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 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 Volt White 2 Redux is the eighth run of the stream's ninth season, which began on December 26th, 2022, and concluded on January 7th, 2023. It featured Pokémon Volt White 2 Redux, a hack of Pokémon White 2 created by AphexCubed which expanded on the already existing Volt White 2 hack by Drayano60. Volt White 2 features revamped movesets, abilities, typing and stat distribution for many Pokémon, as well as mechanics brought from later generations (most notably the inclusion of the Fairy-type), an improved Trainer roster, and multiple extra events, among many other changes.
The protagonist for this run was a boy called "44X N Y", a name of which the player interpretations included "Xenos" or "Forrest", and for several people within the community evoked 4 4, a glitch Pokémon from Pokémon Yellow. Unlike most other TPP Hosts, and taking advantage of the fact that releases were disabled for this run, the team used by 44X N Y was more flexible than usual, consisting of about ten different Pokémon used in frequent rotation rather than the standard six mainstays.
Making the best use of this unconventional team, 44X N Y managed to accomplish a lot during his time in Unova. He become Champion, defeated the powerful rematch teams of the Elite 4, received the Diploma by completing the Pokédex, triumphed over the Unity Tower, White Treehollow and PWT Championship Tournament, defeated every Pokémon League Champion scattered through Unova, starred in and successfully released all PokéStar Studios movies, and answered every call from Yancy.
See also here for the archived status of the run.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Volt White 2 Redux contains examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: Notable Pokémon used during this run included Terumi (Serperior), Sora (Lucario), Sigilyph (Sigilyph), Albert (Hydreigon), and KILLFISH (Qwilfish) on the Bob side of the spectrum, and aooop (Archeops), ATISSRZM4 (Vanilluxe), Stu) ;?,54 (Volbeat), and VolG (Volcarona) on the Aerith side.
- Amazon Brigade: Noticeably inverted; while there were previous runs that featured teams that were composed either entirely of female Pokémon, or of a mix of male and non-gendered Pokémon, this was the first one in which the final team was composed exclusively of male Pokémon.
- Artificial Stupidity: When facing against Ace Trainer Drayano, the latter's Gardevoir copied Serperior's Contrary ability, which inverts all stat gains and losses. As a result, using Quiver Dance caused it to lose Special Attack, Special Defense and Speed instead of raising them... and it tried to solve the issue by using Quiver Dance again, over and over, unable to understand that it only caused its stats to drop further, and kept doing so until the move literally ran out of PP.
- Demoted to Extra: KILLFISH the Qwilfish was part of the team for a majority of the main story, serving as a potent setup Pokémon thanks to its access to Spikes and Intimidate, as well as having respectable bulk. As the game progressed however, it became apparent that it was progressively getting outmatched by the increasingly powerful opponents. It ended up being swapped out for Archeops, being occasionally taken out of the PC due to its access to Water-type HMs, before eventually getting almost entirely phased out. Nevertheless, it did feature on the C-Gear during postgame, alongside the other notable Pokémon of the run.
- KILLFISH eventually made a return to the team during the final Pokémon League rematch, ultimately earning it a place in the third and final Hall of Fame of the run.
- Everybody Lives: An Enforced Trope, as the release function was disabled at the start of the run, and remained that way following a poll in which 71% of viewers voted to keep it unavailable, thus ensuring that no Pokémon were released for the entirety of the run.
- Loophole Abuse: While releases were disabled for this run, there was nothing preventing Pokémon from being permanently traded away; and indeed, several Pokémon were given away to Yancy, who after a certain point offers the player to trade any of their Pokémon for one of her own, once per day. Most notably, ATISSRZM4, the Vanilluxe that was used throughout most of the main story, was traded away for Yancy's Rhyhorn; although this did lead to the rather heartwarming interpretation that the protagonist shared ice cream with her.
- Obvious Rule Patch: In Volt White Redux 2, the Wii found in the player's bedroom can be used to enable cheat codes, notably ones that can drastically alter the difficulty of the game. Obviously, said feature was turned off for the run to avoid chat messing with it.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo:
- The Memory Link feature was enabled for the run, unlocking flashbacks that mentionned AAQ, the protagonist of Twitch Plays Pokémon Volt White, by name. She was also mentionned by a few NPCs, notably the one handing over the Prop Case.
- The four PWT tournaments featuring previous Hosts returned from Randomized White 2, along with a brand new one titled "The Four Heavenly Kings" and featuring Stars, AAEFFFF, Kr , and U!!!?.
- The battles against previous player characters from Volt White 2 Redux were themselves swapped for battles against previous Hosts: Hilda was successively replaced with AAQ, ♂♂♂', .iecbw and n, Hilbert with ♀♀R, W ☹☹'' and AAAALK', and Red with KAY and RED.
- Shout-Out:
- Serperior was named "Terumi" after Yuuki Terumi, the main antagonist of the BlazBlue series, whose design and moveset sport a blatant snake motif.
- The name "Albert" given to Hydreigon was a reference to the villain Master Albert from Mega Man ZX Advent, due to the latter's Throne form resembling a three-headed dragon.
- While trying to find a name for Lucario, some players suggested to simply "keysmash", aka just input randomly all over the in-game keyboard. It was jokingly misinterpreted as "keyblade", and Lucario was thus dubbed "Sora" after the protagonist of the Kingdom Hearts series.
- The signature drawn by chat on the back of the Trainer card◊ spelled "SUS", referencing a popular meme associated with the game Among Us.
