Pokémon Red isn’t a game that should take multiple weeks of playing 24/7 to beat. When it does, it’s one entertaining and impactful experience.
Twitch Plays Pokémon allows viewers to vote on game inputs of Pokémon Red by writing button commands in the comments. The playthrough started over a week ago, and has been stuck at Pokémon Tower for three days.
An anarchy/democracy system helps to decide whether every input is done, or is done via majority vote, respectively. The votes tend to keep the governmental status bar in the middle, thus gluing the playthrough to anarchy until a 75 percent vote changes it over to democracy.
Things get even worse with combo inputs, such as making Red press start nine times by trolling a “start9” comment. Thankfully, the creator of the Twitch Plays Pokémon livestream has modded the playthrough to add a “start throttle” to trump the start9 trolls. Finally, all comments take about 20 seconds to be processed.
It’s utter chaos at times, but there are surprisingly a lot of moments of organization. By setting up a special script, players can read only the comments other than input commands and government votes. Also, a GoogleDoc run by Twitch Plays Pokémons’ creators tracks the progress of the run, states the goals that need to be met to move on, and gives links to helpful forums like Reddit where players can create a course of action.
Early in the playthrough, ridiculous shenanigans ensued. Names of Pokémon are hilarious, the Pokémon often get released, important items get tossed, and Red gets stuck behind ledges all the time. An infamous tree cutting scenario is thought back to in shudders. The fan image macros are often hilarious, including this Inception-inspired one depicting the moment Red took a fateful leap off of the Daycare Center’s ledge (source).
Moments like the one below are about ten times more frustrating when trying to coordinate 70,000 commentors at once to say “left,” “down” and “A” to select a Poké Ball. Many battles end in stalemates between Ghost and Normal types playing through moments like, “Lick doesn’t effect Pidgeot!”
Watch the Twitch Plays Pokémon livestream for yourself to see what a difference start9 can make to a playthrough of Pokémon Red (video plays automatically, unmute to hear).
Do you find the ‘Twich Plays Pokemon’ livestream entertaining or annoying?
Featured image from Reddit user purplemew.