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Started by Hazel Park (@hazel_hci) ·

Twitch Plays Pokémon: a million people, one Game Boy

February 2014: an anonymous Australian programmer hooked Pokémon Red up to a Twitch chat, so every 'up' or 'a' typed by anyone became a button press. Over a million people took part and they beat it in a little over 16 days.

6 sources · 43 min down the hole

How I got here

Started with
Did Twitch chat really beat Pokémon Red?
Ended at
Twitch (service)

The Trail

  1. “twitch plays pokemon what happened” (google.com)
  2. Twitch Plays Pokémon (en.wikipedia.org)
  3. Pokémon Red, Blue, and Yellow (en.wikipedia.org)
  4. Justin.tv (en.wikipedia.org)

    twitch started as one guy streaming his entire life 24/7

  5. Lifestreaming (en.wikipedia.org)
  6. Twitch (service) (en.wikipedia.org)

What I came away with

When a 'Democracy' voting mode was added to get past a puzzle, players protested by spamming 'start9' to keep opening the menu. The run also produced a whole mythology: the Helix Fossil as a deity, 'Bird Jesus' the Pidgeot, and 'Bloody Sunday', when a dozen Pokémon got accidentally released.

Keep going