Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a series of social experiments in which commands representing buttons on an original Nintendo Switch (up, down, left, right, A, B, X, Y, L, R, ZL, ZR, +, -, L-stick, and R-stick) are entered into a chat on Twitch, and then translated into a game of Pokémon via an IRC bot. In short, hundreds of people are fighting over a controller. Throughout its life, Twitch Plays Pokémon has spawned hilarious characters, memorable moments, and even a few religions.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Brilliant Diamond is the eighth run of the eighth season of TPP, which began on November 20th, 2021, the very day following the release of the featured game Pokémon Brilliant Diamond, and concluded on December 1st, 2021. As a return to Generation VIII, it also marked the return of the Pokémon Box Link feature allowing the dreaded PC to be accessed from anywhere from the pause menu with the press of a few buttons. On a brighter note however, these remakes also brought with them the Grand Underground feature, which allowed players to join through the Internet for some sick underground parties.
The protagonist for this run was a boy, key-smashingly christened "a;;;/]]]][%". Due to being the first Host from Sinnoh to help himself to one of Professor Rowan's starters rather than receive it from him, as well as owning two different Pokémon able to steal items from opponents, while proving unable to keep a bird Pokémon on his team without eventually either depositing or releasing it, it was often joked by players that he was actually a thief and that he suffered from a fear of birds.
A revisit later took place from November 14th, 2022 to November 16th, 2022, during which the Battle Tower was unlocked and the focus was put on completing the Pokédex, including the newly available Shaymin, Darkrai, and Arceus.
See also here
for the archived status of the run.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Brilliant Diamond features examples of:
- Apple of Discord: Although they were a few notable examples throughout the run, Manaphy was by far the worst one. On the one side, a significant amount of players wanted to release it either for having already been used in a recent run, seeing a free Mythical Pokémon as "cheating", or simply for the sake of pissing off everyone else. On the other side, the rest of the playerbase were determined to protect it, both because it was a long-time member that had a lot of grinding invested in it already, and because they were sick of the high number of releases that had already happened in this run and the few that preceded it. As a result, not a day went by without at least one input war happening over it.
- Artificial Stupidity: While facing against Roark, a;;;/]]]][% found himself down to his last Pokémon, a very underpowered Bidoof, against Roark's own last Pokémon, Cranidos. Despite Cranidos only having a silver of health left, the difference of power between the two meant that it likely only needed to land a single hit to take out Bidoof... yet Roark chose to use Leer instead, letting Bidoof strike back with Tackle and resulting in a victory for a;;;/]]]][%.Roark: This is embarrassing...Mobotropolis: Really it is
- The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Vocally discussed by the Voices after Cynthia switched out her Roserade for Gastrodon, somehow predicting that a;;;/]]]][% would use a Water-type and taking advantage of it to fuel Gastrodon's Storm Drain despite the fact that there was no actual logical reason for him to do so as Roserade resisted Water, leading to accusations of the game blatantly cheating.
- Game-Breaking Bug: While in Jubilife City, players went to visit the TV Station and told the producer there the secret phrase that would unlock the Mystery Gift containing Manaphy's Egg. However, because the console's Internet connection was disabled, the game got stuck on the "Connecting... Please stand by." screen indefinitely with no option of backing out, which lasted for two and a half hours before the Streamer was finally around to intervene.
- Help, I'm Stuck!: During the second day, the player character somehow clipped into Pachirisu's model, causing them to get stuck in place. This thankfully only lasted for a few minutes, as entering the Grand Underground fixed the issue. The same thing happened a few more times over the course of the run, with the same solution.
- Old Save Bonus:
- Due to having played Pokémon Sword before, the Voices were able to obtain a Jirachi from an NPC in Floaroma as early as the second day of the run. Sadly, it got released about a day later.
- Having completed all missions during the Legends: Arceus run allowed players to obtain the Azure Flute during the revisit, and thus to battle and capture Arceus.
- Punctuation Shaker:
- Greatly exaggerated with a;;;/]]]][%, the protagonist of the run.
- Other notable examples included ££££££££xS the Pikachu, f'(((( the Murkrow, or äääæ the Bibarel.
- Sticky Fingers: This happened to an even greater extent than usual, especially in the early hours of the run during which Poké Balls would be thrown in practically every Trainer battle. The fact that the battle menu was arranged in a column layout and looped around, combined with the lack of touchscreen control and the higher-than-average amounts of trolling that remained in effect from recent runs, meant that any single rogue directional input would send the cursor looping around, and thus frequently land on the bag rather than on an attack.Pokemario6456: Half of it's not even trolling, it's trying to navigate the scrolling menus
- Thieving Pet:
- Mostly implied with Pachirisu; because of its Pickup ability letting it find items outside of battle, along with the pre-existing interpretation of the protagonist as a thief, many players ran with the idea that the items it found were ones it stole from other Trainers. There were a few instances of on-screen theft, such as Pickup activating while fighting Crasher Wake to steal a Sitrus Berry from his Floatzel, but those were actually fairly rare.
- Played more straight with the team's second Pikachu, which was taught the move Thief and regularly made use of it to steal items from its opponents. There was notably a lot of time spent in the Trophy Garden to try and steal a Light Ball from a wild Pikachu.
- Also downplayed with Gardevoir, which briefly filled this role during the battle against Cyrus by tracing the Pickpocket ability from his Weavile, which then activated to let it steal the latter's Chople Berry.
- The Unpronounceable: A particularly egregious example with a;;;/]]]][%, whose name is pretty much just a mess of random symbols even by TPP standards.
- This gets lampshaded in this comic by a very confused rival.Barry: HOW DO YOU PRONOUNCE THAT?!
- This gets lampshaded in this comic
- You Are Number 6: The Drapion that made it into the first Hall of Fame of the run was simply named "1".
