Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a social experiment in which commands representing buttons on an original Game Boy Color (up, down, left, right, A, B, start, and select) are entered into a chat on Twitch, and then translated into a romhack of Pokémon Crystal via an IRC bot. In short, over 10,000 people are fighting over a controller. Throughout its life, Twitch Plays Pokémon has spawned hilarious characters, memorable moments, and even a religion.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Prism, the fourth run of "Season 3", takes the mob to the region of Naljo in the sequel to Pokemon Brown for the first time played in pre-release form implementing type changes and a completely new storyline. The run officially started on October 8th, 2016 and ended on October 26th, 2016.
Hilarity will ensue as Twitch wanders around completely lost, gets stuck in darkened pits, try and mine with their fists, watch in horror as the world slowly becomes a glitched mess, and fights Power Rangers knockoffs.
See also here
for the archived progress of the game, here for the archived status of the run, or here for live updates, which have been archived here. There is also a recap page, found here. The ROM was planned to be released in IPS patch format after the run's completion, until the creator received a C&D notice by Nintendo.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Prism contains examples of:
- Anti-Frustration Features: TMs are reusable.
- See below in Blackout Basement, by which point the streamer updated the hack so that actions like that and HM moves would act like later generations by simply pressing A on the object and using the first Pokémon who fits what's needed.
- Blackout Basement: Mound Cave has pits that lead to these, which is even more frustrating as there is no Flash. Instead there are electric lights that Electric-type Pokémon can light up...if the mob can actually select them.
- Colorful Theme Naming: Cyan, the Palette Rangers.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Prism changes a lot of the mechanics, and more importantly, typings.
- Pressing A on a stone wall will cause Cyan to mine the wall, even if she doesn't have a mining pick. Cue endless messages of "You need a mining pick to mine." To appear whenever Cyan faces a rock wall.
- By default, Cyan runs, which makes moving faster...and Ledges and Pits even more frustrating. This isn't helped by the fact the game runs at 60fps, thus making Cyan run faster than inputs would allow her.
- Epic Fail: Being a new romhack played for the first time by people who can barely avoid ledges, expect a higher amount of Face Palm moments.
- The mob spent hours in the Mound Cave, which is a special hell filled with pits that lead into dark areas that require lighting up lamps with an electric type to see.
- Primarily due to its status as Obvious Beta, Laurel Forest is a glitchy mess. It caused Engarde to become a zombie, then a glitched out mess of sprites, then the entire team becoming glitched out and turning into each other. It became so bad it required a save state reset.
- The mob attempted to keep the overpowered move 'Dust Devil' on Tyranitar which was in the first slot so frantically pressed Up to avoid overwriting the move. They successfully changed the slot to be changed through all the moves and back onto Dust Devil in time for it to be overwritten.
- There's also the time the mob glitched into a TREE, forcing a reset.
- After spending a greater part of the day chasing after a Fakemon Legendary that didn't even show up at it's proper spot because a glitch, the chat finally engaged it in battle... Only to run from it on the very first turn.
- Grand Finale: Of the OLDEN saga that overarched season 3. After plaguing the chat with glitches and keeping an eye on them throughout the urns, Cyan finally manages to catch Phancero AKA OLDEN bird in a Master Ball.
- Infinity -1 Sword/Disc-One Nuke: Needless to say, no one (at least, those that haven't played the 2012 demo) expected Cyan's first Pokémon to be a Larvitar...Or her Rival's to be Bagon.
- Original Generation: While the group has played romhack regions before, this is the first entirely new region that the Twitch Plays devs helped work on. Bonus points for being the testing grounds for the game's December release. In addition, it was revealed in the post-game that there are at least 5 brand-new Legendary Pokemon exclusive to this hack.
- Running Gag: Fifi can't keep Tri Attack as a move no matter what the chat does. Every time the chat reteaches it to her, she usually ends up losing it on the very next level up, usually to a status/non-damaging move.
- The TM for Body Slam has been successfully used 12 times...six of them on Engarde alone.
