The Legend of Twitch Plays Pokémon - Full Documentary

[Music] there's a reason why pokemon has become the largest franchise in the history of entertainment with expansive worlds to explore and hundreds of creatures to collect it has captivated hundreds of millions starting with the original generation while still fun to play by yourself in 2014 a man pondered what would happen if he tried to have thousands playing a single copy in tandem even though the idea is crazy in and of itself the story becomes more insane from there with infighting betrayal trolling doxing threats and most importantly teamwork making it the biggest social experiment in the history of the internet this is the legend of twitch place pokemon [Music] over the past 20 years as the internet has matured people have argued over if online communities are a force for good or evil structure chaos purity or depravity anarchy or democracy you can say that the internet is a reflection of society in general but with the added step of anonymity for people that choose to take part in this giant social experiment that is the world wide web one group synonymous with the online world since its inception are gamers often ignored by the mainstream they've congregated on forms chat rooms and comment sections as a place to speak their mind people have often seen online gaming as a toxic environment one round on halo 3 on xbox live back in the day would make many give up on humanity so the idea of trying to control this chaos would be impossible right well this story begins in 2011 with the inception of twitch.tv at the time live streaming was still a fairly new and niche form of entertainment but creators were steadily starting to appreciate how twitch gave them a direct connection to talk with and receive feedback from their fans through the twitch chat too layman this chat may look like a fast-moving wall of babel but to the site's users it's how entertainers are able to interact with the millions that tune in since the site's inception fans have been able to sway streamers content by banding together in the chat but what if someone took this concept to the next level what if the unruly force that is the internet had complete control over what happened on the stream an early example of this would be salty bet a project in which twitch viewers were able to gamble and make bets on a randomized fighting game the betting was done via twitch chat all viewers had to do was type in how much money they wanted to bet and which character and it would be counted and at the time unknown programmers saw salty bet and wanted to expand upon this idea he wanted to create a system in which a twitch chat full of people would in tandem be in control of the same video game in order to find out if they'd be able to work together and actually beat it after thinking for a while on which game to use to try out for this concept he eventually landed on pokemon red he reasoned that pokemon's immense popularity would make it easy for the largest number of people online possible to join in and play on top of this the original generation had very simple controls the game uses a grid-based movement system so if a viewer typed up in the twitch chat the character would walk up one tile writing down would make them step down a tile star would make them access the menu and so on and so forth using an emulated copy of pokemon red for the stream he coded the actual system with which the twitch chat would control the game for the project the streamer had originally intended to use a modified version of pokemon red in which all 151 original monsters were available you see pokemon red was originally released alongside pokemon green or blue in the united states nearly identical games with each having their own pokemon exclusive to each version the streamer wanted to circumvent this but accidentally ended up using the unmodified version of the game instead an understandable error when you consider this was nothing more than just a fun side project with everything set up and ready to go the streamer created a twitch account for the project and on february 12th 2014 twitch place pokemon officially began as he made the stream live it's unlikely he could ever imagine what would happen next what was originally just a fun project to have a game played by a chat room would soon become one of the biggest events in gaming history captivating an entire community and serving as quite possibly the greatest social experiment in the history of the internet twitch plays pokemon was not a huge hit at first with the mere 30 to 50 viewers being active at any given time on day one the few that did get to witness its inception were given the option of naming their trainer but ended up just going with the default title red the same happened with their rival as they chose the name blue with that out of the way the adventure began and with it came the first important decision in any mainline series game what to choose as their starter pokemon this pick would have repercussions for the rest of the campaign as they were playing a game built upon tight matchups eventually the viewers chose the fire type starter charmander they nicknamed it a bbb bbbk which fans later decided to pronounce as abby with abby they defeated blue in the game's first battle this wasn't especially difficult but the fact that they were able to work together and win was a good omen for how the rest of the run would go from there things went pretty smoothly for the next few hours they traveled to the nearby viridian city successfully fought their way through the viridian forest and finally arrived to the game's first gym leader brock if you're not familiar with pokemon the goal of the game is to defeat the eight gym leaders scattered throughout the world in order to challenge the final boss known as the champion so fighting brock would be the first real test of their skill and teamwork ability and this is where more people became interested around the time the players entered brock's gym a nintendo form known as gba temp began discussing the stream from there 4chan got involved because of a screenshot of the stream being spread on the