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 White is the eleventh run of the stream's tenth season, which began on December 27th, 2023, and ended on January 3rd, 2024. It featured a mostly unaltered version of Pokémon White, but like the previous "Inverse" run, threw in the added twist of all type matchups being inverted. In other words, any type resistance or immunity became a weakness, and any type weakness conversely became a resistance.
While the game was mostly unaltered aside from the inverse gimmick, it did also retain a few extra features from the last Unova-based run, specifically the disabling of releases from the PC, and the addition of custom C-Gear skins both returning and brand new. It also marked the first time Pokémon were obtained through Entree Forest as if transferred from the Dream World
, which here specifically served to receive otherwise unobtainable Mythical Pokémon.
About half a day after the end of the run, a short revisit entitled Pokémon Non-Inverse White took place, during which the save was transferred onto an actual non-modified Pokémon White game. While this meant the "inverse" gimmick was no longer in effect, this allowed the game to connect to a fan-maintained online server to let players trade and battle with the stream, as well as locally connect to a second 3DS to activate events by transferring data from Randomized SoulSilver and partake in multiplayer alongside the Host of the Black run.
A few hours after Non-Inverse White ended, Twitch Plays Pokémon Inverse White 2 began, serving as a direct sequel to Inverse White.
See also here for the archived status of the run.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Inverse White contains examples of:
- A Dog Named "Cat": One Onix caught during the run was named "ABIRD".
- Ascended Meme: One of the custom C-Gear skins◊ inserted into the game simply featured the caption "birds!" written in
large Comic Sans letters, along with a few sprites of early Generation I designs of bird-like Pokémon. Bird Pokémon are infamously one of the most often-recurring subjects of arguing and infighting between TPP players, to the point of coining the term "Bird Wars"; this skin was added specifically while they were fighting each other over various topics while inside N's Castle, as a jab towards their tendency for such futile conflicts. - Black Comedy: One of the boxes was at some point renamed to "OVEN", and as a result, every newly-caught Pokémon sent to it was referred to by the game as having been "transferred to OVEN".
- Everybody Lives: Just like in Volt White 2 Redux, this was enforced by disabling releases, as players responded favourably when asked prior to the run if said release block should be applied again.
- I Have Many Names: Garbodor had its nickname changed multiple times, going from "Trub", to "Recy", to "Recycling", to "pepepopo", to "Garbodorn0", to "0Tyruba.y", to "Trpuebp". That last one stuck for good, and was kept until the end of the run.
- Mythology Gag:
- Solosis was named "Cellmadioz", a reference to the round-shaped "-madio" Pokémon that became highly memetic during Twitch Plays Pokémon Snakewood DX.
- A caught Marowak was named "HOPIUM", in reference to the Randomized Black in which "copium" was frequently reference in reference to how the chat constantly tried to convince themselves that surely the next item they'd find would be the Thick Club, which would greatly boost the offensive capabilities of their Marowak, only to always end up disappointed.
- During the Non-Inverse White revisit, Geonet was used to set QZO's country of origin as Australia, a deliberate reference by players to this being the country in which lived the original Streamer of Twitch Plays Pokémon.
- Nerf: Meloetta was captured in the Entree Forest at Lv.100; however, to avoid it making subsequent parts of the game too easy, it was manually brought down all the way to Lv.1 right afterwards.
- Old Save Bonus: During the Non-Inverse White revisit, the Relocator feature was used to transfer the event Shiny Celebi, Shiny Raikou, and Lock Capsule from the save file of the Randomized SoulSilver run, in turn granting access to the in-game events in White to obtain Zorua, Zoroark, and TM95 Snarl.
- Palette Swap:
- Just like in Inverse Platinum, the type icons and Gym Badges in the stream overlay had their colors inverted during the run.
- During the Non-Inverse White revisit, the C-Gear skin used featured the protagonist and his starter Tepig with inverted colors.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo: The Non-Inverse White revisit featured several appearances by previous protagonists:
- One of the players encountered through online play was using the save file of AAQ from the Volt White run, allowing QZO to receive a Lileep from her during a trade, then battle her in a Triple Wonder Launcher Battle, before finally receiving her Staraptor in a second trade. She was later seen again on the Afghanistan floor of Unity Tower, where she inquired about how her Staraptor was doing.
- The revisit briefly switched to Randomized SoulSilver, putting the Voices back in control of 11 CCvu just long enough to get her Celebi to forget Cut so that it could be transferred to Inverse White using the Relocator feature.
- Using the Entralink's wireless connection features, QZO was able to cross into the world of the original Black run, in which he met GMYC to deliver special Pass Powers and items to him and battle against some of his Pokémon. Later on, GMYC joined QZO again through local wireless to partake in a multiplayer Musical and team up on the Battle Subway.
- Punctuation Shaker: The name of the Host, QZO, is actually spelt in-game with two spaces in front of it and after it.
- Sdrawkcab Name: A one-letter variation with N, who throughout this run was regularly referred to by players as "Z" or "ᴎ" to reflect the Inverse gimmick, as evidenced by the "#PokemonTrainerZ" and "#PokemonTrainerᴎ" hashtags that appeared on stream during battles against him.
- Shapeshifter Mode Lock: The Meloetta encountered in the Entree Forest was manually set to appear in Pirouette Form. As a result, it stayed in that form after being captured even outside of battle, rather than reverting to its Aria Form.
- Shout-Out:
- Among the Pokémon caught during the course of the run were a Cubchoo named "YOGI", a Beheeyem named "MEGAMINDZ", and a Foongus that was later renamed to "Amon Gus".
- Zekrom was at some point renamed "Zekenator", which is one of the self-given nicknames that Zeke from Xenoblade Chronicles 2 goes by.
- Too Many Cooks Spoil the Soup: The first visit to N's Castle had players arguing, fail to coordinate, and borderline sabotaging each other all the way throughout.
- The whole mess began with a series of misaimed inputs causing Stoutland to get its most powerful move Return overwritten by the much more impractical Giga Impact. Learning it back took longer than it should have not only due to some minor disagreements regarding other moves to learn, but also because a few people deliberately stalled the process just to listen to the unique song that plays before entering N's Castle for longer. Then once inside, an other input war broke between players wanting to progress immediately and those who wanted to talk to every NPC first, resulting in ten minutes of running all over the room and bonking every wall.
- Conflict calmed down on the way to the final battle, aside from an argument over whether or not to talk to Anthea to heal, but rose back to full force when facing Zekrom; some players wanted to add it to the party due to it never having made it to an endgame party before and to celebrate the Year of the Dragon, while others didn't want to sacrifice an existing team member for it. Conflicting inputs led to it being accidentally KO'd on the first attempt, then to running all over the room before managing to challenge it again, and finally to Beartic being sent to the PC after A inputs outmatched B inputs upon capture.
- After losing to Ghetsis (ironically in part due to two consecutive misses with Giga Impact), players unsurprisingly began to fight each other over the PC, resulting in the accidental deposit of Carracosta before teleporting back into N's Castle, where players ran around looking for a PC and then began fighting all over again to either keep or replace Zekrom, eventually just teleporting back outside and only coming back after finally depositing Zekrom and fixing some of the mistakes made when attempting to learn new moves earlier.
