Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a series of social experiments in which commands representing buttons on an original Nintendo Switch (up, down, left, right, A, B, X, Y, L, R, ZL, ZR, +, -, L-stick, and R-stick) 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 Randomized Violet+ is the eighth and final run of the ninth season of TPP, which began on January 21st, 2023 and ended on January 31st, 2023. It featured the game Pokémon Violet, with two different twists added on top of it. Firstly, a mod named Pokémon SV+ was applied, which improved multiple aspects of the game including enhanced player movement, infinite gliding, more challenging battles, and reduced action delay. Secondly, the entire game was randomized, causing spawn locations, Trainer teams, and Pokémon movesets and evolutions to be shuffled around.
And so, after receiving a Quaxly that actually turned out to be a Staravia as her starter, newest protagonist 2errh embarked on an adventure throughout a Paldea region now freely roamed by Pokémon from faraway or even long-gone regions, the supposed ancient past or distant future, or of downright Mythical status. The game even had its wild spawns re-randomized a couple of times so that every Pokémon in and out of the Paldea Pokédex could be obtained, including the occasional Bad Egg... yet always leaving Flutter Mane nowhere to be found.
See also here
for the archived status of the run.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Randomized Violet+ features examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: The final team was composed of :u6708: the Clodsire and Sliasslo the Braviary, alongside Delibot the Iron Bundle, Ann the Magearna, Legraf the Grafaiai, and Iron Sight the Luxray.
- Ascended Meme:
- Due to evolutions being randomized, Lechonk evolved into Grafaiai, earning it the nickname "Legraf" from players. It was later made into its actual in-game nickname.
- Due to sporting both a golden coloration and the Paradox-exclusive Quark Drive ability, the team's Shiny Luxray was interpreted by some players as being a futuristic Shiny Pokémon itself; it later received the in-game nickname "Iron Sight", further cementing said interpretation.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: A recurring glitch caused some wild Pokémon to rapidly shift in size during battle, or in the case of this Gholdengo, to get stuck at such a massive height that only its feet remained visible.
- Game-Breaking Bug: One Trainer on Dalizapa Passage caused the game to consistently crash upon sending out her first Pokémon. It was later determined that said first Pokémon was not actually the Gallade she sent out, but a Weavile set to "Form 1". Weavile's only has one valid form, "Form 0", thus trying to call an invalid Pokémon caused the game to call the next valid Pokémon on her team instead, then crash anyway.
- Gathering Steam: Triggering the battle against Titan Orthworm first requires the player to dash into it, a time-sensitive maneuver that's particularly difficult to perform when playing through Twitch inputsnote . The solution that the Voices came up with consisted of lining up with Orthworm, pausing the game, and spamming "up" and "up + L3" inputs to build up speed, before a single player exited the menu to unleash it all at once. It still took an hour and a half for this method to finally yield results (and even then, mostly due to luck regarding where Orthworm respawned after an umpteenth failed attempt), but the final battle against Titan Orthworm was eventually successfully triggered without having to rely on Streamer intervention.
- Glitch Entity: The randomizer occasionally caused Bad Eggs to spawn as wild Pokémon; engaging one in battle caused the fight to end immediately, making them impossible to actually defeat or catch.
- After finding out that the randomizer erroneously called unused index numbers in lieu of the ones corresponding to Clodsire and Flutter Mane, it was theorized that Bad Eggs appearing in the wild was actually the result of the game trying to spawn Pokémon using those empty index slots.
- I Have Many Names: Magearna was originally without a nickname, but was later renamed "Reisen", which over the course of the following days was then successively changed to "Anastasia", "Ana11", "A", "Ann", "Anna", "Ann" again, "Annw", "Ann" once more, back to "Anna", "Ana", "Anaz", and then finally settled once more on "Anastasia".
- Missing Secret: One of the conditions to end the run was to complete the Paldea Pokédex and obtained the Diploma; in order to help with this task, wild spawns would be re-randomized every time the Academy Ace Tournament was beaten. Yet, even after three re-randomizations, Flutter Mane remained the last Pokémon to not only remain uncaught, but downright unseen. It was eventually figured out that, due to the randomizer confusing National Pokédex numbers with internal index numbers, and Flutter Mane's Pokédex number matching an unused internal index number, the randomizer in turn produced Bad Eggs spawns in lieu of Flutter Mane ones, making the latter effectively non-existent. This was fixed for the fourth re-randomization, with which players were finally able to complete the Pokédex.
- One-Letter Name: The starter Staravia was simply named "S".
- Portmanteau:
- Iron Bundle was named "Delibot", a combination of "Delibird" and "robot".
- Having evolved from Lechonk, Grafaiai was referred to and later renamed as "Legraf".
- Put on a Bus: The starter for this run was a Staravia named "S", which stayed on the team for almost a day and a half, but was ultimately deposited to the PC after evolving into an underwhelming Bombirdier sporting the equally underwhelming Guard Dog ability, and never returned to the team.
- Shapeshifting: Multiple Pokémon found themselves sporting the Imposter ability, allowing them to transform into their opponent upon entering battle, one notable example being 2errh's own Clodsire.
- Shout-Out:
- Clodsire, whose ability Imposter allowed it to transform into its opponent upon entering battle, was initially renamed to "Sussy Ba" (short for "Sussy Baka") as a reference to an Among Us meme. It was later renamed again to ":u6708:", which when typed into the Twitch chat shows up as "月", a character that bears resemblance to said game's characters.
- Magearna's first name was "Reisen", as a reference to a lunar rabbit character from Touhou Bougetsushou. It was later changed to "Anastasia" instead, referencing the eponymous movie which features a mechanical toy built for a princess as a plot point, mirroring Magearna's own backstory.
- Arceus was named "Odio" after the evil god from Live A Live, due to it being in its Dark-type form when caught.
- Stylistic Suck: Starting with the second randomization, a mod was enabled causing every Pokémon model to be displayed in low poly, for no reason other than it being kinda funny. It was turned off on the next randomization, but certain Pokémon, notably the members of the team, kept appearing in low poly for a long while after despite the mod being disabled.
- Unfortunate Names: During one of the many renaming sessions involving it, Magearna was accidentally renamed "Ana11".
