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Can we reflect on how once-in-a-lifetime Twitch Plays Pokemon was?

S

Stopdoor

Member
Every so often I remember this happened and marvel. A horde of tens of thousands defeated "the ledge". A horde of tens of thousands wrestled with and succeeded against many close calls with the forgotten mechanic of releasing your Pokemon at the PC. A horde of tens of thousands bided their time to un-fossilize Omanyte and grind him into their "Helix God". A horde of tens of thousands of people all collaborated to catch a Zapdos with a Master Ball.

Seriously. Especially that last one. How even? They only had one shot.

I'm probably forgetting some other awesome moments. Some might have been under "Democracy", but all those best of moments really did happen under pure "Anarchy". Too bad about that Rocket Hideout, but all I'll say was maybe that kick in the pants was ultimately for the greater good, letting us get to those cool moments with the energy necessary to make it a real legend and not just a technical feat we'd note in Kotaku months later.

Twitch Plays Pokemon really was a once in a lifetime gaming industry event, you know? It'll just never happen the same way again. Beyond the natural and forced jokes, there was some legitimate amazing feats. What a weird thing to know was always happening in the back of your head over the course of a week or two. A community event like no other. Not about the newest product, about money, about companies, about fame, but invigorating new life into something we're all familiar with in some way, that we could really share together.

Anyway, I can wax poetically, but maybe you can have some time to reminisce. It's just fun to remember it's something that really happened. Zapdos with a Master Ball, really?
 
W

WillyFive

Member
Twitch Plays Pokemon should have stopped streaming after the first game ended and wait a whole year to start up the next gen; make it a yearly event. I think that would have kept it's popularity.
 
A

AtticuSMT

Banned
I remember it happening, but didnt really get into it. Just seemed like organized chaos to me, so it wasn't anything super special.
 
P

Pudge

Member
It really was amazing. I wish the person that ran that stream figured out what he had and delayed playing through the new games instead of just blasting through the entire franchise. Could you imagine that being a scheduled yearly event like AGDQ?

It could have been something.

WillyFive said:
Twitch Plays Pokemon should have stopped streaming after the first game ended and wait a whole year to start up the next gen; make it a yearly event. I think that would have kept it's popularity.
Click to expand...

Drat, I've been Ninjask'd
 
P

| Praxis |

Banned
Is there a write up anywhere that assumes the person reading it knows nothing about pokemon other than there's a yellow one?
 
C

Crayolan

Member
g6e2i9d.jpg
Click to expand...

So many legendary moments. Feel bad for people who didn't find the stream until later runs, the sheer scale of the original might never be replicated.
 
H

Hydrus

Member
Yea it was amazing. Still remember getting ready to turn off the PC and head to sleep, when I decided to check up on it one last time. Go watch the live video, and It was the moment they were defeating blue. I thought "Holy shit! They actually did it!". Still awesome I got to watch that live lol.
 
Falchion

Falchion

Member
I remember being on stream when we got the Silph key which seemed like an impossible task at the time. I agree that it would be been cool to wait before going through the next games but whoever runs the channel probably wanted to maximize on its popularity while it was possible.
 
N

Nanashrew

Banned
I joined that chat around the time of Mt. Moon. It was great. I didn't have an account on GAF yet but I did lurk the thread for the art.

As a social experiment, nothing has really topped it. Sometimes I just like rewatching this video because it's just so good https://youtu.be/lLY19F0bN1g

--

And yeah, I do agree that it should have ended, or at the very least, taken a short break between games because it just crashed after that. And new people showing up and using old memes just because it sounded funny. There was no story or mythos built up or anything. It got terrible.
 
M

McNum

Member
Zapdos with the Master Ball in Anarchy Mode was the highlight of the entire stream. That should not have been possible. You need to not have used the Master Ball by accident. You need to navigate to Zapdos. You need to fight it, get into the Item menu, and navigate to the Master Ball. And they did it.

I think the runner up, apart from all the crazy lore, is the All Terrain Venomoth earning its final nickname. "Dragonslayer". Lance's final Dragonite vs a level 30-something Venomoth. But thanks to a quirk of programming, Dragonite kept using Agility, letting Venomoth win by poison.

It really was a once in a lifetime event. And it was amazing. Can ten thousand people sending inputs to the same game of Pokémon Red beat the game? Yes. They could. And most people didn't even think they'd get to Viridian City.
 
