Web Video / Twitch Plays Pokémon TriHard Emerald

Rest in peace.

^Source "A little sketch of Fate and her Torchic!" by xe_cute

"5hrs into TriHard and we: killed a leaf, stole potions, got an old man arrested, saved a dead child, soft reseted, pressed 1000 selects and became addicted to pokeballs. This is LUL"

— Chat for Twitch Plays Pokémon TriHard Emerald

Twitch 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 TriHard Emerald is the fifth run of Season 6, which began on August 10th, 2019 and ended on August 20th, 2019. It features an original hack of Pokémon Emerald created by the development team member Tustin2121, which is notably the first source hack of Emerald to see the light of day. It features an ex-member of Team Skull as its main character, along with several changes made to the in-game dialogue that either alter the story or make reference to TPP memes. Most importantly however, it implements special rules inspired by those of the popular Nuzlocke Challenge:

1. The Pokémon Storage System is inaccessible; Pokémon are immediately sent to it after fainting.
2. Poké Balls are available for free, but cannot be used if the party is full.
3. The save option has been removed; the game instead saves automatically each time a Pokémon Center is visited.
4. In the event of a white out, the game automatically resets and loads the latest save.

The Host for this run is an ex-member of Team Skull named F48 ("Fate") who recently moved to Hoenn with her divorced father, and, just like every Host from Hoenn before her, chose Torchic as her starter. Later in her journey, and in spite of the recommendations of her father, she ended up joining Team Aqua instead, helping them in their efforts to awaken Kyogre. As a result, she regularly ends up butting heads with her two rivals, the Hero Antagonist Logan, and her concerned neighbour Brendan.

See also here for the archived status of the game. The ROM has been released in the form of a BPS patch, and can be downloaded here.

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Twitch Plays TriHard Emerald contains examples of:

