Well, I've seen "Twitch Plays Pokemon" mentioned across various sites, but I thought it was just some random typical "Let's Play" broadcast...little did I know that the scope was
far beyond that. XD
Thanks to
this post that unexpectedly made
Pokemon Red/Blue music randomly start playing in another tab in the browser I was using 1-2 days ago, I scrolled down to find what the trigger/source was, and I eventually became engrossed in it. XD Ugh...this is kind of why I try not to spend too much time with livestreams, but this particular one was just too compelling! Once I found out it had a
Bulbapedia and Wikipedia page dedicated to it, I considered whether I should start a TVTropes page for it - lo and behold, to my appreciation, it already had
a detailed page of its own! (and even a
KnowYourMeme page for all of the intriguing memes spawned from the Pokemon phenomenon, along with
its vast, dedicated subreddit!)
This has been quite an eventful month, though...from
Pokemon Bank's English release to Diancie's reveal, and now
Twitch Plays Pokemon (amidst other things in pop culture, like Little Mac's SSB4 announcement, 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics,
Power Rangers Megaforce's Season 2 premiere)... Although I kind of want the stream to be somewhat lengthy, if it keeps going on like this, it's going to detract from my productiveness a bit each day! {XD}
Anyways, I was present when we underwent the epic and tenseful "Lavender Town to Fuchsia City maneuver", where we got to Fuschia City after a
long trek from Lavender Town (annoyingly, my stream decided to conk out the
moment we transitioned from the route we were traveling on to Fuchsia City's boundaries), attempted to enter Fuchsia City's
(OMG; at this rate, 'fuschia' totally needs to be a valid spelling of 'fuchsia') Pokemon Center, succumbed to a ledge, tried to replicate the feat again,
strolled into Fuchsia Gym with Pidgeot as the only conscious Party Pokemon (any blackouts would've meant going back all the way to Lavender Town to likely navigate Kanto Route 12's maze
again), casually took down a Gym Trainer like it was nothing (who had only 1 Pokemon, although we sadly got Pidgeot poisoned in the process), with the chat subsequently going into a craze of reaching Democracy Mode in time to retain our progress. Unfortunately, Pidgeot succumbed to poison in the overworld, sending Red back to Lavender Town... That was probably one of the most depressing moments in videogaming that I've ever seen; it would've been such a
Crowning Moment of Awesome if we had made to Fuchsia's Pokemon Center... ;-;
I've watched most of Day 8 (I think I started on Day 6 or 7), although I missed the battle against Gym Leader Koga most of the Kanto Safari Zone navigation (I'm still hoping to actually be present during a time period where Democracy Mode is being used as opposed to Anarchy Mode). The "Great Freeze" (where inputs ceased to be acknowledged by the game as Twitch chat server maintenance was occurring) was hilarious with all of the "rioting", followed by the brief bursts of the game displaying all of the scrolling incoming inputs at a
very rapid rate.
Despite being just a viewer (for now), I still feel way more powerless compared to whenever I do battles in Hoenn's Battle Palace (where the computer essentially chooses move commands for your Pokemon at random, and your only permissible action is switching Pokemon). XD I feel like yelling at someone each time we screw up something (even though I haven't actually contributed to the chat yet). XD
I'm somewhat split on the use of Anarchy Mode vs. Democracy Mode.. While Anarchy Mode is truer to the spirit of the game/event, IMO, Democracy Mode
does help things get done (I'm glad Democracy Mode was used in the Safari Zone; would've liked to see it prevail during the aforementioned Pidgeot poisoning). I'm hoping it gets used primarily to prevent Unwinnable situations (i.e., if Pidgeot accidentally gets released at the PC, we don't really have any other high-level Pokemon, and it might take substantial experience-point grinding to get Pokemon to levels that can withstand/face the Elite Four properly... And since we can't re-battle Trainers in the game, if we don't have Pay Day, we have to conserve a lot of our money for potential things like resources and stuff).
Also, I LOL'd when I heard that we apparently soft-reset the game at point, leading to the disabling of the Select button. XD
Sooo... the chat broke. There's a message that says it's undergoing maintenance and no inputs are being registered. But the worst part is that we're stuck in battle with the Low Health Alert playing. Dx
The fact that the Low Health Alert annoying was playing at the moment was like icing on the cake (for me, it felt slightly annoying yet very appropriate). XD
---
In any case, I'll be watching for a while... Still awaiting the Sabrina battle, Viridian Gym battle, as well as pretty much everything that happens once we enter Victory Road. XD
To quote a few people:
It's so bizarre how quickly this turned into an internet phenomenon.
(Source)
So, in one week, we've spawned a new religion, grown martyrs and expelled heathens, and entered into a new leg of political debate, which was settled (mostly) in about 48 hours.
If this wasn't a video game, we'd be in history books by now, boys. We're more significant to the history of the world than Sealand, I'd wager.
(Source)
Lastly, obligatory XKCD comic! (
Reddit comments are equally hilarious; and that subreddit's user flairs are so fitting!)
So weird that I'm using the term 'we' so much despite not actually influencing Red's actions myself.. XD