Welcome to Kanto. Where Mew are Communist, Slaking fly, Wooper are Cavemen, Blastoise solve crimes, Bugs shoot lasers, and more...
"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't."
Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a series of social experiments that started in February 2014 in which commands representing buttons on an original Game Boy Advance (up, down, left, right, A, B, L, R, and start) are entered into a chat on Twitch, and then translated into a game of Pokémon via an IRC bot. In short, thousands of people are fighting over a controller. Throughout its life, Twitch Plays Pokémon has spawned hilarious characters, memorable moments, and even a few religions.
Following Twitch Plays Pokémon Emerald, the game, a remake of Pokémon Red and Blue, began on April 11, 2014, with the protagonist once again being a girl named A. Before the game started, the streamer ran the game's data through a randomizer, resulting in a Machop being the chosen starter Pokémon. ...A Machop that has the Truant ability. With Pokemon in the wild such as punching birds and Surskit with Hyper Beam, this is sure to be a run to remember.
At 15 days, 2 hours, 2 minutes, and a mere eight attempts (In comparison to last time, which took over one hundred times), the Elite Four and Champion Green were defeated, making A the Champion of Kanto.
Come April 2016, in the lead up PBR 2.0's debut, several older run saves were played. FireRed was the first, almost 2 years after its end. It's brief presence was soon followed by Emerald.
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for the archived progress of the game, here for the archived status of the run, or here for live updates, which have been archived here.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 FireRed contains examples of:
- Alice Allusion: A young girl adventures through a mixed-up, randomized world where brightly-colored creatures do nonsensical things. Bonus points for one of the character's nicknames actually being Alice. And one of her companions? A constantly smiling cat.
- All Just a Dream: One interpretation.
- Alternate Continuity: The Mob speculated before the run started that it would be one of these.
- This◊ comic shows the third option that it's a direct follow-up from the other games involving time travel.
- This
- Awesome, but Impractical: Half of the new Com Mons have Hyper Beam, Blast Burn, Razor Wind, or Skull Bash as their starting or early moves. These moves require a turn to cool down or a turn to charge up, during which you can't attack. These moves make up... basically 60% of the Mob's party's attacks.
- Balance Between Good and Evil: Seems to be the case with Helix and Dome. Originally Helix was the patron of the mob, being the incarnation of chaos and anarchy, and Dome was heavily demonized. But after A chose Dome, the opposite choice to her predecessor, images like this started popping up, leading the lore in a new direction. Helix and Dome aren't that different, merely two different aspects of existence that must be balanced out. In a world of order, Red called upon Helix to balance it out. And in this world of chaos, A attempts to restore balance by using Dome.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Meta-wise; typically, the Mob is an advocate of anarchy. This game takes place in a world where even the animals refuse to follow pre-established laws (like, say, physics).
- Blatant Lies: Professor Oak describes Machop as "really quite energetic" while A is considering a starter. It is revealed that the Machop has Truant and loafs around every other turn in battle.
- Body Horror: How many of the Pokemon work. Cats have a thin layer of magma surrounding them, birds can grow fists, mice have plant based organs, and so on.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Almost every Pokemon found so far.
- Also inverted: It's been theorized that the MAIN CHARACTER is a PC in Mook Clothing because that her 'starter' is a commonly found Pokemon, not the special starter one normally gets in the game. Most trainers' 'first Pokemon' is generally a common Pokemon. This might be considered a case of GMPC.
- Brought Down to Normal: Psychic-type Gym Leader Sabrina becomes a Normal-type Gym Leader due to the randomizer.
- And yes, we are aware of the irony present.
- Call-Back: A great number of A's Pokemon are very familiar. For example, she's gotten a Pidgey, who is mistaken for the second coming of Bird Jesus, a Wooper, a Marill, and a Nincada.
- And they found a Torchic, immediately thought to be the return of Zexy.
- Now also the case with the Old Amber... Which brought back a Charizard. The chat immediately thought of the Charmeleon that was lost to Red and called it a miracle.
- Cloud Cuckoo Land: Wonderland - the world where birds punch, spiders scream and insects fire death rays.
- Crazy-Prepared: Meta-wise: In preparation for the typing of Koga's gym, one user made sprites for almost every possible type he could have gotten at that point. Full set is here.
- Denser and Wackier: So much more than the other three games.
- And if you follow the interpretation that Alice is Bill's daughter, stories showing the sympathetic side of Bill and family are Played for Drama.
- Disc-One Nuke: Several, but Chairman Meow Zedong stands out: A Skitty that learned several high-power moves like Skull Bash, Razor Wind, and Psychic. He spent a lot of the early game steamrolling fights, but had most of his good moves replaced with useless status moves, leaving him with the unreliable and weak Cut. As the Skitty line has dreadful stats, the mob dumped him in the PC to stop his experience sponging.
- The Dog Was the Mastermind: The dome fossil, that ancient idol of evil, turned out to be... an Ariados. It had no prior role in the lore whatsoever. The mob collectively shrugged and began arguing over whether to use the Charizard they got from the old amber. In all fairness, according to someone who figured out the randomizer's algorithm accurately, the Helix Fossil would not have been much better - in this world, it's a Qwilfish.
- Early Game Hell: Not made much better by a Machop with Truant and a Surskit knowing only Hyper Beam as A's first two Pokémon. She later gets a Slugma, Marill, and another Surskrit which knew Blast Burn, Hydro Cannon, and Hyper Beam respectively. Add to the fact that the sixth Pokemon Skitty had Skull Bash, another move that ate up two turns.