pokemon board with these new eyes on the project more and more people began to trickle into the live chat throughout the day despite all the new people giving commands the chat was still able to beat brock in two attempts taking around only an hour with players spirits high after their victory and a steady stream of new people entering the chat they headed towards cerulean city in search of their second gem but between them and the city lay an obstacle that would prove to be their most difficult yet mount moon on their first attempt inside the mountain they were quickly overwhelmed by the wild pokemon causing them to black out and be booted back to the entrance after only half an hour the players decided that abby would not be able to handle the trek on her own so before entering the cave again they wanted to capture another pokemon this was when they caught a pidgey which would later become known as bird jesus with this new team member players now felt up to the challenge this time they certainly put up more of a fight than before and abby even managed to evolve into charmeleon however they still were not able to make it through the cave and blacked out after an hour a 100 improvement from last time at least their third attempt was actually going quite well with them managing to make it about halfway through with no defeats to speak of they may have even managed to make it to the end in good time if the stream had not suddenly gone down in the middle of the attempt the streamer was asleep during the blackout so all players could do was simply wait for the next day when he woke up to reboot the program day 2 began with the game restored putting players right where they left off halfway through mount moon this was when they picked up an item called the helix fossil which would soon become a meme in the community you see this fossil is an item with absolutely no use or function until much much later in the game however players had a habit of opening up their bag and trying to use it which of course would result in the game telling them that there was nothing they could do with it this started a joke amongst fans that whenever they were in doubt about how to beat a difficult challenge they must consult the helix fossil for its wisdom it started something of a mock religion in the fan base with helix becoming their god and the helix fossils counterpart the dome fossil being seen as a satanic figure despite them never actually obtaining it after six hours inside the dreadful cave the chat finally exited out the other side from there all they had to do was travel a very short distance to cerulean city where they would reach a new checkpoint however tragedy struck when they got into a fight mere steps away from the city's entrance causing them to black out and once again having to start all the way back at the entrance of mount moon around this time stories of the stream's struggles began to spread across the web on top of 4chan users of game facts and more notably reddit began talking about this weird little experiment with threads dedicated to twitch place pokemon popping up all over the place this was the true beginning of twitch place pokemon's popularity with over 3 000 new people entering the chat wanting to help them get through mount moon despite some difficulty with the character repeatedly going into and leaving the mountain during the last attempt with their two pokemon now at a much higher level they managed to work together and get through the cave in under an hour finally arriving in cerulean city the first thing they did in town was challenge the gym leader misty but were quickly defeated as their fire type starter was weak to water in the wake of the defeat players decided to travel north to route 24 in order to catch some new party members to train it was here that they were once again challenged by blue in a fight that many consider to be one of the hardest in the entire game despite their small team an overwhelming number of viewers giving commands at the same time they were able to beat him in just two attempts from there they continued onto the route where they captured erratica they named jlvwnnn00 which they decided to call jay leno after spending a bit more time leveling up by fighting wild pokemon they were ready to re-challenge misty this fight was a long and grueling one time and time again they entered her gym fought as best as they could but eventually lost and were booted back to the pokemon center with bird jesus now evolved into a pidgeotto the first thing they did in town was challenge the gym leader misty but were quickly defeated as their fire type starter was weak to water then after 11 attempts and eight hours they were able to finally defeat misty by the skin of their teeth earning their second batch the players decided to celebrate by capturing another rattata which would go on to be known as digrat for reasons we'll get to later and the day ended with them heading south to vermillion city in search of their next batch the third day marked an important milestone for the stream as it was when the twitch place pokemon subreddit was formed bringing new interest to the game being played meanwhile on stream the players had reached vermilion city and went straight to the cruise ship ssn in order to progress the story however they quickly blacked out prompting them to travel east to catch some new pokemon when they returned they had added a drowzee later dubbed the keeper and a spearow to their party hopping on the cruise liner again they were challenged by blue for the game's third battle with him with the help of their new pokemon they were able to win in just two attempts and went on to obtain the move cut from the ship's captain and soon after blacked out at this point it didn't matter though as they had already gone what they came for since the only way to access the game's third gem was with cuts so now they just needed to find a pokemon to teach the move to luckily an npc in vermilion city was willing to trade their far-fetched name ducks for their spiro the players accepted the trade tot cut to ducks and were finally able to enter the gym pokemon red's third gem is