on Twitch Plays Pokémon Theta Emerald EXTwitch 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 Theta Emerald EX is the fifth run of Season 4, and the twenty-sixth run overall, beginning September 30th, 2017 and ending on October 15th, 2017. The game featured in this run, Pokémon Theta Emerald EX, is an extensive hack of Pokémon Emerald created by LCCoolJ95, featuring all Pokémon up to Generation VI and many later-gen mechanics, including Fairy-type, Mega-Evolution, and a Physical/Special split. This particular run was notably picked through a community poll after Pyrite proved to be a divisive choice, something that would become commonplace in future seasons.
The Host for this run is a girl named ACCPPQ (often interpreted as "Acacia" or "Acapella"), who followed the previously established trend of Hoenn-based Hosts picking Torchic as their starter; she was also seen by many as a spoiled-rich girl due to starting the game with 50,000P, although she quickly lost half of it to a wild Wingull and spent the rest of it on Poké Balls. Other notable characters included a fabulous Mega-Evolving Ampharos, an Aegislash thought to be wielded by ACCPPQ herself, an overpowered Gogoat nicknamed "Holly" that served as figurehead of the team, and a Sylveon that stole the show after a glitch made the villain from Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak appear all over its battle interface.
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for the archived progress of the game, here for the archived status of the run, or here for live updates, which have been archived here.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Theta Emerald EX contains examples of:
- Breakout Character: AAAAAAAAAA the Sylveon, also known as "Screameon". It was deposited on Day 2, as not only was the chat actually trying to get a Leafeon rather than a Sylveon, but many players had grown tired of Eeveelutions being overly represented in TPP runs, especially as a Sylveon was already part of the team from Brown. Ironically though, the debate over whether or not to keep in the team, along with the jokes about its name and one instance during which its battle interface started glitching out and displaying the villain Spat from Hamtaro: Ham-Ham Heartbreak caused it to become the most memorable Pokémon of the whole run, and to receive the largest amount of fanart out of all of them.
- Glitch Entity: During one Trainer battle, the opponent attempted to use the move U-turn, which would have normally allowed him to switch to another Pokémon. However, he did not have any other Pokémon, which led to a glitch Pokémon being sent out instead, appearing as a white question mark in a black circle, and freezing the game in the process.
- History Repeats: This run marks the fourth time a main run takes place in Hoenn, and the fourth time Torchic is picked as the starter for one.
- Horsemen of the Apocalypse: There were a lot of visual glitches which made Pokémon appear wrongly colored or over the battle interface during this run. Four notable ones were Darmanitan, Honedge◊, Growlithe, and Spat. One interpretation that emerged links them to the four Horsemen: Darmanitan as Famine (it appeared to be eating the HP bar), Honedge as Death (being a Ghost-type), Growlithe as Pestilence (its color scheme resembled Guzma, a Bug-type specialist), and Spat as War (his objective is to destroy as many friendships as possible).
- Mythology Gag: During Inkay's evolution into Malamar, the screen was flipped upside-down as a reference to its atypical evolution method in the main series games, which involves holding the console upside-down.
- Previous Player-Character Cameo: In an unintentional example, AHUNIgg made a quick cameo when a Blazed Glazed savestate was mistakenly loaded after a game crash on Day 1.
- Riches to Rags: ACCPPQ started the game with no less than 50,000 Pokédollars, significantly more than the usual 3,000 from most Pokémon games. However, she lost half of it to a wild Wingull about an hour into the run, then spent the other half on Poké Balls twenty minutes later, leaving her with a measly 120 Pokédollars.
- Snakes Are Sinister: Inputs froze as a wild Arbok appeared, which brought the stream to a halt for about an hour and fifteen minutes. Several people joked that said Arbok had either hypnotized ACCPPQ or was restraining her in its coils.
- Take That, Audience!: It took almost four days for ACCPPQ to get her final Badge, to the point where the subreddit sidebar listed the number of Badges obtained as "still 7◊".
