on the TPP subredditTwitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a series of social experiments in which commands representing buttons on an original Game Boy Color (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 Bronze is the third run of Season 5, and the thirty-first run overall ; it ran from June 9th, 2018, to June 18th, 2018. The game used for this run, Pokémon Bronze, is an extensive hack of Pokémon Gold taking place in the whole new region of Kohto. Its creator, Freako, was also the one behind Pokémon Dark Graystone, a joke hack that was previously played as a Season 4 side-game. On top of the new region, it features an original storyline, a new villainous team known as Team Racket, different starters, an even two meme-inspired Pokémon in the form of MissingNo. and Pumbloom.
The Host for this run was a female character named "FEEFFrr" (often interpreted as either "Fifi" or "Fifer"), who picked Pichu as her starter and named it "//..Wnne;Pk", immediately earning it the nickname of "Winnie the Chu" among the Voices. During her travels through Kohto, she caught a MissingNo. named "LLLLLLLCCC" and made it a permanent addition to her team, and performed such feats as walking on trees, traveling to a glitched dimension, and warping all over the place after ignoring the warning of a gate-keeping Picnicker that turned into a Magikarp; as a result, a lot of the lore for this run followed up on the "glitchmancing" storyline that had been introduced with Bootleg Green and Dual Red & Blue.
See also here for the archived status of the run, or here for live updates, which have been archived here.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Bronze contains examples of:
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Sure, FEEFFrr keeps him in her contact list, and sure, they frequently talk with each other over the phone... But as far as the Voices are concerned, Zack is a wannabe Joey at best, and an over-obsessive, insufferable nuisance at worst. In fact, #ShutUpZack ended up trending in the chat on several occasions.
- Glitch Entity: As the game started, the overlay tried to initialize the party using some odd data that it somehow managed to parse into a party. The result was a completely glitched party◊ composed of seven Pokémon, namely a Meowth, a Rhyhorn, a Blastoise, two Ho-Oh, a P-Unown, and a Pokémon without a sprite. Their names, level, stats, moveset, and held item were all completely out of whack, with the "empty" one in particular having no valid moves, a double Fairy-type, and hitting both the maximum level and amount of HP possible. All of them ended up affected with the sleeping status, with the exception of Rhyhorn which was frozen instead.
- Killed Off for Real: About half a dozen Pokémon were released during the course of the run; most notably, on Day 5, the hearts of many viewers broke as "Winnie" the Pikachu, which was the only Pokémon on the team at that moment, ended up being released while attempting to withdraw more team members.
- Minus World:
- Most of Kanto technically qualifies. One unedited warp in Kohto's Memoria Town led FEEFFrr to Kanto's Route 15, allowing her to access Vermilion City, Saffron City, Cerulean City, and most of the surrounding routes. One NPC, Picnicker Edna, even called out FEEFFrr on it, stating "You shouldn't be here! Silly hacker!". Because those areas weren't meant to be accessed, some of the warps, notably the door of the Power Plant and the entrance of Rock Tunnel, led to locations they weren't meant to, allowing for some Sequence Breaking.Live Updater: Never underestimate TPP's ability to break things.
- The stairs that were supposed to lead to Vermilion City's docks instead sent FEEFFrr straight to a glitched area covered in incoherent tilesets, which notably featured two blue clones of FEEFFrr. Talking to one of those clones actually triggered the dialogue that would normally happen before boarding the S.S. Anne; after said dialogue however, FEEFFrr found herself not on the aforementioned boat, but trapped inside an even glitchier, enclosed area. An earlier savestate had to be loaded in order to get her out; then, as the chat kept talking to the NPC and getting stuck despite being asked not to, the stream operator eventually took over control and just flew away from the glitched area.
- Most of Kanto technically qualifies. One unedited warp in Kohto's Memoria Town led FEEFFrr to Kanto's Route 15, allowing her to access Vermilion City, Saffron City, Cerulean City, and most of the surrounding routes. One NPC, Picnicker Edna, even called out FEEFFrr on it, stating "You shouldn't be here! Silly hacker!". Because those areas weren't meant to be accessed, some of the warps, notably the door of the Power Plant and the entrance of Rock Tunnel, led to locations they weren't meant to, allowing for some Sequence Breaking.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo: The original hack featured a battle against Red in Cerulean Cave. Here, it has been replaced, as is tradition, with a battle against a Trainer from TPP's past, namely AJDNNW from Twitch Plays Pokémon Crystal, using his team from the Season 3 revisit.
- Sequence Breaking: Because it is located in a part of Kanto that wasn't meant to be accessed through normal means, the entrance of Rock Tunnel led FEEFFrr directly in the middle of Cerulean Cave, thus skipping most of the dungeon the run's final boss resided in.
- Super-Cute Superpowers: For about half of the first day, Winnie found herself without a single damaging move, and had to make do with Charm, Tail Whip, and Sweet Kiss, the later notably becoming her only method of defeating opponents (by hoping that they take themselves out in the resulting confusion). This was eventually remedied when she was taught Mud-Slap in place of Charm, and later Zap Cannon in place of Tail Whip.
- The Unpronounceable: While random assortments of letters and symbols are commonplace in TPP, the rival in this run is a particularly egregious example of an unpronounceable name, being called "--?!!".
- What Happened to the Mouse?: During the first two hours of the run, FEEFFrr visited Pallet Town, and met with Red. In the unaltered version Pokémon Bronze, Red later serves as the True Final Boss of the game. Here however, because said final battle was replaced with AJDNNW from Twitch Plays Pokémon Crystal, that encounter never gets any kind of proper payoff.
