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Twitch Plays Pokemon is a massively-multiplayer online co-op game, challenging a mob of anonymous internet users to collaborate, and possibly complete a game of Pokemon Red.

In less than a week, the anarchic mob, despite the odds, made unbelievable progress through the game. The players generated a subculture that went viral around the internet, earning the attention of the BBC, CNN, and many other internet communities.

The script used in TPP might even pioneer a new form of crowdscourced co-op gaming, Twitch Plays.

How it Works

• A Gameboy Emulator streams the screen and any recent commands to Twitch.tv for players to watch.
• The players then call out commands through a chat window, causing an script to control the game accordingly.
• The players react to mishaps by countering other players, announcing a goal, or otherwise attempting to create order out of chaos.
• Some players have weaved a narrative to explain the madness, a shared experience of frustrating events, and even a "semi-satirical" religion called "The Glory of the Helix Fossil".

Later updates to the script introduced:

• A Democracy mode, requiring users to vote on the next button to press.
• A tug-of-war system, allowing users to vote for the script to run a free-for-all Anarchy mode, or return to the organized Democracy mode.

Progress is mindnumbingly slow, and mishaps many. But over time, the crowd manages to train their pokemon, defeat several gym leaders, and even spin a satirical narrative and mythology that explains mishaps or miracles.

Getting Started

Here's the best way to begin:

1. Read the Twitch Plays Pokemon History.
2. Watch the YouTube TPP Timelapses.
3. Try your luck in the Twitch.tv streams.
4. Record any progress on this wiki.

Editing This Wiki

This wiki provides a community-editable space for players to record events and folklife from the stream in real time. It provides a more stable and open alternative to the original Google Doc, which went private due to a flood of editors.

Jump in to add to (and clean up) this wiki. Editors will need:

• A Github Account - After login, an edit button will appear above every wikipage.
• Markdown Syntax - The same syntax famously used on Reddit and Tumblr.
• Imgur for Image Hosting - Reduces the strain on this wiki.
• Use [[wikilinks]] to create pages. Edit a page, wrap the word containing the page title you want with [[parentheses]]. Then save the page and click on the red link to edit that empty page.
  • Notice that this [[special kind of wikilink|linking to a page with this name]] has the opposite syntax of Mediawiki, so don't get confused.

If you're not sure where to put new content, or are just afraid to screw up the wiki, don't be shy! Just put it in the Sandbox and we'll deal with it sometime.

About This Wiki

This is an initiative created by the Bibliotheca Anonoma, designed to document the progress, subculture, and the viral madness of this amazing internet phenomenon.

The wiki utilizes the Github Gollum Wiki engine, a Git-based wiki engine used for easy archival and revision tracking.

All Twitch.tv streams and related material will be permanently saved by the Internet Archive as part of the Preserving Virtual Worlds collection.