infamous for its trash camp puzzle basically in order to reach the gym leader lieutenant surge the player must find two switches randomly hidden in bins throughout the room if the players find the first switch but then incorrectly guess which trash can will have the second switch the puzzle resets and they must start over from the very beginning the chat was understandably dreading this puzzle as many expected it to take them hours to complete due to its random nature luck appeared to be on their side that day though as they cleared the puzzle in only 30 minutes from there they were able to beat lieutenant serge on their second attempt and left in search of the next batch as they made their way down route 9 the players accidentally found a major flaw in twitch plays pokemon's programming you see as more and more people entered the chat and a sea of bun commands came in it started to prove a little too much for the program to handle this hit a boiling point with a rapid string of a b start and select commands which the program interpreted as one single press this was a problem as those four buttons held down at once would reset the emulator viewers of the stream were of course horrified as they were forced to start their adventure over but soon the streamer realized what had happened and loaded up an old save file placing them right back where they were to prevent this from happening again he disabled the select button command while the reset was terrifying to those that watched it live the chat would soon realize all past struggles were child's play compared to the horrors that awaited them next up until this point in the stream players were focused on the challenges they'd face in the form of pokemon battles this is understandable as that's what fans of the franchise are used to being the game's main obstacles but when playing with thousands of others elements once mundane can quickly turn into nightmares case in point towards the end of route 9 there is an area full of ledges that the player can't transcend down but not back up in a normal playthrough most players wouldn't think twice about them but in twitch place pokemon whenever a single person prompted the down command they'd fall through the one-way barrier and as a result would have to get the entire chat to walk all the way around again for hours players went in a loop of reaching the top of the ledge accidentally jumping down and then walking all the way to the beginning to get back up again when they finally did make it past the obstacle they'd lose a battle forcing them to do it all over in total it took them a whopping 4 hours to clear this small section it certainly didn't help that there were some people in the chat who weren't actually interested in making progress rather they just wanted to cause chaos and keep the stream there for as long as possible to make earnest participants go insane despite that players were eventually able to overcome the trolls and make it through leading to the next challenge you see standing between the players and the next gym leader was a cave known as the rock tunnel unlike mount moon this cavern had its own added challenge of being completely pitch black in order to see in the darkness they needed to have a pokemon that was able to use the move flash to illuminate their surroundings however they had no pokemon that was able to learn it forcing them to navigate the cave without being able to see in front of them it goes without saying that this was a painful task the chat had no choice but to blindly type in commands hoping that they would go in the right direction some more proactive players on the subreddit chose to look at a map of the rock tunnel outside of the stream in order to see the correct way out but there were so many others just typing haphazardly that these efforts proved useless it didn't help that they kept getting defeated in battles and blacking out forcing them to start over and over again at the beginning of the cave as if all this wasn't bad enough trolls had discovered a new way to cause chaos in the stream and this is where the digrat ratata mentioned earlier comes into play you see digrat as his name implies knew the move dig which when used outside of battle automatically teleports the player back to the entrance of whatever cave or building they happen to be in so every time they made any substantial progress through the rock tunnel those mischief makers who just wanted to watch the world burn would open up the team menu and have digrat use dig starting them back at square one after three hours of this players decided that they were finally fed up and wanted to fight back so they hit up the nearest pokemon center to access their pc the game storage system for pokemon after a short struggle digrat was deposited into the pc giving the stream a fighting chance at actually getting through the mountain it was still a monumental challenge but through determination trial and error slowly leveling up their team and sheer luck they finally made it to the exit of the rock tunnel after a whopping 10 hours in the darkness they arrived in the creepy nearby village of lavender town and immediately began making their way toward celadon city home of the fourth gem on the way during a random battle bird jesus gained enough levels to evolve into a pidgeot and was quickly proving to be their most valuable pokemon when they arrived in celadon city the next day their first task was to go directly to the gym to challenge the leader erika unlike previous gym leader fights which took at least two attempts to complete the players were able to easily beat erica in only about 30 minutes with bird jesus whoeverless demolished every single one of her pokemon due to his high level and type advantage this was the one benefit of training in that cave for so long however this victory would quickly be overshadowed by the first major feud in the twitch place pokemon community despite twitch place pokemon's chaotic nature there were some fans who were working behind the scenes trying to give it some structure in both the subreddit and 4chan the people were discussing strategies and planning ahead they knew that