After over 391 hours of gameplay, the social experiment known as Twitch Plays Pokémon is over (for the time being). Early this morning, 35,507,110 people watched as the committee-controlled player character defeated rival Blue and became the Pokémon Champion.
For those of you who don’t know, Twitch Plays Pokémon is a Twitch.tv stream where viewers can play Pokemon Red…all at the same time. Say you type ‘up’ into the chat bar. Thanks to some clever scripting on the part of TPP’s mysterious benefactor, that chat message is interpreted by the game as a command. So typing ‘up’ is the same as pressing the ‘up’ button in-game. Dorkly has a pretty fantastic timeline, in case you want to follow the whole thing from the beginning.
The stream has birthed many fantastic inside jokes, like the mythical Helix Fossil or Bird Jesus. Some people may complain about how “dumb” these jokes have become, but if you can’t appreciate a faux-religion formed inside an incredibly geeky social experiment, then maybe you’re not the target demographic for this whole thing.
(Also, pull the stick out of your ass)
At time of writing, the stream is currently showing a countdown timer, counting down to Twitch Plays Pokémon Gold/Silver. It’s got a little under 17 hours left, so we’ll have to wait and see which version TPP decides to use. But for now, savor this moment. Let March 1st be forever known as Helix Day. Not in the eyes of the government, nor the general public. In our eyes. In our hearts.
Let the legacy of Lord Helix live forever.
