twitch created a specialized directory for various "Twitch Plays" streams, with their VP of Developer Success Kathy Astromoff stating that the company has recognized the growth of similar experiments, and enabling such experiments to be easily found by its userbase.[70] Further, in March 2016, Twitch announced a new "stream first" initiative to help developers create games that are aimed for integration of streaming and chat atop more traditional gameplay, basing the format on the prior success of Twitch Plays Pokemon streams.[71] Amazon.com, which acquired Twitch in 2014, developed the Amazon Lumberyard game engine that includes direct support for Twitch streaming to allow viewers to influence games via the associated chat, taking cues from the popularity of "Twitch Plays".[72]

Another homage, Fish Plays Pokémon, surfaced in August 2014 as part of a hackNY hackathon. The stream, which consists of a fishcam in which the position of a betta fish in a fish bowl is used to control Pokémon Red, peaked around 20,000 concurrent viewers.[73][74][75] Yet another homage, called π Plays Pokémon, maps every digit between 0 and 9 to a button on the Game Boy Advance and sends an input to Pokémon Emerald every second, echoing the idea that the mathematical constant pi is conjectured to be a normal number.[76]

A Helix Fossil emote with the shortcut "PraiseIt" was later made available as a Twitch chat emote in celebration of the original Pokémon Red run.[77]

On March 1, 2024, the official Pokémon Instagram account posted a video of various Omastar and Omanyte to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the original run’s completion.[78]

Game completion[edit]