eventually they'd need a pokemon that could learn surf a move that allows the player to travel across water after much debate they had narrowed down their choice to two candidates a vaporeon or a lapras when the players received an eevee the pre-evolved form of vaporeon from an npc in celadon city they determined it would be easier to just go with that as their surf pokemon in red version eevee can be evolved into either a water fire or electric type depending on what stone it's given so the water stone is what they needed to purchase however when they entered the department store to buy a water stone in order to get a vaporeon they ended up purchasing a firestone instead and blew the rest of their money on useless pokedolls undeterred the planners decided to go with their backup plan of a lapras they went to the pokemon center and booted up the pc in order to clear room in their party for when they would secure their new pocket monster this is when they encountered another function of the pc that had not become a problem until now releasing pokemon you must understand that in addition to storage the pc also allows you to set your pokemon free deleting them from the game so when they tried to do the ordinarily simple task of storing an unwanted pokemon in the end two of their party members were released the beloved jay leno and abby the loss of their starter pokemon the pal that in most playthroughs a trainer would keep to the very end of their journey rocked to the community with the subreddit becoming flooded with posts grieving the loss to add insult to injury the firestone was used on the eevee evolving it into a flareon and essentially making everything that had happened in the past few hours all for nothing this earned flareon the name false prophet and in the meta lore it took the role as the evil follower of the dome fossil this debacle left players with no other choice but to lick their wounds and hope they would have more success getting a lapras later on the rest of the day went fairly smoothly they captured an oddish which they called cabbage and made their way to celadon city's hideout for the game's villain team rocket [Music] day six was perhaps the most important in the entire run of twitch place pokemon as players continued making their way through the team rocket hideout they found themselves stuck while trying to navigate its notorious tile puzzle basically the way it works is that the room is filled with floor tiles each with an arrow pointing in a different direction when the player steps on one of these tiles they will automatically travel in a different direction that the arrow was pointing until they either hit a wall or hit another arrow this will cause them to begin moving in that new direction at this point the stream had grown into a phenomenon in the online world and as a result there were tens of thousands playing at the same time so coordinating movement was pretty much impossible this was a problem as the puzzle required players to step on specific tiles in a strict order to get through despite the best efforts of the most serious players and forward planners nothing could be done to get past the tile room and it seemed to some like this may have been the end of their journey as they had finally found an obstacle they were unable to clear after the chat spent almost a full 24 hours in this one building the streamer decided that he had to intervene the live stream began cutting in and out for around an hour while he concocted a new system to help the game progress and when the stream came back online a new system called democracy mode was implemented with this new system each command would be counted as a vote for what the next move should be and every 10 or so seconds the program would issue the most popular command to the game this made gameplay a lot slower but also more precise with democracy mode players were finally able to complete the tile puzzle and continue progressing through the team rocket hideout despite how useful democracy mode was when it came to progression some players hated it saying that it ruined the intent behind twitch plays pokemon however there was hope for these players as it was possible to revert back to the old system at the top of the screen there was now a meter constantly counting the votes for which mode viewers wanted to play in democracy or classic anarchy when the votes began to sway in one direction or the other the mode would change accordingly most of the time players pretty much all agreed that anarchy was much more fun and they continued to play under its rules sometimes however when they encountered a problem that they deemed too difficult the polls would shift towards democracy to the anarchists the mere inclusion of this mode was appalling so they decided to protest this was the commencement of what became known as the start 9 riots basically whenever the game would shift into democracy mode fans of anarchy would begin spamming the command start 9 into the chat which would cause the program to open and close the in-game menu nine times start nine began to win the poll every single time since the rest of the votes were usually split despite democracy being implemented in order to make the game a bit smoother these riots would grind all progress to a complete halt after a full day of infighting between pro-democracy and pro-anarchy players they finally managed to reach the end of the hideout and fight team rocket's leader giovanni but during the battle this infighting revved back up causing them to lose the battle and start the team rocket hideout puzzle from the very beginning yet again this left pretty much the entire community exhausted and frustrated wondering if democracy mode would end up doing more harm than good the next day their second attempt at the team rocket hideout went much smoother as they managed to reach giovanni in under an hour this time however digrad who somehow ended up back in the party during the pc fiasco struck again and ejected them out of the hideout forcing them back to square one soon they managed to reach giovanni once more and this time defeated him with the help of ducks and their mvp burgess