What Is 'Twitch Plays Pokémon'? The Internet Miracle Celebrating Its Tenth Anniversary Explained

Ten years ago, hundreds of internet users converged onto one Twitch channel with one goal: to beat a playthrough of the first Pokémon. The catch? The game was literally controlled by Twitch chat, meaning every input had to be inputted by a chat member. Imagine hundreds of thumbs trying to control one video game all at once and you can picture the madness that ensued.

Miraculously, after sixteen days, Twitch viewers were able to complete this improbable task, sealing Twitch Plays Pokémon's well-deserved slot in the internet hall of fame. On the anniversary of that infamous run, the channel is doing it again, attempting to complete the run with "total anarchy" rules (more on that later).

Here's why Twitch Plays Pokémon is such a legendary internet phenomenon, and why this new run has people so excited.

What Is Twitch Plays Pokémon?

Twitch Plays Pokémon started on February 12th, 2014. An anonymous Australian programmer was able to code a way for an emulation of Pokémon Red to be controlled entirely by inputs written by Twitch chat.

This means for a player to move, a Twitch chatter would have to type "right" or "up," etc. Same thing for inputting commands like "A" and "B." The neat idea came with an extreme problem, as hundreds of typers would input directions at the same time, making moving, battling, and managing Pokémon a Herculean task.

This made for what is likely the messiest and most arduous playthroughs of Pokémon ever attempted. Recall some of the game's trickiest puzzles, like the Rocket Hideout Maze or the pitch-black cavern that requires the move Flash to navigate. Now imagine 800 people attempting to navigate these puzzles all at once.

Placing a key item or Pokémon into a storage PC meant there was a high probability the "players" would be unable to retrieve it. Incredibly, the players managed to catch Zapdos, but in attempting to retrieve it from the storage PC, they accidentally released 12 Pokémon.

To attempt to mitigate the chaos, some users suggested a "Democracy" rule, where the most common command entered within a 30-second period would be the action the player took. This led to a divide in the game's "players," as some demanded the incredible "anarchy" of every input registering, while others wanted to avoid situations like the Rocket Hideout Maze, which took an anarchy-controlled chat 24 hours to complete.

With the help of an occasionally "Democracy"-controlled chat, Twitch was able to complete Pokémon with a truly ragtag team of Omastar, Pidgeot, Zapdos, Nidoking, Venomoth and Lapras. The playthrough took a staggering 16 days, but the internet had come together and accomplished something truly remarkable.

What Are The Memes Of Twitch Plays Pokémon?

The chaos of Twitch Plays Pokémon lent itself to a plethora of in-jokes, some of which remain popular to this day. Likely the most iconic meme of the two-week playthrough is "Lord Helix," a fan-given nickname to Omanyte. Because the Helix Fossil was positioned second in the playthrough's item box, it was often selected at inappropriate times by the Twitch chat. The frequency of these misinputs led players to ironically view it as a mythical item, a reputation that made the Helix Fossil's eventual transformation into Omanyte (and later Omastar) something like the coming of a God.

Other memes from the playthrough include "Bloody Sunday" (the day chat released twelve Pokémon trying to retrieve Zapdos), "The Ledge" (an infamous path outside Cerulean City requiring some careful platforming that ground the playthrough to a halt), and Eevee the "False Prophet," a Pokémon the chat attempted to turn into Vaporeon but failed, accidentally leading to the release of the playthrough starter Pokémon.

What Is The Legacy Of Twitch Plays Pokémon?

The experiment was a success, and it spawned several spinoff playthroughs. Nearly every mainline Pokémon game has been played by the channel, and some other games have been attempted, such as Zelda, Tetris and Mario. This week's ten-year anniversary is a testament to the popularity of the original playthrough, and a pure "Anarchy" run is sure to deliver some maddening headaches, but perhaps some new legends will be born.

According to Polygon, the current stream is just the beginning of what the channel plans to celebrate the anniversary. The channel's owners "intend to visit 'every mainline Pokémon region' in a 'Super Gauntlet' run of games and 'experiment with hardware peripherals that some Pokémon games can use.'"

Considering the first "Twitch Plays Pokémon" took two weeks to finish, it just might be that this "super run" of every Pokémon game the channel is planning may last until the end of time.

For the full history of Twitch Plays Pokémon, be sure to check out Know Your Meme's encyclopedia entry for more information.