Season Game Start Completed Completion time Notes
Season 1 Pokémon Red 12 February 2014 1 March 2014 16 days, 9 hours, 55 minutes, 4 seconds
Pokémon Crystal 2 March 2014 15 March 2014 13 days, 2 hours, 2 minutes, 55 seconds Uses a modded version, with 251 species of Pokémon available and the final boss Red's team consisting of the same team from Twitch Plays Pokémon Red.
Pokémon Emerald 21 March 2014 11 April 2014 20 days, 21 hours, 55 minutes, 41 seconds
Pokémon Randomized FireRed 11 April 2014 27 April 2014 15 days, 2 hours, 1 minute, 54 seconds Used a modded version with a pseudorandom number generator to change the predetermined Pokémon, items, and moves.
Pokémon Platinum 2 May 2014 20 May 2014 17 days, 11 hours, 38 minutes, 47 seconds
Pokémon Randomized HeartGold 23 May 2014 12 June 2014 18 days, 20 hours, 33 minutes, 51 seconds Used a modded version with a pseudorandom number generator to change the predetermined Pokémon, items, and moves.
Pokémon Black 15 June 2014 27 June 2014 12 days, 18 hours, 34 minutes, 59 seconds
Pokémon Blaze Black 2 6 July 2014 22 July 2014 19 days, 2 hours, 15 minutes, 37 seconds Used a ROM hack of Pokémon Black 2 called Pokémon Blaze Black 2 and featured the ability to obtain all Pokémon available within Generation V as well as other gameplay tweaks.[79][80]
Pokémon X[79] 27 July 2014 1 August 2014 5 days, 5 hours, 44 seconds
Pokémon Omega Ruby 22 November 2014 29 November 2014 8 days, 13 hours, 29 minutes
Season 2 Pokémon Anniversary Red 12 February 2015 23 March 2015 39 days, 19 hours, 27 minutes, 12 seconds Used a modded, more difficult version which makes all 151 species available; goal is to complete the Pokédex.
Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal 23 March 2015 10 November 2015 37 weeks, 3 days, 3 hours, 21 minutes A bootleg version of Pokémon Crystal. This version is notorious among Pokémon fans for its rampant mistranslations.[81] Unlike previous games, this version was not played constantly and instead was interspersed between Pokémon Battle Revolution matches.
Touhou Puppet Play 1.8 Enhanced 10 May 2015 24 May 2015 13 days, 15 hours, 44 minutes Uses two modded versions of Pokémon FireRed at once known as Touhou Puppet Play 1.8 Enhanced which uses characters from the Touhou Project game series in place of Pokémon is utilized, as well as the hack Moémon. Both were being completed simultaneously.
Moémon
Pokémon Randomized Alpha Sapphire 12 July 2015 26 July 2015 14 days, 1 hour, 17 minutes Used a modded version with a pseudorandom number generator to change the predetermined Pokémon, items, and moves. Super Smash Bros. for Wii U matches, played by computer AIs, were streamed alongside the Alpha Sapphire playthrough.
Pokémon Colosseum 12 October 2015 18 October 2015 6 days 3 hours, 27 minutes
Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness 12 December 2015 20 December 2015 8 days 4 hours 9 minutes
Pokémon Trading Card Game 20 December 2015 13 February 2016 7 weeks, 6 days, 25 minutes, 6 seconds Similarly to Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal, this game was played intermittently throughout Pokémon Battle Revolution. The game was completed during the Anniversary Crystal intermission.
Pokémon Trading Card Game 2 13 February 2016 8 April 2016 7 weeks, 6 days Started during the pre-Anniversary Crystal intermission. Finished during post-Anniversary Crystal intermission.
Season 3 Pokémon Anniversary Crystal 14 February 2016 16 March 2016 30 days, 4 hours, 33 minutes Similar to Anniversary Red in which a modded version is used and it's required to catch all Pokémon to complete the game.
Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team 12 February 2016 27 January 2017 50 weeks, 2 hours, 24 minutes Played as a sidegame both alongside Pokémon Battle Revolution and other runs. It was temporarily replaced by Pokémon Ultra.
Pokémon Brown 16 June 2016 27 June 2016 11 days, 2 hours One of the original serious ROM hacks based on Pokémon Red.
Pokémon Randomized Platinum 31 July 2016 16 August 2016 15 days, 4 hours, 2 minutes Used a modded version with a pseudorandom number generator to change the predetermined Pokémon, items, and moves.
Pokémon Ultra 16 August 2016 28 October 2016 10 weeks, 3 days, 11 hours, 41 minutes A poorly made ROM hack based on Pokémon Leaf Green. Like Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal and the Pokémon Trading Card Game before it, it is a sidegame and is played between Pokémon Battle Revolution matches.
Pokémon Prism 9 October 2016 26 October 2016 16 days, 23 hours, 18 minutes The sequel to Pokémon Brown. It debuted on TPP after being in development for almost eight years.[82]
Pokémon Sun 18 November 2016 2 December 2016 13 days, 22 hours
Pokémon Waning Moon 13 January 2017 26 January 2017 13 days, 11 hours, 37 minutes Used a modded, more difficult version of Pokémon Moon.
Season 4 Pokémon Chatty Yellow 12 February 2017 24 February 2017 11 days, 19 hours The third anniversary run. Uses a modified version of Pokémon Yellow centered around Chatot, which utilizes scripting to take quotes from users in the chat to replace in-game dialogue in real time.[83]
Pokémon Dark Graystone 24 February 2017 13 March 2017 2 weeks, 3 days, 4 hours, 4 minutes, 57 seconds Uses a modified version of Pokémon Gold. Played as a sidegame like VC and Ultra.
Pokémon Ash Gray 13 March 2017 29 September 2017 28 weeks, 4 days, 28 minutes, 6 seconds Uses a modified version of Pokémon FireRed based on the events of the Pokémon anime. Played as a sidegame.
Pokémon Blazed Glazed 8 April 2017 25 April 2017 16 days, 16 hours Uses a modified version of an existing modified version of Pokémon Emerald, known as Pokémon Glazed.
Pokémon Randomized White 2 3 June 2017 20 June 2017 16 days, 18 hours, 11 minutes Used a modded version with a pseudorandom number generator to change the predetermined Pokémon, items, and moves.
Pokémon Pyrite 12 August 2017 26 August 2017 14 days, 7 hours, 58 minutes Uses a modified version of Pokémon Crystal featuring increased difficulty and other changes.