with the team rocket boss crushed all that was left was to collect the needed key story item the silph scope and they would be done with the hideout forever as they walked up to it though the team menu was opened yet again with players watching in horror as digrats sent them back outside forcing them to do another encore run-through of the despised building after another gruelling two-hour trek they reached the top again and at last picked up the silkscope ending one of the most exhausting chapters of the saga with all the attention the struggles of this stream we're receiving through the addition of democracy mode and those criticizing the change up many started to have questions about the man behind the scenes running this whole experiment this would lead them down a whole new rabbit hole going through team rocket's headquarters might not have been twitch place pokemon's most productive day but it was one of its most popular the mainstream media had now begun to take notice of the stream and write articles bringing attention to what this group of anonymous players had accomplished during this day there were a whopping 123 224 co-current viewers which was by far the all-time highest number of watchers a twitch stream had ever received this had become a massive deal with many starting to wonder about the man behind it all wondering who exactly he was upon digging however you'll find that very little is known about this mysterious individual behind twitch place pokemon a surprising fact considering how popular his experiment had become but over time people were able to piece together a few minor tidbits about the man behind the stream for one since the streamer only seemed to be online in the middle of the night and also showed the clock on his computer screen once people realized that he was australian also the fact that he was nostalgic for the first generation of pokemon games made many surmise that he was in his 20s and his technical abilities showed that he was a competent programmer who was working from home which allowed him to operate such an experiment even though he appeared to be a homebody that didn't mean the streamer didn't socialize with others on the internet as the twitch playthrough became more popular he began to recruit volunteers to help him manage the increasingly hectic game and community surrounding it of these volunteers one of the most notable was a man known as the chef so uh my username is the chef uh on twitch's place pokemon and i been involved with twitch place pokemon as a participant since uh the red days back i believe in day two when i first came in there over time the chef was able to build up some credibility in the tpp community allowing him to gain more responsibility with different aspects of the account required to run it 24 7. things started out great but over time as he began to interact with the secretive streamer behind the scenes he along with many other moderators and developers began to take issue with how they were being treated but just seeing the amount of abuse he spewed out towards the other team members uh it was just one random weekday i went to go get some food i came back and it looked like the overlay team they were working on new overlay and they presented it to streamer and streamer completely rejected the idea didn't even want to review the brand new overlay and instead presented his old one which honestly i'm not sure if you guys have seen the picture of it but it's horrifying to the eyes the attitude that the streamer showed behind closed doors had clearly irked many over time and this stream overlay situation was the boiling point as it led to a feud between both him and the chef things became heated as people began taking sides arguing if the streamer was ruining the project and fighting for control of the entire operation this escalated to the next level when the streamer was accused of doxing the chef for questioning his judgment and sewing descent enraged by what the streamer had done the chef proceeded to go rogue on the twitch place pokemon live stream and call out the bad behavior in front of a live audience telling the world that the streamer was responsible for him being doxed and swatted streamer this message is solely for you you made a huge mistake giving me an open mic on a live twitch stream you made this personal with me this morning leaking my personal info to the subreddit and also not and also wanting not only to potentially come after me with legal action but to go as far as swatting me and don't believe me there will be pictures of that being posted out everywhere people will see how low the head you actually are it's absolutely disgusting but what's even more disgusting is that you are so hell-bent and actually trying to destroy me that you're ignoring your staff in dev chat right now telling you not to do this with pressure rising and threats to reveal his identity becoming a very real possibility the streamer made a public apology to calm down the mob and step down as operator of the live stream though our sources indicate that the new operator was merely a puppet with the streamer still calling the shots behind the scenes as time went on the outrage subsided and eventually the chef quit the team to run the overwatch event friday night fights instead upon researching the story i actually tried to get in touch with the streamer for myself a task easier said than done after asking around a bit i was referred to a twitter account who gave me a discord username to send a request to then a few hours later my friend request was accepted and i was there dm'ing with the enigmatic man behind the live stream while he was fine talking privately i would soon learn that he suffers from social anxiety making it difficult for me to convince him to break his silence and jump on a call for an interview after well over a month of follow-up messages as of writing i have been unable to set up a call with this unnamed individual and had no choice but to finish making the documentary without his untold side of the story it's fitting really as now it seems almost certain that the streamer will remain in the shadows for the rest of time