Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a social experiment in which commands representing buttons on an original Gamecube controller (up, down, left, right, A, B, X, Y, L, R, Z, start, control stick, and c stick) are entered into a chat on Twitch, and then translated into a game of Pokémon Colosseum via an IRC bot. In short, hundreds of people fighting over a controller. Throughout its life, Twitch Plays Pokémon has spawned hilarious characters, memorable moments, and even a religion.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Colosseum, the fourth run of "Season 2", takes the mob to the desert region of Orre. Where Teams Cipher and Snagem are stealing Pokémon and closing their hearts, creating dangerous new Shadow Pokémon. With new challenges like perpetual Double Battling, saving at the dreaded PC, and capturing Shadow Pokémon it's sure to be the most chaotic and challenging run since Red Anniversary.
The lore of this run focuses on A7, a teen who was originally part of the Pokémon Channel project and now trying to survive in the savage wasteland that is Orre after a Nuclear Apocolypse. Having lost his childhood companion Pikachu to his own stupid mistake, he was forced to join Team Snagem to survive. After finally having enough, he defects and steals the Team's prototype Snag Machine. His motives unclear, it is at that faithful day he meets a kidnapped girl named Rui...
The run officially got underway on October 12th, 2015, and officially ended on October 18, 2015 with the defeat of Team Cipher Leader Evice.
See also here
for the archived progress of the game, here for the archived status of the run, or here for live updates, which have been archived here. There is also a recap page, found here.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Colosseum contains examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: Rui's our companion, but we're named AAAAAAA.
- After the End:
- The lore has taken a turn toward this, citing many similarities between Colosseum and the unfinished Pokemon Channel playthrough from Intermission.
- Taken to the logical conclusion with AAAAAAA being the Human Character from Pokémon Channel◊.
- The lore has taken a turn toward this, citing many similarities
- Auto-Save: Creates a save state periodically.
- Book Ends: The run begins and ends at Outskirt Stands.
- Coincidental Broadcast: Like other televisions in previous runs, the mob tend to turn on the TV a lot. Unlike the other TVs, where each TV session has various shows to listen to, Colosseum only plays the same currently available news report that AAAAAAA is being part of. The mob spammed the TV 1000 times throughout the run, most of them intentional.
- Continuing is Painful: In order to checkpoint, the mob has to check in at the PC. Since the mob isn't too happy with PCs, they only checkpoint after story events and accidental PC usage. This means they often end up teleported a good distance away from where they once were and, thanks to Orre's map system, can take them anywhere from an hour to an entire day to get back to where they once were.
- Darker and Edgier: The game itself, even by Twitch Plays Pokémon standards, is darker and edgier. With a protagonist who's a former villain that goes through a Heel–Face Turn and decides to continue stealing Pokémon, but only from the bad guys.
- Dark and Troubled Past: Thanks to this game being on the higher end of Story to Gameplay Ratio, most of the lore involved the protagonist and the world's backstory this run, which primarially focused on how Orre became a Post Apocalyptic wasteland and how A7 turned to a life of crime.
- Developer's Foresight: After snagging Bayleef, AAAAAAA whites out, and the chat believes they've glitched the game and are able to go catch the other Johto starters, only to find out one Starter removes all three from their trainers' teams.
-
Dummied Out: A day before this run began, the mob played around Pokemon Channel. A notable thing of the intermission was the streamer's ability to turn Democracy Mode on and off by input through the chat rather than putting the stream offline for a couple of seconds. Since Colosseum was beaten without Democracy Mode, this input setup went unused for the run. - Everybody Lives: Despite the PC appearing in the strangest of places and whiting out makes AAAAAAA appear in front of one, the run was finished without any releases.
- Friendly Fire: Like the first Hoenn run, A7's team can attack each other as well as the opponents. This sort of infighting has earned Umbreon the nickname "Scumbreon" early in the run for biting Espeon so much.
- Interface Screw:
- Downplayed with the menus, as the borders are the only thing that occasionally glitches up.
- The battle with Ein was played with a blank screen; the chat managed to win despite the disadvantage.
- Kryptonite Is Everywhere: Colosseum has mostly everything the mob has trouble doing with in anarchy, with examples being:
- Colosseum's gameplay is purely made out of Double Battles, which the chat is generally known to rarely finish one without hurting their team members first.
- Saving/checkpoints in this game are done by using the PC, a device that most people are scared of using it because of accidental releases and party switching. Whiting out promptly boots AAAAAAA face-first to a PC. PCs are also not placed in uniform locations, making dodging them difficult.
- Similarly, the sheer amount of menus makes trying to navigate through them in anarchy incredibly difficult. Just trying to buy Poké Balls is a nightmare because the only place that sells them also sells status healing items first and foremost. Even though the Colosseums provide a stable way to grind and make money, every time the mob has attempted to buy Poké Balls so far, they wasted their money by accidentally buying vast amounts of awakenings and antidotes instead. This has made team building difficult, to say the least.
- Special Effect Failure: Because of the program the streamer uses to run the game, the graphics tend to black out or remove some of the textures of the Pokémon or scenery. Other times, textures can replace other textures, such as a giant Misdreavus showing up in a dark sky.
- Stealth Sequel: To the Pokemon Channel intermission.
- Useless Item: Awakenings, as the Call command (which replaces Run in this game) does the same thing. Its placement in the Poké Mart menu makes the mob buy many of them by accident.
