Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a series of social experiments in which commands representing buttons on an original Game Boy Advance (up, down, left, right, A, B, L, R, start, and select) 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 Lightning Sapphire is one of the side-games played during PBR intermissions, using the "full democracy" system in which players vote on a single input in-between every betting match. The game in question is a poorly translated bootleg version of Pokémon Sapphire, in the same vein as Vietnamese Crystal and Bootleg Green, and is believed to be an even buggier and less polished precursor to the infamous Pokémon Chinese Emerald bootleg. It was named after the TPP developer LightningXCE, who was the one to discover the original cartridge.
This particular bootleg was notoriously difficult to dump, having been mentioned for the first time all the way back in 2016
, almost four years before it was finally ready to be played on stream. The reason for this was a particularly devious Copy Protection system, Sintax's "YJencrypted" system, which basically locks out the ability to read data from the cart at any chance it gets. More information on the dumping process of Lightning Sapphire can be found here.
Lighning Sapphire finally made its TPP debut on May 11th, 2020, right after the end of Twitch Plays Pokémon: The Gauntlet. The Voices chose to play as a girl that they named "URF", referencing a popular Vietnamese Crystal meme, and began their adventure with a Mudkip (or rather, a Wmon) that they named "BUTT", referencing the fact that they have a very juvenile sense of humour. It came to an end on December 10th, 2020, just before the start of Twitch Plays Pokémon Vega, with Urf last seen visiting her mother in Littleroot Town.
See here for the archived status of the run, and here for archived progress of the game in screenshot form.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Lightning Sapphire features examples of:
- Ascended Meme:
- In Vietnamese Crystal, surfing outside of battle prompted the message "WAVE IS SMALL. MAY IS URF?". In Lightning Sapphire, the chat picked the female character, whose default name is May, and named her "URF"; in other words, May is URF.
- Erat* was named "Racc", after the RaccAttack emote that the chat loves spamming.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Kaiyu and Yiyu, two Trainers found on Route 114, provided much more of a challenge than any of the Gym Leaders preceding them. This was partly due to the fact that BUTT was paralyzed before the battle, and one of the opposing Pokémon, LImon* , using attacks that had a double type advantage over it and let it heal itself. After BUTT was taken down, the rest of the team couldn't do much at all against LImon due to being severely underleveled in comparison. Because the latter also had access to a paralyzing move and kept stalling, the battle ended up lasting for no less than fourteen hours, twelve hours more than the preceding Gym battle.
- Call-Back: The Force was a major lore element in Twitch Plays Pokémon Vietnamese Crystal due to the move "Strength" having been translated as "Force". It came back here as the name of the move "Mud Shot", along with several Trainers in the second Gym referencing it, and the fourth Badge being called the "Magic Force Medal".TennisMaid: How can I check my force if I don't take any games?Wrestle: The force is of the most importance! Come on!
- Home Sweet Home: The last thing Urf did before the sidegame came to an end was to fly back to Littleroot Town, go back inside her home, and talk with her mother.
- Killed Off for Real: After catching Neck* , there was no longer a use for Sgull* , since the latter was used exclusively to fly from place to place, which the former could do just as well while being more efficient in battle and just being a more unique addition to the team. Thus, it was released; given that it was named "tpp", the chat was particularly amused to do so.PC: Bye tpp
- Marathon Boss: The battle against Kaiyu and Yiyu, two Trainers found on Route 114, took place after BUTT had been paralyzed, and the latter thus ended up being taken down by the opposing LImon* , which had a double type advantage against it. The rest of the team was severely underleveled and couldn't do much damage to LImon; add to that the fact that LImon also had access to a paralyzing move, and that both sides engaged in a lot of stalling, and you get a fight that lasted for over four hours before BUTT finally fainted, and a total of fourteen hours◊ before URF finally whited out. For comparison, the preceding Gym battle against Tiequan* only took about two hours to complete.
- Self-Deprecation: URF caught an Sgull* which was named "tpp". Thus, the game displays the message "tpp dying!" whenever it faints and "tpp hard to use skill!" when it is paralyzed.
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Spiritual Successor: The Lightning Sapphire run can be seen as this towards the Vietnamese Crystal and Bootleg Green runs, as it also features a poorly translated bootleg of an official Pokémon game. - Stealth Pun: URF's name references the message displayed when attempting to surf in Vietnamese Crystal, which is "WAVE IS SMALL. MAY IS URF?". The default name of the character is May, thus in this run, May is URF.
- Toilet Humor: URF's starter was named "BUTT". To push it even further, thanks to the butchered translation, every time it uses Tackle, the phrase "BUTTBump!" is displayed on screen.
- Utility Party Member:
- Racc the Erat* made to the end of the game at a pitiful Lv. 9, serving mostly to use Cut and Rock Smash outside of battle. It was also the only member of the team not to hold an item, as its Pickup ability is extremely useful in Sapphire where it can be used to obtain Nuggets, Rare Candies, Ultra Balls and PP Ups no matter the level of the Pokémon that has it.
- Similarly, Neck* and Tiny* stayed at low levels and served pretty much no purpose in battle; the former knew Fly, Flash and Sweet Scent, while the latter knew Strength and Dig, all moves that have uses outside of battle, with Strength being necessary at multiple points to progress.