regardless the game must go on as more challenges await the chat [Music] things continued relatively smoothly for a while after obtaining the silph scope the chat caught two zubats named x-wing and dashbat and a ghastly which they called rick gasly on top of that they also decided to challenge the dojo in saffron city where bird jesus single-handedly swept the teams of every trainer inside as a reward they were given a hitmoly which they named c3ko however later that day while trying to use the pc both c3ko and x-wing ended up getting released compared to the incredibly busy previous days day 8 was pretty uneventful they returned to lavender town in order to use their newly acquired key item to battle the ghost marowak within the town's pokemon tower like most things in twitch place pokemon though this was much easier said than done once again the problem was digrat as he continued to do what he did best and dug them outside the structure not only that but pretty much their entire team lacked attacks that were able to damage ghost type pokemon resulting in a number of defeats and blackouts after nearly 22 hours making very little progress it was starting to look like a repeat of the team rocket hideout debacle this is when digrat saw a bit of a redemption arc for days its dig move had been a massive headache for players however in pokemon tower it turned out to be a huge blessing because in pokemon red the only ghost type pokemon are also poison type which is weak to ground type moves such as dig not only that but digrat's normal typing made him immune to ghost type moves turning him into their secret weapon against these ghouls with digrat's help the tides were turned and the players began easily battling their way up the tower this was the most combat he had seen in the entire game and gained him enough levels to evolve into eradicates earning him the new nickname big dick at last they reached the top of the tower and obtained the pokeflute from mr fuji finally allowing them to continue their journey the next day they used the musical instrument to wake up a snorlax blocking their path forward but despite the chat's best efforts they did not catch it the chat began making the journey towards the location of the next gem fusca city on the way they engaged in enough battles for cabbage to evolve into gloom plus bird jesus reached level 50. upon arrival they defeated the gym leader relatively easily in only two attempts most of the rest of the day was spent in the city's safari zone it needs to be understood that the safari zone is an area specifically designed for catching as many pokemon as possible the player pays a small fee and then are allowed to catch as many creatures as they want until they exceed the maximum amount of steps taken at which point they are ejected from the area they caught an incredibly high amount of pokemon in the zone but the only ones of any note were a venomoth named all-terrain venomoth and a nidorino named the font eventually after several hours of getting booted out of the safari zone due to either reaching the max number of steps or big dig using dig to eject them the chat managed to reach the end of the area where they obtained the hm for surf after they were done there they returned to saffron city where they finally obtained the lapras they had planned for all those days prior they decided to call it air jordan due to the chat giving it the nickname air they quickly taught air jordan surf concluding the eevee vs lapras civil war after fighting their way through the silphco headquarter for about 13 hours they reached the end and were once again challenged by giovanni this time however they were able to defeat him fairly easily and obtain the master ball an item that you only receive once that can catch any pokemon without fail next the chat decided to go to saffron city's gym to challenge its leader sabrina after four failed attempts and four hours of trying they finally beat her with the help of none other than bird jesus with the master ball in hand players decided that the next day should be spent using it to capture the legendary pokemon zapdos an ambitious task so they began making their way towards its location and none of them knowing of the horror that would await as a single man with an army would do his best to destroy all the work accomplished thus far and what would go down as the most distressing day in the entire playthrough [Music] as the chat was heading towards zapdos elsewhere on twitch an up-and-coming live streamer known as destiny was hatching a scheme of his own as he watched thousands come together to beat pokemon red steven was fascinated by the experiment taking place and wanted to be a part of it for himself though his goals were much different than those on 4chan and reddit he wanted destruction just as a warning my recollection of events might not be perfect because it's been a long time but i think my general understanding was i want to say that there was a certain part it's one of the routes where you were going through cities but like i think it got to the point where they couldn't quite get to certain parts in the game because one or two commands would send you back so far that it became like impossible to actually make progress so i think what the creator did was they implemented an ability for the chat to vote on the next command and then there are other streamer communities like mine that were like wouldn't it be crazy if we went in and like released like an important pokemon or messed the game up in some way and then i think on my stream we became fixated with the idea of trying to set free that they had caught um it was a pidgeotto i think is what it was he rolled up to and they called him bird jesus so we were going to try to release him from the box the plan was simple while streaming he would send all of his fans into twitch place pokemon's chat in order to switch the mode to democracy so they could then all vote on movements to release bird jesus the community's most cherished pokemon and as his scheme went into effect tens of thousands watched in terror as one man and his minions attempted to erase what they worked so hard