Pokémon Theta Emerald EX 30 September 2017 15 October 2017 15 days A modified version of Pokémon Emerald which features increased difficulty, 721 Pokémon as well as various other changes from later generations.
Pokémon Green 15 October 2017 13 April 2018 25 weeks, 5 days, 3 hours, 45 minutes, 36 seconds Badly translated bootleg. Played as a sidegame.
Pokémon Ultra Sun 25 November 2017 8 December 2017 13 days, 4 hours, 7 minutes
Season 5 Pokémon Red and Blue 12 February 2018 27 February 2018 14 days, 1 hour, 50 minutes A dual run in which Pokémon Red and Pokémon Blue are played simultaneously. Unlike the previous dual run, inputs are split between the two games and users can choose to input specifically for one game or let it alternate between them.
Pokémon Storm Silver 14 April 2018 4 May 2018 19 days, 3 hours A romhack of Pokémon SoulSilver in which all Pokémon from up to the fourth generation are available as well as various other minor changes.
Pokémon Sweet 4 May 2018 10 February 2019 40 weeks, 1 day, 23 hours, 56 minutes, 23 seconds A romhack of Pokémon FireRed with "candified" Pokémon known as PokéSweets. Played as a sidegame.
Pokémon Bronze 9 June 2018 18 June 2018 8 days, 8 hours, 21 minutes A romhack of Pokémon Gold.
Pokémon Randomized Y 11 August 2018 26 August 2018 14 days, 11 hours, 26 minutes Used a modded version with a pseudorandom number generator to change the predetermined Pokémon, items, and moves.
Detective Pikachu 8 September 2018 10 September 2018 1 day, 22 hours, 47 minutes
Pokémon Flora Sky 13 October 2018 29 October 2018 16 days, 2 hours, 42 minutes A romhack of Pokémon Emerald featuring an original story and Pokémon from the fourth and fifth generations.
Hypno's Lullaby 30 October 2018 12 November 2018 1 week, 5 days, 23 hours, 55 minutes, 43 seconds A romhack of Pokémon FireRed based on the creepypasta, Hypno's Lullaby. Played as a sidegame.
Pokémon Crystal Randofuser 8 December 2018 19 December 2018 10 days, 9 hours, 1 minute A romhack of Pokémon Crystal which fuses different Pokémon together.
Season 6 Pokémon Burning Red 12 February 2019 22 February 2019 9 days, 13 hours, 33 minutes Used a romhack with the ability to switch between Pokémon Red and Pokémon FireRed. Pokémon, money and most items are transferred between both games.
Pokémon Gold Space World Demo 2 March 2019 30 March 2019 4 weeks, 23 hours, 33 minutes, 15 seconds An early demo of Pokémon Gold that was playable at Nintendo Space World 1997 featuring Pokémon that are unused in the final game. Played as a sidegame.
Pokémon Metronome Sapphire 31 March 2019 19 December 2019 TBD Uses a modded version with a pseudorandom number generator to change the predetermined Pokémon and sets them all to Level 100 with only the move Metronome. Ended as a full-run and continues as a sidegame as of 3 April 2019.
Pokémon Volt White 13 April 2019 25 April 2019 11 days, 21 hours, 16 minutes A romhack of Pokémon White featuring all Pokémon from the fifth generation available as well as various other changes.
Pokémon Randomized Colosseum 8 June 2019 15 June 2019 6 days, 5 hours, 34 minutes, 21 seconds Used a modded version with a pseudorandom number generator to change the predetermined Pokémon, items, and moves.
Pokémon XG: NeXt Gen 13 July 2019 21 July 2019 8 days, 1 hour, 40 minutes A romhack of Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness.
Pokémon TriHard Emerald 10 August 2019 20 August 2019 9 days, 21 hours, 34 minutes A romhack of Pokémon Emerald where defeated Pokémon are permanently removed from the party, similar to a Nuzlocke Challenge. The main difference being that upon loss of a battle, the game reverses to a previous save. Meaning that removed Pokémon can technically be restored at the cost of a loss of progress.
Pokémon Randomized Ultra Moon 12 October 2019 23 October 2019 10 days, 16 hours, 2 minutes, 17 seconds Used a modded version with a pseudorandom number generator to change the predetermined Pokémon, items, and moves.
Pokémon Sword 23 November 2019 1 December 2019 7 days, 23 hours, 57 minutes
Pokémon NavyBlue 1 December 2019 Ongoing TBD A romhack of Pokémon FireRed played as a sidegame. Extremely poorly made game, with many poorly made fan Pokémon.
Season 7 Pokémon Gauntlet Red 13 February 2020 19 February 2020 6 days, 18 hours, 43 minutes The Gauntlet is a rerun of most of the games played during Season 1 played one after the other.
Pokémon Gauntlet Crystal 23 February 2020 3 March 2020 8 days, 16 hours, 19 minutes, 43 seconds
Pokémon Gauntlet Emerald 7 March 2020 18 March 2020 11 days, 20 hours, 10 minutes, 15 seconds
Pokémon Gauntlet Platinum 28 March 2020 5 April 2020 8 days, 14 hours
Pokémon Gauntlet Blaze Black 2 12 April 2020 27 April 2020 14 days
Pokémon Gauntlet X 3 May 2020 10 May 2020 7 days, 5 seconds
Pokémon Lightning Sapphire 5 May 2020 10 December 2020 30 weeks, 2 days, 22 hours, 38 minutes, 3 seconds A bad translation of Pokémon Sapphire. Was the final sidegame before a vote to remove them.
Pokémon Sirius 13 June 2020 23 June 2020 10 days, 1 hour, 12 minutes, 54 seconds A romhack of Pokémon Emerald and the prequel to Pokémon Vega.
Pokémon Rising Ruby 8 August 2020 21 August 2020 12 days, 22 hours, 16 minutes A romhack of Pokémon Omega Ruby including higher difficulty and all sixth generation Pokémon obtainable.
Pokémon Vega 12 December 2020 25 December 2020 12 days, 11 hours, 14 minutes A romhack of Pokémon Emerald and the sequel to Pokémon Sirius.
Season 8 Pokémon Chatty Crystal 14 February 2021 8 March 2021 21 days, 3 hours, 40 minutes The seventh anniversary run. Uses a modified version of Pokémon Crystal centered around Unown and Chatot, which utilizes scripting to take quotes from users in the chat to replace in-game dialogue in real time.
Pokémon Renegade Platinum 10 April 2021 21 April 2021 10 days, 19 hours, 50 minutes A romhack of Pokémon Platinum including higher difficulty, balance changes and all generation IV Pokémon obtainable.
Pokémon Green 8 May 2021 10 May 2021 1 day, 3 hours, 32 minutes, 15 seconds A collaboration between two other Twitch Plays streams in which they raced to see who could complete Pokémon Green, Pokémon Blue and Pokémon Red respectively.

