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 Randomized Black is the fourth run of Season 8 and the ninth randomized run overall, which ran from July 3rd, 2021 to July 12th, 2021. Part of the specific settings were decided through a community poll, resulting in the randomization of move types, power, and PP, while move category and accuracy stayed intact. Other features included the usual shuffling of Pokémon locations, movesets, abilities, and evolutions, along with every Trainer battle being a Double Battle, and the ability to freely switch between camera angles.
The run featured a Host named ♂♂♂' who chose a Mareep with the ability No Guard and the Game Breaking move Ice Ball as her starter. During the course of her adventure, she encountered N so often that he earned even more of a reputation for being a creeper than usual, had a Luxray named "Good Morning" carry on the legacy of the tragically departed one named "Good Night", saw her hopes fulfilled by a Garchomp after a Salamence had dashed them, and most of all, spent the whole game desperately searching for a fabled Thick Club to give her Marowak without ever finding it.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Randomized Black was immediately followed by Twitch Plays Pokémon Randomized Black 2, the title screen for the latter appearing on screen as soon as the former ended. Moves retained the same properties they had in this run, while everything else (including movesets and evolutions) was re-randomized.
See also here for the archived status of the run.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Randomized Black contains examples of:
- Event-Obscuring Camera: A free camera cheat was enabled during the run, which allowed players to freely switch between a "third-person" view (Select+ A + L), a 45° angle view (Select+ A + R), and a top-down view (Select+ A + B). Predictably, this more often than not meant that various sprites and objects found themselves in the way of the camera, completely blocking the view as a result.
- Game-Breaker: In the base games, Ice Ball is a move with a base power of 30 that hits the opponent every turn until it misses for up to five turns in a row, doubling in power every time. The randomization boosted its power to a whopping 75, meaning it would reach a power of 150 on the second turn (on par with most of the most powerful moves in the game, which usually have a heavy drawback to them), then 300 on the third turn (higher than the most powerful move of the base game at 250, which has the cost of fainting the user), and 600 on the fourth turn (the highest Ice Ball can reach in the base games is 480 after five turns). This in itself made it an absurdly broken move, but add to that that Mareep, which was picked as a starter, not only knew the move but also had No Guard as an ability, which prevented it from ever missing. In other words, as long as Mareep didn't faint, it was guaranteed to K.O. at least three or four opponents in a row.
- History Repeats:
- The last Unova run, Gauntlet Black 2, featured a male Host with a name made up mostly of female symbols. This one features a female Host with a name made up mostly of male symbols.
- The previous randomized run, Randomized Ultra Moon, had an excessive amount of Trainers being randomized into Hau, to the point where it became running joke with its share of associated jokes ("Hau are you?") and a dedicated hashtag (#HauWorl). This run had an excessive amount of Trainers being randomized into N, leading to it becoming a running joke with its share of associated jokes ("ChereN", "CilaN") and a dedicated hashtag (#NWorl).
- Meaningful Rename: ♂♂♂' at one point had a Fraxure on her team, which the Voices focused on training as they expected its final form to be a particularly powerful pseudo-legendary Dragon-type. Sure enough, it evolved into a powerful Salamence... with the ability Truant, one of the absolute worst abilities in the entire game, which rendered it completely useless. Thus, it was replaced with a Gible which was in turn renamed "COPIUM", after a memetic substance supposedly breathed by people unable to deal with loss or defeat. After reaching its final evolution as a Garchomp and proving itself an extremely valuable member of the team however, it's name was changed once again to the much more positive "HOPIUM".
- No-Sell:
- Cherubi received the ability Wonder Guard, making it completely immune to any attack that wasn't super effective. Given that it is a pure Grass-type with five different weaknesses and poor defensive stats, this still made it likely to go down in a single hit. It lost the ability after evolving into Ferrothorn.
- Oshawott also received Wonder Guard, which served it much better due to only having two weaknesses, but it wasn't used by ♂♂♂' during the run.
- Inverted with Mareep, which had the ability No Guard, meaning its moves could never miss, but neither could its opponent's.
- Power Copying: Several Pokémon were able to learn the move Sketch due to the randomized movesets, letting them permanently learn one of their opponent's moves. Sandshrew used Sketch to copy Water Gun, and Nincada used it to learn Comet Punch.
- After beating the game a first time, CREAMY the Articuno joined the team and was taken to the Move Relearner to be taught Sketch. It was then paired up with specific teammates to copy moves from them during Double Battles, namely Shell Smash from a Mudkip and ThunderPunch from a Slakoth.
- Replacement Goldfish: After beating the game a first time, gn the Luxray was released during a trip to the PC. As a result, the Voices retrieved a Flaffy that they had captured in the basement of Relic Castle and evolved it into another Luxray. Since gn was often referred to as "Good Night", this new Luxray was in turn referred to as "Good Morning", and even eventually renamed from "n" to "gm".
- Running Gag: Trainers being randomized into N quickly became a running theme, the list including Cheren, Cilan, a Pokémon Ranger, a Worker, a Pokefan, two Backpackers, a Hiker, a Team Plasma Grunt, an Ace Trainer, and even, on two occasions, himself.
- The Unpronounceable: The Host for this run was named "♂♂♂'", which is basically unreadable; the most common interpretation of it over time was "Mars", due to the ♂ symbol being based on the Roman God of the same name and used to represent the corresponding planet.