for he managed to get the mode changed to democracy but players quickly caught on to what he was trying to do and after a struggle anarchy was reinstated destiny was not done yet however he and his fans decided to stand down and wait for the right opportunity to strike again meanwhile players arrived at the power plant to the home of zapdos their plan was to use the master ball to capture it and surprisingly unlike pretty much every other plan they had made previously this one actually went off without a hitch they nicknamed him aa-jay and he was automatically sent to pc storage since their team was full it was pretty much unanimously agreed on by players that they wanted zapdos in their active party so they made their way to the nearest pokemon center to rearrange their team this was when destiny and his followers began their second attack turning what should have been a simple use of the pc into a nine hour struggle known in the twitch place pokemon community as bloody sunday as they opened up the team menu and the pc destiny's fans quickly jumped into the chat and began forcing the cursor towards the release of various pokemon it quickly became clear that their numbers were too great for them to be stopped entirely so players had to settle for just keeping them away from bird jesus on that day many pokemon ended up getting released though bird jesus was saved most of these were safari's own captures but tragically three favorites were lost in the battle cabbage ducks and the recently redeemed big dick ducks was perhaps the biggest loss of the day as he was the only one of their pokemon that knew cut without him the chat was forced to trek all the way back through the dreaded rock tunnel to get to the next gem at the end of the day bird jesus was safe and zapdos had been successfully added to the team but the community was still in a collective state of mourning for the friends they had lost many people took this attack personally and began going after destiny directly yeah it was actually crazy interesting i would say this is up to that point um that was probably the most hate i'd ever gotten on the internet directed towards me um i had people trying to hack my accounts i had people trying to spam report me to twitch to get my stream banned i had people that were just saying all sorts of crazy things about my internet saying i was a horrible parent that i should lose my child people were like sending crazy messages to me on on reddit on twitter and my email on my twitch deal i got everything um yeah people were basically just like their whole lives were i would say their whole lives like it seemed like there was a large amount of people who had a sizable amount of time dedicated to trying to like destroy me in every possible way over like twitch plays pokemon was super crazy to me at the time broken and depressed they began to make their way back and prepared to once again navigate through the darkness [Music] despite how long it had taken them last time on this occasion players managed to get through the rock tunnel in an impressive three hours in part due to their much stronger team though a small victory it was enough to lift the community spirits after the prior day's tragic events but their adventure was not even close to being over to get to the seventh gem on cinnabar island without having to move fly or cut was by revisiting the town they started the game in pallet town so they had to backtrack on foot they traveled backwards through mount moon and the viridian forest finally arriving on the shores of cinnabar island six hours later before checking out the gym players wanted to take advantage of a different feature of the city first the fossil laboratory this was a place where scientists would take fossils and reanimate them turning them into pokemon here long time players could finally take an old meme to the next level and turn the helix fossil into an ammonite dubbed lord helix this was the final addition to their party and for the rest of the play through their team consisted of bird jesus zapdos lord helix air jordan all-terrain venomoth and the fonts with the squad assembled they move forward upon venturing to the gym they found the door was locked in order to obtain the key they would have to search in the pokemon mansion right next door which is exactly what they did however it would take until the next day to actually get the needed item as they repeatedly blacked out while in the mansion not only that but at one point they ended up accidentally trapped between an npc a rock and a table with no way out without big dig to bail them out they realized that the only way to escape was to keep losing wild pokemon battles until all party members fainted day 13 began with them returning to the pokemon mansion and finally obtaining the secret key granting them access to the gym when they challenged the gym leader blaine they easily swept through his entire team with the help of zapdos gaining them their 7th gym batch all that was left now was to return to viridian city where the final gym was waiting for them before they could challenge the elite four as they arrived in the now familiar town they had one more unforeseen challenge to overcome before entering the gym much like the obstacle they had struggled with all the way back on route 9 in front of this building was another ledge that you could go down but not back up nearly 10 hours were spent walking up to the front of the gym and hopping down the ledge before they could enter forcing them to walk all the way around to try again and again and again eventually though through either teamwork or sheer luck they managed to enter the gym and challenge its leader team rocket's very own giovanni on their first attempt battling him they lost forcing them once again to make it past the ledge this time around however they managed to clear it on their first try and re-challenge giovanni immediately on the second attempt they were able to achieve victory by having bird jesus spam the move sand attack on his rhyhorn lowering his accuracy and rendering him incapable of landing a single attack with that they had earned their final badge and it was