from the official Twitter account of Twitch Plays PokémonTwitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a series of social experiments in which commands representing buttons on an original Game Boy Advance (up, down, left, right, A, B, L, R, 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 Metronome Sapphire is one of the side-game runs played during Arena intermissions. The game featured, Pokémon Metronome Sapphire, is a joke hack of Pokémon Sapphire created specifically for the occasion by the TPP development team. Not only is the species of every Pokémon encountered completely random, all of them are set to be at level 100, and only know the move Metronome. Said hack is also notable for being the very first Generation III assembly hack created by the team and played on stream.
The game debuted as a special April Fools intermission, which ran from March 31st, 2019 to April 3rd, 2019. It then returned as an Arena side-game, thus being played using the "full democracy" system in which players get to vote on a single input between each match. Marina, the Host of this run, actually managed to reach the Hall of Fame as soon as April 2nd, then reached it a second time after the game switched to the side-game format. It kept running until the pre-intermission for Twitch Plays Pokémon Sword began on November 21st, 2019; after the run ended, it was finally replaced by a new side-game, Pokémon Navy Blue. It returned briefly in its original intermission format from December 14th, 2019 to December 19th, 2019, allowing Marina to finally catch Meltan and Melmetal.
A Metronome Ruby intermission later interrupted Twitch Plays Pokémon Gauntlet Platinum on April 1st, 2020. It had a boy named SS as its Host, and featured a very screwed up interface displaying erroneous sprites, misinformed types, and unintelligible moves and abilities. It was played in Turbo Anarchy until the first badge was obtained, and ended when the second was acquired.
See also here for the archived status of the run, and here for archived progress of the game in screenshot form. The game has also been released in the form of a BSP patch file, which can be downloaded here.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Metronome Sapphire contains examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: Marina's team upon first entering the Hall of Fame was composed of "IIHBAAAMMM", "AAAAAAAAAA", "MMMMMMMMGG", "JJJJJJJJJJ", "111", and "Kingdra". Averted with her second Hall of Fame team, which traded 111 and Kingdra for "CCCCCCCBBB" and "YYRRRRRQQ".
- April Fools: Metronome Sapphire was initially introduced as a special intermission for April Fools 2019. On top of the sheer ridiculousness of the concept of fully luck-based Pokémon game, the stream also featured an "Unregistered HyperCam 2" watermark, the return of the much maligned Turbo Anarchy mechanic, the occasional DVD logo bouncing on the screen, the emulation speed randomly increasing tenfold, and an end-game countdown that just kept going after it reached zero.
- The Bus Came Back: As an intermission, Metronome Sapphire marked the return of the Turbo Anarchy mechanic, after almost two years of absence due to being unceremoniously dropped following its negative reception.
- The Cameo: On top of the already-existing 386 Pokémon of the first three generations, Meltan and Melmetal have been added and made available in the game.
- Cap:
- Every single Pokémon in the game is set to be at level 100 by default, thus removing any notion of leveling up.
- To ensure that Pokémon won't find themselves running out of usable moves too easily, the default amount of PP for Metronome has been modified from 10 uses to a whooping 99.
- Hope Spot: Marina was diving underwater as the intermission was nearing its end, and the chat thought that they wouldn't be able to get her back to the surface before it did... only for the countdown to keep going after reaching zero, giving the chat enough time to get her out of the water. The sentiment of victory was short-lived, however, as the stream's host then disabled inputs and manually made Marina dive back underwater before ending the intermission for good.
- Interface Screw: Some of the random events that occurred during the intermission involved a DVD logo bouncing around the screen, or the emulator suddenly speeding up the game drastically, making it even harder to control than Turbo Anarchy already made it.
- Last Lousy Point: Because this game was the only one played on TPP in which they were available, one of the main objectives of the chat was to catch Meltan and Melmetalnote . However, the complete randomization of encounters means each of them only has a 1 out of 388 chance of ever appearing; as a result, it took until the Christmas intermission for Meltan to finally be caught, at which point it was one of only five Pokémon species that the chat hadn't caught yet.
- Marathon Boss: Metronome Sapphire makes it so that Poké Balls are only used if the catch is succesful. As such, the chat spent over 27 hours trying to catch a wild Mewtwo, until finally whiting out.
- Race Against the Clock: During the entirety of the intermission, a timer on the bottom-left of the screen counted down to the end of the run. There was actually a bit of urgency during the last few minutes, as the chat desperately tried to get the underwater-diving Marina back to the surface before the intermission ended. Ultimately subverted when the timer reached zero... and then kept going as it started counting up.
- Sarcasm Mode: The announcement on the official Twitch Plays Pokémon Twitter account, which provides the quote for this page, is pretty much dripping with sarcasm, declaring "challenge and skill" to be the main focus of this run.@Twitch_Plays: We hope you'll enjoy the ultimate form of competitive play with us!
- Stylistic Suck: An "Uregistered HyperCam 2" watermark was present in the upper-left corner of the screen for the entirety of the intermission.
- Trolling Creator: As the timer counting down to the end of the intermission was nearing zero, the chat was desperately trying to get the then underwater-diving Marina back to the surface. When said countdown did reach zero however, it just kept going by counting up instead of down, which gave the chat enough time to get Marina out of the water. But then, the stream's host disabled inputs, and manually went back underwater before saving the game. To add insult to the injury, they then proceeded to play the drowning music from Sonic The Hedgehog right before ending the intermission for good.