TwitchPlaysPokémon played Pokémon Green and came in first.

TwitchPlaysPaperMario played Pokémon Blue and came in second.

TwitchPlaysSpeedruns played Pokémon Red and came in last.

Pokémon Blue 1 day, 7 hours, 22 minutes, 42 seconds
Pokémon Red 1 day, 11 hours, 3 minutes, 13 seconds
Dragon Ball Z Team Training 13 May 2021 N/A TBD A romhack of Pokémon FireRed featuring characters from the Dragon Ball Z anime series in place of Pokémon. Played as a sidegame.
Pokémon Randomized Black 3 July 2021 12 July 2021 8 days, 4 hours, 56 minutes A romhack of Pokémon Platinum including higher difficulty, balance changes and all generation IV Pokémon obtainable.
Pokémon Randomized Black 2 12 July 2021 29 July 2021 17 days, 7 hours, 35 minutes Used a modded version with a pseudorandom number generator to change the predetermined Pokémon, items, and moves.
Pokémon Emerald 13 August 2021 17 August 2021 3 days, 9 hours, 48 minutes, 21 seconds
Pokémon Blazing Emerald 21 August 2021 N/A N/A A romhack of Pokémon Emerald.

From Platinum to Black 2, the stream showed a second game, Pokémon Stadium 2, alongside the main game. Unlike other games, inputs for Stadium 2 were chosen at random and were not controlled by the chat. Instead, players on the chat were given virtual currency that could be used to place bets on the outcome of Stadium 2 matches.[84] After Pokémon X concluded on 1 August 2014, a similar system was implemented, with Pokémon Battle Revolution taking the place of Stadium 2, as it added more features such as better graphics. This time, instead of inputs being entirely random, players who bet on the current match could vote on which move would be used by their team each turn; the system would randomly choose one of the bettors' choices, but players who had placed higher bets had a higher chance of their move being chosen.[citation needed] The developer has created a modded version of Pokémon Battle Revolution known as Pokémon Battle Revolution 2.0. It is meant to fix glitches and add various improvements such as additional battle arenas.[citation needed] During the interim, the stream showed Harvest Moon GB, Pokkén Tournament, EarthBound, Robopon Sun, and save states of the first four runs in reverse order.

In addition, an extra game is showcased to the side of any game currently being played. This game is a romhack of Pokémon Pinball dubbed simply Pokémon Pinball Generations, which adds two new boards based on the second generation of Pokémon. As such, all Pokémon from Generation II are now obtainable in-game, and Pokémon badges are awarded randomly when a Pokémon is caught during a Pinball playthrough.[85]

See also[edit]

Further reading[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b "MOST PARTICIPANTS ON A SINGLE-PLAYER ONLINE VIDEOGAME". Guinness World Records. March 2014. Archived from the original on 20 June 2014. Retrieved 24 June 2014.
  2. ^ Chase (1 March 2014). "Victory! The Thundershock Heard Around the World". Twitch. Archived from the original on 5 March 2014. Retrieved 1 March 2014.
  3. ^ "The Game Awards Nominees 2014". Archived from the original on 14 November 2015. Retrieved 7 December 2014.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i "The bizarre, mind-numbing, mesmerizing beauty of "Twitch Plays Pokémon"". Ars Technica. Condé Nast Publications. 18 February 2014. Archived from the original on 18 February 2014. Retrieved 18 February 2014.
  5. ^ a b c "Twitch Plays Pokemon conquers Elite Four, beating game after 390 hours". CNET. CBS Interactive. Archived from the original on 1 March 2014. Retrieved 1 March 2014.
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External links[edit]

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