finally time to travel through victory road and go up against the game's final trainers on the chat's way there they were challenged again by their old rival blue despite beating him in two attempts players decided that their team needed to level up a bit more before challenging the elite four so they returned to the pokemon mansion and began grinding by battling wild pokemon after wild pokemon after seven hours of this they decided that they were ready and returned to victory road however it seemed as though they weren't as well equipped as they thought and blacked out after four hours to make matters worse since the last pokemon center they had used was on cinnabar island they were sent all the way back there after losing rather than get discouraged players considered this a blessing in disguise as they returned to the pokemon mansion to grind levels again for another six hours during the second training session lord helix evolved feeling that this was a sign they decided that they were now truly prepared and once again made the journey back even though they had spent all that time leveling up victory road presented new challenges outside of just battling in order to make it through the cave the chat needed to move around large boulders with the move strength which they taught to the fonts much to the frustration of anarchists the decision was made to switch to democracy in order to handle the precision required for the rock moving puzzles then at last after almost 13 hours of traveling they made it to the other side and entered the pokemon league ready to face their final challenge if they could pull this off all their struggles would have been worth it from the start their fight against the elite four was rough for those unaware the way the elite four works is that the player must defeat all of them in a row and then the champion without being defeated once if a player blacks out they must start all over their first challenge was against the ice type trainer lorelai on their fourth try against her they were finally able to come out victorious next they moved on to bruno the fighting type trainer which they actually managed to defeat on their first attempt then came agatha the strongest ghost type opponent in the entire game which became apparent when she destroyed them sending them back to the start surprisingly though on their next attempt they were able to easily beat lorelei and bruno and managed to beat agatha leaving only one elite four member between them and the champion things were looking bleak in this fight as the dragon type trainer lance began quickly taking down the player's team one by one in the end each trainer only had one pokemon left lance had a dragonite and the chat had all-terrain venomoth against all odds and despite being more than 20 levels lower than their opponent venomoth was miraculously able to achieve victory finally it was time to face the champion blue when they challenged blue this first time they really didn't stand a chance they tried their best but since all terrain venomoth was their last pokemon standing and had already been weakened from the fight their loss was more or less inevitable they then spent the next seven hours or so losing over and over to various members of the elite four each time failing to make it back to blue no matter how many times they were forced to restart they kept getting back up and trying again hoping that things would go well for them the next time as the chap began getting tired they successfully defeated lorelei then bruno then agatha and then lance finally after days inside the pokemon league it was time to challenge blue yet again with a full team the battle was tough but in the end they were able to pull through with the final move being zapdos using thunder on blue's blastoise the champion didn't stand a chance after 17 long days and over 90 000 viewers watching live the credits rolled on pokemon red with twitch place pokemon generation 1 coming to an end [Music] after the chat completed the game twitch place pokemon continued live streaming the proceeding generations in the series along with this other experimental broadcasts were started such as stock stream where a twitch chat invested in stocks for the account's owner or fish place pokemon where a goldfish was tasked with playing the game but nothing has been able to recapture the lightning in a bottle that was the original pokemon red playthrough by far the biggest winner of all of this was twitch itself as this event broke site-wide records brought media attention to the service and cemented its place as the king of online streaming no one better understood the good that this experiment had done for their business better than the ceo of the site amateur he brought a representative from the guinness book of world records to the company's headquarters to present them with the award for the most users to input a command to play a live streamed video game the total amount of people that ended up participating and playing pokemon red came out to a staggering one million one hundred sixty five thousand one hundred and twitch offered to fly the streamer out to california to be part of the ceremony as well but he declined as it was never his intention to be famous he was just a man that had a fun little idea for a live stream that grew well beyond his wildest expectations to this very day the creator of twitch plays pokemon remains anonymous but his creation will live on in the internet's memory forever it may have been chaotic frustrating and difficult but twitch plays pokemon brought internet users and the gaming community together in a way no one could have imagined while gamers had been known to fight a lot on the world wide web many thought that on march 1st of 2014 when the champion was defeated with the collective help of the entire online community maybe we could finally all get along [Music] you

Channel: TheGamerFromMars

Views: 1,126,019

Keywords: thegamerfrommars, internet culture, Pokemon, Twitch, TwitchPlaysPokemon, Twitch Plays Pokemon, Destiny, documentary

Id: hEKbfId5oHM

Length: 51min 16sec (3076 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 11 2020