- Mt Moon took forever to get through due to the large number of wild pokemon with poison and trapping abilities.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: As is typical with Twitch Plays Pokémon, the interpretations and lore evolve over time. Due to this, some things listed on these pages are now considered non-canon, and may not be marked as such. Especially true with A and Bill.
- Eldritch Location: Oh yes. Given the presence of punching birds, bugs with death lasers, and a pangolin being called a fish, this is damn-well anticipated.
- Enemy Mine: Many regard the acquisition of the Dome Fossil instead of Helix to be this.
- Epic Fail: Right here.
- History Repeats: If this and TPPE take place in the far future. Also in relation to Emerald and A, with the character name and many early details of the runs being the same.
- During Red's run, there was a similar game that ran on in another channel where significantly fewer users controlled Red, which therefore meant he was able to reign them in better. The chat also became conscious of potential bots, and tried to snuff them out. Come FireRed, viewership declined, allowing for more control in the command input. A system was also added to identify potential bots.
- Once again, the Mob is trapped in Rocket Hideout for an indefinite period of time.
- Hope Spot: The mob tricks Bill into sealing himself (while still in Clefairy form) inside his own vile system, and immediately has A stroll out the door like a badass. Unfortunately, re-entering his house shows him standing in the middle of the room as if nothing had happened, having somehow escaped offscreen. A literal Karma Houdini.
- Similar to the shiny Chinchou in Emerald, they encountered a shiny Pikachu on the seventh day. They killed it.
- A ignored Bill's first offer to go to the Sevii Islands. This post outlined how, with his PC inoperable, as long as they didn't accept his offer, they'd finally defeat Bill. Minutes later, A talked to him in the Pokemon Center, accepted his offer, was dragged to the Sevii Islands, and given the task of fixing the PC.
- In one battle against Green, Slaking successfully froze Green's Aggron with Tri Attack...only for Aggron to immediately thaw out and proceed to spam Rock Smash until Slaking went down, causing A to white out. Happened again in a rematch, wherein Aggron was frozen and thawed out that same turn, then spammed Rock Throw. Slaking got a critical hit with Crush Claw, and one more attack would've downed Aggron, but Aggron's Rock Throw was a crit as well.
- Inherently Funny Words: It's hard to say where "potato" came from in the chat and why it's so popular, but presumably it stays because it sounds amusing.
- Interface Screw: During battle with Koga, he used his ninjutsu skills to disable all the TPP interface: democracy timer, commands, party roster - all of it, only the game screen itself remained.
- Irony:
- In a way, randomizing everything in the game the way the streamer (or Bill, if you go by in-game lore) has done is the greatest anarchy the Mob could have asked for.
- The Mob picked the Dome Fossil, but Democracy remained disabled until the Rocket Hideout.
- The Mob gets dragged along by Bill into the Sevii Islands. His task for them? To fix his PC.
- Kill and Replace: One possible explanation for Bill's Offscreen Teleportation. The Clefairy-Bill A left in the transporter was in fact a separate person (maybe even Wonderland's version of Bill); she left this person to suffocate, allowing Bill to dispose of the body and take his place in order to get closer to A.
- Killer Rabbit: As part of the randomization, Pokemon abilities, attacks, and natures were all changed. This has led to the aforementioned "Screaming Spiders" and "Punching Birds." It also has made Route 1 the second most dangerous Route in the game after Route 29 in Crystal. Literally everything is somehow a Killer Rabbit.
- Lighter and Softer: Compared to the rest of the Bill saga; Alice is considered one of the most well-adjusted Season 1 protagonists and the overall mood of the run is a lot lighter, and there was only one release the entire run, which fanon has commonly accepted to be an agent of Bill and not actually killed by the release (the first example of non-fatal releasing in the series.) Though it's still darker than the runs that don't contain either of the series' major villains (except maybe Black, which was still dark in its own right.)
- Misplaced Wildlife: Up to and including land-dwelling fish.
- Mundane Utility: The fearsome Pokémon Tower is used by A and her team as a grinding spot.
- Non Sequitur, *Thud*: One of the Rocket Grunts at Silph Co. experiences this after his defeat."Cough cough...I forgot- KOFFING turns into WEEZING!"
- Nostalgia Level: Aside from the meta-level given the game is essentially a remake, Guilt Trip Tower contains mostly mons from previous runs, be they mons the mob once had or mons the mob once wanted.
- Not Rare Over There: Some normally rare Pokemon are now common, most notably Surskit and Kirlia.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: According to one interpretation, A killed the wrong PC moderator by suffocating him in the transporter, allowing Bill to take his place behind her back.
- Peninsula of Power Leveling: The Pokemon Tower. Twitch spent a long time grinding here due to the instant heal tiles and the fact that unlike in the normal games, the wild pokemon were't annoying ghost types.
- Reality Is Out to Lunch: What this is to the previous TPP runs.
- Serial Escalation: In Red, the greatest threat was Bill's PC. In Emerald, he supposedly supplied the Elite Four with powerful Pokemon and sent out the Bot spam. Come FireRed, he takes over a nation.
- Tempting Fate: A ignored Bill's first offer to go to the Sevii Islands. This post outlined how, with his PC inoperable, as long as they didn't accept his offer, they'd finally defeat Bill. Minutes later, A talked to him in the Pokemon Center, accepted his offer, was dragged to the Sevii Islands, and given the task of fixing the PC.
- Villain Decay: Unlike previous generations, there was only one casualty at the PC.
- Villain World: For those who see the randomization as the work of Bill.
