STACK February 2016 Issue 136

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TWITCH PLAYS POKÉMON
1 2
Pokémon Red
Pitching towards the interaction between
players and viewers, what happens when
there is no player, and viewers must
work together to complete the game
themselves? Welcome to the beautiful
chaos that is Twitch Plays Pokémon.
The Internet is a magical place. For
something like this to happen, there’s a
lot of hard work and preparation that goes
into it. So, you’d think whoever was at the
helm would want to take credit - however
the reality is quite the contrary. The
mastermind behind Twitch Plays Pokémon
has chosen to remain anonymous,
although we do know that he’s an Aussie.
What a bloody rippa.
When people talk about TPP, most are
referring to the inaugural event, Twitch
Plays Pokémon Red. Launched back in
2014, it began when this said anonymous
legend launched an emulated version of
Pokémon Red on PC as a Twitch stream.
Using the chat, you could input the game’s
controls – up, down, left, right, B, A,
Start – and the character would do what
you asked. It sounds simple enough,
maybe when one person is doing it. Two
is a little more tricky, and thousands upon
thousands is borderline insane. Insanity,
funnily enough, is what ensued, as
70,000 individuals attempted to control
the one player to simply move in a given
direction. Of course, there will always be
three types of people; those who merely
spectate, those who want the story to
progress correctly and become the very
best, and those who will do anything
within their power to disrupt the course
of nature.
From the chaos sprung religion. The first
Pokémon TPP managed to successfully
catch was a Pidgey, that eventually evolved
to its final form of Pidgeot. Said pocket
monster became known as Bird Jesus,
as he was the only really useful team
member and the only one strong enough
to dish out any real damage.
Next came the Helix Fossil. What is
supposed to be turned into a Pokémon
and made a useful member of your team,
the Helix Fossil became the game’s
magic 8 ball. Since pressing start was
an easy way to disrupt the game, TPP
on Pokémon Red was comprised wholly
of menu navigation, which often ended
up with the community in the Items
section of their bag. The Helix Fossil was
somewhat lucky it existed in the way
that it did, as it couldn’t be dropped or
discarded in any way – the option chosen
instead was “Use”, which didn’t actually do
anything. So, of course, being inherently
useless, the TPP community deemed it
a prophet and would consult the Helix
Fossil whenever they were in doubt or
needed help. And yes, there’s even a
website ) that lets
you yourself consult the almighty conch.
The Internet is an interesting place.
The whole thing is blatantly hilarious
– which is to be expected from a
community-based Pokémon
playthrough. Of course, Pokémon
requires certain moves to
progress through the world – one
of which being Surf. When the TPP
community decided to evolve their
Eevee into a Vaporeon to learn the
move using a Water Stone, they instead
bought a Fire Stone and evolved it into
Flareon. Therefore, obviously, Flareon was
an agent sent by the Dome Fossil (the
Helix’s counterpart) to unseat them from
their quest and disrupt all that is good and
holy. A blasphemer, if you will. An enemy
of the state.
Going back to captured Pokémon, it’s
been noted just how difficult to catch
the creatures were, let alone assigning
them nicknames. Charmander got
the name “ABBBBBBK(“. Rattata was
“JLVWNNOOOO”. Naturally, neither of
these are particularly easy to pronounce,
so the duo instead became known as
Abby and Jay Leno respectively. Sadly,
they were both released into the wild
after about 100 hours of play. May their
memories rest in peace. This doesn’t even
touch on the Farfetch’d that learnt Cut –
after six hours – and became known as
the “Slayer of Trees”. And a Venomoth that
was captured and deemed “AATTVVV” –
All Terrain Venomoth. Sigh.
And so we come to the introduction
of a Democracy. Up ‘til now, TPP would
simply take the input of chat commands
as they came and do as it deemed fit;
this came to be known as Anarchy mode.
The anonymous creator decided enough
anarchy was enough, and presumably,
if you ask the TPP community, was
under the control of the Dome Fossil
as he implemented the
new Democracy mode.
This took the majority
of input “votes” over a period of time
and implemented a majority command.
The two modes were switched between
dependent on viewer input, with the
anarchic being the preferable one.
Despite all the odds, after 16
consecutive days of play, the Elite Four
was beaten, and the game considered
completed. TPP had done the impossible.
The infinite monkeys on infinite keyboards
had done what was highly unlikely – but
ultimately inevitable – and taken over ten
times the normal playthrough time to
complete Pokémon Red.
And so the saga continued, with TPP
going on to tackle the rest of the Pokémon
games, even those on Gamecube and
3DS.
Described by some as a “car crash in
slow motion”, the social experiment is one
that has no end in sight. Hail Helix.