One Twitch streamer challenged his fans to work together over the holidays to complete a randomized Pokémon Crystal run with a five-day time limit, and the power of teamwork shattered expectations. The world-leading streaming site allows followers to do far more than watch their favorite content creators. Fans can communicate through the Twitch channel's chat, but not only can they send emotes and personalized messages, but they can also control the games on the channel if given the proper tools.
Some Twitch streamers have let chat control their lives in some creative experiences on the platform. Channel hosts are able to give viewers control using the chat function. Viewers must input commands to complete an action while others in the chat are attempting the same action simultaneously. In contrast, other viewers have been known to make things more complicated by choosing wrong commands on purpose. Such methods have been used by Twitch chat to defeat challenging games such as Dark Souls, Microsoft Flight Simulator, and even The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
The talented Twitch Streamer and Pokémon Speedrunner 360Chrism recently took a holiday break from his more than 120,000 Twitch followers but left a randomized version of Pokémon Crystal open for the chat to work together and attempt to beat the game during the five-day vacation. His fans defeated Red, the games' final boss, in 35 hours and 33 minutes As reported via NME, this method saw hundreds of people imputing commands simultaneously, which would make playing any video game difficult. Such a feat would be impressive on a vanilla version of the game, but to make things more interesting, a randomizer mod was put in place, mixing the Pokémon player's encounter and their movesets to be different upon each playthrough.
Twitch chat taking control of games has proved to be nail-biting fun with games like Microsoft Flight Simulator. It is not difficult to imagine how some video game sections may be difficult or close to impossible to complete in such a way, with Morty's gym puzzle from Pokémon Crystal being a great example. That section took 360Chrism's followers several hours to complete in this playthrough. The flurry of viewer inputs was somewhat mitigated thanks to Twitch's mods enabling the platform's "Emote-only mode" during certain instances that allowed the mods to control commands for one minute. This allowed the group to progress through some problematic areas and even managed to catch a shiny Espeon.
Streaming platforms have consistently helped breathe life into older games while also reaching new heights with newer titles like the most recent Pokémon Brilliant Diamond remake. Viewers have been watching billions of hours of streamers on Twitch, but for 35 hours and 33 minutes, 360Chrism's fans did more than just watch; they worked together to defeat Pokémon Crystal after traveling far and wide, they became the best that ever was.
Pokémon Brilliant Diamond and Shining Pearl are available for the Nintendo Switch.
Sources: NME, 360Chrism/Twitch