• Ascended Glitch: The wall tile above the ladder of Sootopolis Gym can still be accessed in this hack, and now leads to a secret path with a hidden item at the end.
• Ascended Meme:
  • Entei is regarded as Memetic Loser due to its abysmal performances in Twitch Plays Pokémon: Arena, to the point where one of the custom emotes of the stream is an Entei variant of the "TriHard" emote. As a reference to this, Entei appears on the title screen of TriHard Emerald instead of Rayquaza.
  • "Born to Lose", a song that the stream operators like to play whenever players are doing particularly badly, has been remixed as a Pokémon Centre theme, which plays after the game resets due to a white out.
  • The Select button text box makes a reference to the Select Sect, a term used by the chat to describe people who keep pressing Select to slow down the gameplay.
    Select textbox: I mean... I guess its plausable... Like, Team Magma is a conspiracy to expand the land... And Team Aqua... well... I'm sure you know. So I guess a conspiracy to say SELECT as often as possible... It's stupid but it's not wholly impossible... Alright, you "SELECT SECT"... I'll play along... As if I have a choice, what with you being in my head and all...
  • The PC in Ever Grande City is blocked by an Azumarill, who smacks F48 away if she tries to approach it. Azumarill is also notorious for being the favorite Pokémon and avatar of m4_used_rollout, the stream operator, who has a habit of trying to keep players as far away from the PC has possible.
• Back from the Dead: Despite fainting during the battle against Juan, Wu””2 the Wailord was healed when saving at the Pokémon Center rather than being permanently killed. The reason for this is that Juan's dialogue is so long that it actually overflows the dialogue buffer, which caused the battle to become a Recorded Battle, which can be exited with a single B press. In the unmodified version of Pokémon Emerald, this overflow occurred into unused space, so nothing happens. But the hack removed that unused space and used it for permadeath functionality. invoked
• Blatant Lies: When asked by the Devon employee if she had seen any Shroomish around, F48 answered that she hadn't... even though she had just caught one for her team.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: The text box that appears when pressing the Select button actually evolves depending on how many times it's been pressed. After a few hundred presses, it started addressing the chat directly.
  Select textbox: Hey.
  Select textbox: Hey chat.
  Select textbox: Guess what.
  Select textbox: You pressed SELECT over 400 times now.
  Select textbox: That's right, I've been counting.
  Select textbox: What is wrong with you?
• Darker and Edgier: Between the criminal protagonist with a rough past, the divorce of the protagonist's parents, the possibility of permanent death, and ruder behavior from NPCs, TriHard Emerald has an atmosphere that is ever so slightly less friendly than a traditional Pokémon game.
• Exact Words: During one of the many disputes that occurred over using the PC in the previous run, one of the devs declared that they'd settle the matter by disabling the PC for the next run. Come TriHard Emerald, and this actually turned out not to be a joke: the PC in this run acts as a "graveyard" in which fainted Pokémon are automatically deposited and cannot be retrieved from.
  m4_used_rollout: THERE IS NO PC BWAAA HA HA HA HA HA
  m4_used_rollout: you thought I was kidding
• Heel–Face Turn: After realizing how insane Team Aqua's plans actually were, and how uncontrollable the Legendary Pokémon turned out to be, Jessica and Bailey decided to quit Team Aqua for good, and F48 followed suit.
• History Repeats
  • After Emerald, Omega Ruby, Alpha Sapphire, and Theta Emerald EX, the Voices still seem unable to pick any other starter than Torchic for a run taking place in Hoenn. Averted however in that it is, somewhat ironically for a game featuring a Permadeath mechanic, the first one to make it into the Hall of Fame.
  • In Theta Emerald EX, the first loss ACCPPQ faced was against a wild Wingull. The first and second defeat F48 suffered were also against a wild Wingull.
• Hopeless Boss Fight: Interrupting the fight between Kyogre and Groudon in Sootopolis City triggers a double battle against both of them, in which they are revealed to each be at level 120.
• Important Hair Accessory: At the start of the game, F48 is wearing a Team Skull bandana; she later trades it for a Team Aqua bandana after joining the latter. After her Heel–Face Turn, she throws the bandana on the ground and spends the rest of the game bare-headed.
• Killed Off for Real: If the game is saved after a Pokémon has fainted, that Pokémon is gone forever. By the end of the run, 55 Pokémon had fallen in battle, including valued team members such as Wingull, Swellow, Swalot, Grayhena, or Crawdaunt. Most notable was the loss of Wailord, Sharpedo and Aggron, which were intended to be part of the final team, but were killed permanently while grinding for the Elite 4.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Justified. F48 is an ex-member of Team Skull, so common theft is a habit of hers. As such, the game allows her to enter unlocked hotel rooms to steal people's belongings while they're sleeping, or even to shoplift items directly from the shelves of Poké Marts.
• Missing Mom: F48's parents went through a nasty divorce, and when they split, F48 and her dad moved to Hoenn while her mom remained in Alola.
• Mythology Gag:
  • One Trainer in Petalburg Woods is named Scout James, referencing the infamous Lorekeeper James from Twitch Plays Pokémon Alpha Sapphire.
  • Brawly's dialogue makes a reference to the Helix Fossil; this dialogue is actually lifted straight from the French version of Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire, in which he made the same reference.
    Brawly: I've been churned in the rough waves of these parts, and I've grown tough in the pitch-black cave! Then I discovered the secret of true power by staring at a Helix Fossil for days and days.
  • Interacting with the PC at the Weather Institute indicates that someone seems to have tried to pull out the power supply, referencing the "PULL THE POWER SUPPLY OUT!" text that appeared when using a PC in Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal.
  • Youngster Joey can be found hanging around Ever Grande City, with a high-level Raticate on his team.
• Repetitive Audio Glitch: A glitch whereby Thunderbolt's attack audio became stuck on a loop happened twice during the run. The second time occured during the battle against Champion Wallace, which the chat interpreted as the audience applauding them; the sound then persisted during the entirety of the ending cutscene and credits.
• Ret-Gone: Any Pokémon caught between the last checkpoint and a white out will be permanently lost, which has happened a fair amount of times in the course of the run.
• Save Scumming: A first for TPP, TriHard Emerald allows the player to return to their last save after fainting the entire team. As a result, the chat often intentionally fainted their entire team to save one or two Pokémon that died that they wanted back. Comparisons to Bites the Dust have been drawn.
• Take That, Audience!:
  • Upon whiting out, the overlay DexNav, which usually shows the wild Pokémon in the area, displays mocking captions such as "BOOOOOOOOO" or "SO SAD".
  • After resetting due to a white out, the Pokémon Centre theme is replaced with a remix of "Born to Lose".
• Villain Protagonist: F48 is an ex-member of Team Skull. She ends up joining Team Aqua later in the game. As a result, during events such as the invasion of the Weather Institute or of the Slateport Museum, her goal is not to prevent the attack, but to make it succeed. She is also not above stealing from people belongings and shoplifting, and her final interaction with Brendan seems to imply that she basically bullied him into quitting his own Pokémon journey, due to her ruthlessness and villainous actions.
• Violation of Common Sense: Due to the rules of the run, killing the entire team brings Pokémon back to life, while healing kills Pokémon permanently.

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