H

Hydrus

Member
McNum said:
Zapdos with the Master Ball in Anarchy Mode was the highlight of the entire stream. That should not have been possible. You need to not have used the Master Ball by accident. You need to navigate to Zapdos. You need to fight it, get into the Item menu, and navigate to the Master Ball. And they did it.
Click to expand...

This is still mind blowing.
 
S

Smasher89

Member
Just wait until someone makes the followup "twitch plays music".

What about the rocket hideout, did the first run actually not beat the game?, I heard something about the rules getting changed around the safari zone but not that much about the run!
 
S

Stopdoor

Member
McNum said:
Zapdos with the Master Ball in Anarchy Mode was the highlight of the entire stream. That should not have been possible. You need to not have used the Master Ball by accident. You need to navigate to Zapdos. You need to fight it, get into the Item menu, and navigate to the Master Ball. And they did it.
Click to expand...

Yeah, man. Holy goodness.

Smasher89 said:
Just wait until someone makes the followup "twitch plays music".

What about the rocket hideout, did the first run actually not beat the game?, I heard something about the rules getting changed around the safari zone but not that much about the run!
Click to expand...

Rocket Hideout was the largest roadblock in the game, with all the arrow panels that send you back to the start if you make a wrong move - probably the highest and longest amount of precision necessary in the game. After a few days the streamer implemented a "Democracy" mode that kicked in every so often where the most-voted on input was used every 30 seconds or something. Controversial of course.
 
P

Poor GRIMES

Banned
WillyFive said:
Twitch Plays Pokemon should have stopped streaming after the first game ended and wait a whole year to start up the next gen; make it a yearly event. I think that would have kept it's popularity.
Click to expand...
This.

They oversaturated it to the point where they no longer had any Pokemon games to play after a certain point lol. I believe the creator had to cheese it up after a while with special rules to get people going and viewing the stream.
 
C

Crayolan

Member
Smasher89 said:
Just wait until someone makes the followup "twitch plays music".

What about the rocket hideout, did the first run actually not beat the game?, I heard something about the rules getting changed around the safari zone but not that much about the run!
Click to expand...

The stream spent over 24 hours in the rocket hideout and viewercounts were dropping as progress came to a halt. So the *rumor* is Twitch didn't want the stream to die and strongly suggested to the streamer to do something to help the stream. He introduced "democracy mode" which made it so that instead of every input being read by the game, each individual input was voted on over a 30 second-1 minute long period. This pissed people off and so people spent hours just voting start9, refusing to progress, until the streamer finally made it so that people also had to vote for "democracy" (the new system) or "anarchy" (the old system). When democracy got over 80% of the vote, then it switched to that, and when anarchy got 50%, it switched back. In the end democracy only ended up being used in the rocket hideout, a few PC trips, the safari zone, one entry into the viridian gym, and victory road iirc.
 
M

Menitta

Member
I didn't watch Twitch Plays Pokemon because I never found it all that appealing, but I LOVED Twitch Watches Pokemon. I've seen a lot of Pokemon anime in my life and I've watched the movies multiple times, but watching those movies with a Twitch chat was easily the best way to watch them.

WAH BOUT THAT
 
C

Crayolan

Member
Menitta said:
I didn't watch Twitch Plays Pokemon because I never found it all that appealing, but I LOVED Twitch Watches Pokemon. I've seen a lot of Pokemon anime in my life and I've watched the movies multiple times, but watching those movies with a Twitch chat was easily the best way to watch them.

WAH BOUT THAT
Click to expand...

TPP did something like this during the Crystal>Emerald intermission where they "played" the GBA video versions of a few of the anime episodes. They had control of the buttons to skip forward and backward which was hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pD-yMGXMK2s
 
O

Orayn

Member
I'm proud to have created that first GAF thread on a whim after hearing about it via Twitter. That was early days.
 
M

Mushroomer25

Member
Possibly the best thing to ever happen on the internet. Everything about Twitch Plays Pokemon's first run was astonishing. The community to arise around this simple experiment was wild, passionate, and deeply talented.

I recall watching late at night, when a pro Starcraft streamer plotted to have his chat raid TPP - spamming commands that would draw the player character towards a PC. The intention was to release the team's beloved 'Bird Jesus'.

