Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a series of social experiments in which commands representing buttons on an original Game Boy (up, down, left, right, A, B, start, and select) are entered into a chat on Twitch, and then translated into a game of Pokémon via an IRC bot. In short, hundreds of people are fighting over a controller. Throughout its life, Twitch Plays Pokémon has spawned hilarious characters, memorable moments, and even a few religions.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Bootleg Green is a side-game run played during Arena intermissions, featuring a badly translated bootleg version of Pokémon Green. It uses the same "full democracy" system as previous side-games, in which players get to vote on a single input in-between every Arena match.
As the game was based on the notoriously glitchy Pokémon Green and played entirely in democracy mode, the main appeal of this run was the sheer amount of glitches that players were able to pull off. Most notably, by using the Dokokashira door glitch
, the Hall of Fame was initially reached in a mere 6 daysnote , with exactly zero badges and zero Pokémonnote . This led to the popular interpretation that Larry, the Host of this run, actually posesses "glitchmancing" powers.
Bootleg Green was introduced on October 15, 2017, right after the end of Twitch Plays Pokémon Theta Emerald EX, as the third side-game of the fourth season, thus replacing the ill-fated Ash Gray. It kept running during the rest of the season, and ended for good on May 4th, 2018, soon after the end of Twitch Plays Pokémon Storm Silver, after which it was replaced by Pokémon Sweet.
See also here for the archived status of the run, and here for archived progress of the game in screenshot form.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Bootleg Green contains examples of:
- Demoted to Extra: Unlike with previous Kanto runs, Larry picking the CRUST fossil (aka. the Dome fossil) had little to no incidence on both the run and the lore. In fact, Larry is more often associated with OLDEN or Orgam Lorple than with Lord Dome, depsite them not being characters in the game itself.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: During the first three days, the whole game was red-tinted, with the exception of green-tinted characters. This was reversed for the remainder of the run.
- Eldritch Abomination: The lore tends to interpret most of Larry's Pokémon as such, due to the large amount of glitches they've been submitted to.
- The team contains an invisible hybrid of Charizard 'M and 'M, also referred to as Anedepami by the community, which is depicted as a spectral, corrupted Charizard-like entity.
- CUCKO is another hybrid Pokémon, this time resulting from the merging of a Doduo and a Charizard 'M. Just like Anedepami, it is depicted as an intangible and glitchy being, albeit one that resembles a messy fusion of Doduo and Charizard.
- WEEB, SUNRA and GG were each evolved from a different Eevee, which were obtained by picking up the same Poké Ball multiple times. It has thus been theorized that the original YEEB's soul was torn in three to create them.
- Upon being caught, Mewtwo (or rather, MISU) was nicknamed "MOM". One interpretation resulting from this is that Larry entrapped someone's soul in it, either his own mother, someone involved in raising him, or someone who experimented on him in the past.
- The team contains an invisible hybrid
- Game-Breaking Bug: Due to the technically-flawed nature of Pokémon Green coupled with the technically-flawed nature of the bootleg translation, it is no surprised that the game ended up crashing several times:
- The message displayed when using Aochider's MAIL was apparently left untranslated, causing the game to crash immediately when Larry attempted to do so.
- Attempting to view the stats of Charizard 'M while the party was seemingly empty caused, perhaps unsurprisingly, another crash.
- Good Bad Bugs:
- By using the Dokokashira door glitch, Larry was able to reach the Hall of Fame in only 6 days (or 10 hours and a half in game time). To put it into perspective, reaching it the "proper" way afterwards took roughly 25 weeks. Not only that, but he did so without obtaining any badge, or even the Pokédex, and with an empty party (said party technically contained an invisible glitch Pokémon, but the Hall of Fame treated it as the "Cancel" button and therefore did not register it).VorpalNorman: Thanks guys now this page looks broken
- Performing the aforementioned Dokokashira door glitch also involved swapping the first Pokémon in the party with a blank space, causing its data to become severely corrupted, and eventually erased for good upon entering the Hall of Fame.
- By the time the game was beaten, the party contained not one but two invisible hybrid Pokémon. One was a hybrid a of Charizard 'M and Doduo, while the other was a hybrid of two different glitch Pokémon, namely Charizard 'M and 'M.
- The Poké Ball containing Eevee could be picked up multiple times, prompting for a new nickname each time. Doing so then reordering the party made three copies of the same Eevee appear in it. They were later evolved into Vaporeon, Jolteon and Flareon respectively.
- By using the Dokokashira door glitch
- History Repeats: In true TPP tradition, an Eevee is once more one of the major characters of this run. This time around, YEEB the Eevee was obtained three times, leading him to be split into WEEB the Vaporeon, SUNRA the Jolteon, and GG the Flareon.
- Killed Off for Real: TORTO the Squirtle was erased from existence after reaching the Hall of Fame for the first time, its data having been overwritten by that of Charizard 'M.
- Sequence Breaking: And how. Larry was able to reach the Hall of Fame before even obtaining the Pokédex, something that would normally happen in the first ten minutes of playing the game.
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Spiritual Successor: This run can be seen as a spiritual successor to Twitch Plays Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal, as both are all-democracy side-games featuring a badly translated bootleg of an official Pokémon game. Incidentally, those two side-games were arguably the ones that received the most lore and attention from the community. - Stealth Prequel:
- Many believe that Larry is actually destined to become Sorcerer Sho from Twitch Plays Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal.
- It has also been speculated by some that he was the one to break the universe in two in Twitch Plays Pokémon Dual Red & Blue.
- Villain Protagonist: Larry seems to be largely considered that way. Whether because he willingly willingly sacrificed his own starter, turned his team into a bunch of eldritch abominations, and even possibly split the universe in half, he is widely considered to be the most amoral, if not downright evil Hosts to date. Worst still, it's been suggested by some that the sole reason he did all of it was for the sake of his own amusement.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: TORTO the Squirtle, Larry's starter, was heavily corrupted through use of a Select glitch, leading him to be erased for good once the Hall of Fame was reached for the first time soon after.
- Whatevermancy: Larry is described in most of the lore as a "glitchmancer".
