Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a series of social experiments in which commands representing buttons on an original Nintendo DS (up, down, left, right, A, B, X, Y, L, R, start, and select) and touchscreen coordinates 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 Inverse Platinum is the second run of the tenth season of TPP and sixty-ninth run overall; it began on March 11th, 2023, and concluded on March 21st, 2023. It featured an almost unaltered version of Pokémon Platinum created by Mikelan98 and AdAstra titled Following Platinum, which only differs from the base game by bringing forward the walking Pokémon feature from Pokemon Heart Gold And Soul Silver.
The main gimmick of the run, however, was a patch developed by Drayano60 that was applied on top of the Following Platinum ROM, and reversed all type matchups in a way similar to the Inverse Battle
mechanic from Generation VI. This meant that any type that would be resistant or immune to another type would now be weak to said type, while conversely any type that would be weak to another type would now be resistant to it. As a result, some typings proved noticeably more viable than usual, while others became borderline unusable (alas, poor Steel...). This also had a notable influence on the Fan Art related to this run, which frequently made use of inverted colors to portray its setting and characters.
See also here for the archived status of the run.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Inverse Platinum contains examples of:
- Amazing Technicolor Population: A lot of fanart for the run depicted the setting and characters of the run with inverted colors. As a result, numerous interpretation depict the humans of Inverse Platinum as having dark-blue skin.
- As pointed out by some, blue-skinned people actually do exist in the Pokémon canon, as inhabitants of the Ultra Megalopolis also share this trait.
- Changing of the Guard: During the main game, the team was composed of six quasi-permanent members: Roserade, Floatzel, Medicham, Scyther, Lickilicky and Rhyperior. After the League was beaten a first time and the focus shifted to the Battle Frontier, three other Pokémon became the new mainstay members of the team, namely Porygon-Z, Azelf, and Zapdos, while the previous ones were put into rotation.
- History Repeats: During the Brilliant Diamond run, the team's Pikachu was taught Thief in order to steal a Light Ball item from wild Pikachu, but never succeeded during the main game. Here, Chatot was taught Thief to steal Lucky Eggs from wild Chansey and Heart Scales from wild Luvdisc, but the former failed to pan out due to Lucky Eggs being only rarely held held by an already low-rate encounter, and the latter because the game's fishing mechanics were too cumbersome for TPP.
- LOL, 69:
- It has been confirmed by the developers that this run being the 69th main run played a part in the decision to debut the Inverse gimmick during it, as the numbers 6 and 9 being reverses of each other were a good visual analogy for it.
- A Buneary caught early in the run was literally named "69".
- Not Allowed to Grow Up: While trade-based evolutions were made available in Following Platinum, the Voices still opted not to evolve Scyther due to how utterly terrible of a type Steel is under Inverse mechanicsnote . They even went as far as to purposefully get rid of their Metal Coats to make sure they wouldn't be used by accident to evolve it, and thus Scyther made it all the way to the Hall of Fame without ever evolving.
- Old Save Bonus: A handful of Pokémon were imported directly from previously-played games using the Pal Park feature :
- From the Pokémon Sapphire sidegame: AGG (Clamperl), Kyogre, Castform, Vigoroth, Kecleon, and DCOV (Beldum).
- From Gauntlet Emerald: G (Xatu), TGGAATTTT. (Mew), zzyyyvv (Seviper), Aacc4438 (Solrock), AAATTTT (Groudon), and AB33 1.00" (Heracross).
- From FireRed: Torchic, Lwweekjjje (Ariados), bvijjefddc (Smeargle), AATUUVWVW (Charizard), TUVWWWWWWT (Treecko), and AA (Lugia).
- One-Letter Name: The starter picked for this run, Turtwig, was simply named "K". Many referred to it as "Potassium" as a result, due it being the chemical element that uses "K" for a symbol.
- Palette Swap: To reflect the gimmick of the type effectiveness being inverted, the type icons in the overlay had their colors inverted as well. Early during Day 3, the same treatment was also applied to the Badge display.
- A large amount of fanart for the run adopted the "inverted colors" aesthetic as well to portray the run's characters, their Pokémon, and the world around them. Some swapped their usual colors for their inverted hue equivalent, others changed them to make them reminiscent of inverted gradients, and others still basically portrayed the entire setting with a negative filter on it.
- A large amount of fanart for the run adopted the "inverted colors" aesthetic as well to portray the run's characters, their Pokémon, and the world around them. Some swapped their usual colors for their inverted hue equivalent
- Plot Armor: Mainstay members of the team had Ball Capsules attached to their Poké Balls in order to avoid them getting accidentally deposited or released.
- Rule of Funny: Rhyperior knowing Attract wasn't particularly useful, nor did it even make much sense to anyone given what Rhyperior looks like... but the Voices thought it was pretty funny, so it kept the move.
- The Speechless: tppLUL, the Chatot that served as an occasional Utility Party Member during the run, at one point had its cry overwritten through the use of Chatter out-of-battle. Because the emulator used offered no microphone support, said cry became completely silent as a result. Fittingly enough, looking at its status page also revealed that tppLUL had a Quiet nature.
- Utility Party Member: Several Pokémon spent a significant amount of time on the team not for battling purposes, but for their out-of-battle or capture-related abilities.
- Pachirisu stayed on the team for a large part of the run's first day pretty much solely to take advantage of its Pickup ability to get various free items, as well as to teach it Cut.
- Chatot was usually taken out of the PC whenever travelling via Fly was needed. The rest of its moveset was just as utility-oriented, with Defog being used to facilitate navigation in foggy areas, Sing to put wild Pokémon to sleep in order to catch them more easily, and Thief to try and get Lucky Eggs and Heart Scales from wild Pokémon.
- Similar to Chatot, Golbat almost exclusively served as a mean to use Fly, specifically while hunting for roaming Pokémon as it also knew Mean Look, which could prevent them from escaping.
- Tropius and Bibarel both sported movesets consisting exclusively of field moves: Surf, Rock Climb, Waterfall and Rock Smash for the former, and Fly, Strength, Cut and Defog for the latter.