I watched as an assassination attempt was foiled live, as the chat collaborated until more non-raid users could outvote the trolls.
 
O

ocean

Banned
It's what got me into Twitch, GAF, and the "gaming world" online. I used to just play games and read articles. Forums, Twitch chat, Discords and stuff? Everything after the sheer magic of TPP.

The lore: off the top of my head, I remember Bird Jesus, ATV, Dux and Lord Helix. I remember reaching Giovanni....... and losing. I thought it was gonna be the end. Fearing the PC (oh the horrors of the PC). It was the most amazing thing I've ever been a part of online.

You had to be there.
 
B

blakep267

Member
I never was that big into actually watching TPP as I found it to be boring, but I loved the recaps, memes and meltdowns that came from it.

Menitta said:
I didn't watch Twitch Plays Pokemon because I never found it all that appealing, but I LOVED Twitch Watches Pokemon. I've seen a lot of Pokemon anime in my life and I've watched the movies multiple times, but watching those movies with a Twitch chat was easily the best way to watch them.

WAH BOUT THAT
Click to expand...
Yes oh my god. I had forgot about that the day it was supposed to happen so I missed the first movie, but I was able to watch the second movie and it was magical. The twitch chat along with the subtle stuff in the movie like ashs bad jokes and team rockets dark humour was just fantastic. It kinda went down hill once the third movie came on and I wish I could've seen some other stuff but I went to bed. I still kick myself for not watching the first movie. Shame that kinda thing will never be archived

LOLDSFAN said:
Bob Ross was also pretty great. Those are my 2 greatest Twitch events.
Click to expand...
Yup. It's kinda fun it's course now, but Bob Ross for that first week or so was just fantastic
 
struggler_guts

struggler_guts

Member
Are there any highlight vids or even archives to watch? I was one of the non believers who expected it to go nowhere so I ignored it :(
 
T

Torokil

Member
Damn its been nearly 3 years since the Red run. I was there during the Zapdos shenanigans and the final battle with blue. Good times. I stopped paying attention sometime during gen II.

Zapdos with the Master Ball in Anarchy Mode was the highlight of the entire stream. That should not have been possible. You need to not have used the Master Ball by accident. You need to navigate to Zapdos. You need to fight it, get into the Item menu, and navigate to the Master Ball. And they did it.
Click to expand...

The Zapdos was sent to the box and they had to sacrifice like 10 pokemon just to get it. The thing was nearly released. That shit was fucking intense, I'm talking Tuco scenes from Breaking Bad intense.
 
C

ChrisD

Member
May sound goofy, but I have such crazy nostalgia for it. I read the GAF threads like they were an ongoing world event, just to keep in the know of what was happening. Got out of bed at like... 3AM, because I wasn't very tired and happened to check the thread when Gary was being fought. I HAD to see the ending live!
 
T

theepicoftyler

Member
The implementation of Democracy kind of ruined the appeal for me. We've all been through the games before, the joy of it was seeing if the signal could be delivered through the noise.
 
mhayes86

mhayes86

Member
My wife and I had a blast with it and were present for most of the first games's stream. I even managed to screencap my command as it scrolled through the stream. The lore and memes that developed over the course of the game were hilarious!
 
H

Hydrus

Member
Off topic, but the other big Twitch stream that I loved, was that super cool old dude who would hear a small sample of a song and then do his rendition of it on two pianos. That dude was awesome! He did some dope pokemon covers. Cant remember if it was this year or last. Wish I could find the videos again.
 
E

everyday math

Banned
༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つWe must beat misty ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

No seriously. That was so much fun and the way the Pokémon community and many others came together to create such a fun story was just amazing.

I miss it.

Mushroomer25 said:
Possibly the best thing to ever happen on the internet. Everything about Twitch Plays Pokemon's first run was astonishing. The community to arise around this simple experiment was wild, passionate, and deeply talented.

I recall watching late at night, when a pro Starcraft streamer plotted to have his chat raid TPP - spamming commands that would draw the player character towards a PC. The intention was to release the team's beloved 'Bird Jesus'.

I watched as an assassination attempt was foiled live, as the chat collaborated until more non-raid users could outvote the trolls.
Click to expand...
I remember this. Many tried, but non truly prevailed. Praise the helix!
 
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