A single stream on Twitch.tv has taken the Internet by storm.
The stream is of the classic Gameboy game Pokemon Red and has had almost thirteen and a half million total views.
This isn’t any normal stream however as the game is being controlled by the stream’s chat.
TwitchPlaysPokemon is running a version of Pokemon Red, the 151 romhack to be precise, and an IRC bot translates chat commands into keypresses.
If you want to get involved, just type: a, b, start select, up, down, left or right into the chat and watch the chaos unfold.
Upwards of fifty thousand people are often watching at any time and any of them can be typing commands into chat. This ends up with Red, the Pokemon trainer, often walking in circles or persistently checking his items.
So far the stream has been running over six days and it’s been something special. Four days in the viewers risked using a PC and wound up releasing ABBBBBBK( and JLVWNNOOOO, a lvl 13 Rattata and the evolved level 34 starter Charmeleon respectively.
Due to the nature of the commands, Red is persistently examining the Helix fossil, spawning the in joke that the Helix fossil is an all knowing God speaking to the trainer and that the object of the game is to revive the old God Omanyte.
With so many people punching commands into the chat, it’s a surprise they’ve gotten this far. You can watch the stream here.