Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a series of social experiments in which commands representing buttons on an original Game Boy Color (up, down, left, right, A, B, 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 Pyrite is the fourth run of Season 4, which began on on August 12th, 2017, and ended on August 27th, 2017. The game used for this run, Pokémon Pyrite, is a hack of Pokémon Crystal that mainly aims to make the game more challenging. Changes include the inability to switch Pokémon or use healing items in the middle of a battle, re-balanced learnsets and growth rates, an improved AI, and a level cap that prevents Pokémon from growing past a certain level until the next badge has been acquired. As a result, Pokémon Pyrite ended up becoming one of the hardest challenges TPP ever had to overcome.
Due to her name "EWWYPPP" being read as "eeeyup" and her dedication to take care of a sick Miltank, the Host of this run is most often depicted as a rancher cowgirl, taking care of cattle and bare-handedly taming wild Pokémon. Her journey through Johto and Kanto ended with what became the Signature Scene of the run: a battle against Azure from Twitch Plays Pokémon Crystal Anniversary, which turned out so challenging that said opponent became the first (and so far only one) that TPP was unable to defeat without the help of Democracy.
See also here for the archived status of the run, or here for live updates, which have been archived here.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Pyrite contains examples of:
- Broke the Rating Scale: "Wattsons" are a unit of measurement named after Gym Leader Wattson from Twitch Plays Pokémon Emerald, which are intended to measure how much trouble the chat had beating a certain Trainer. 1 Wa is equivalent to 23 attempts, aka the number of attempts needed to defeat Wattson in Emerald; for instance, Clair in Pyrite took 26 attempts to defeat, thus her granting her a Wattson ranking of 1.13 Wa. Azure, however, is not only the highest ranked individual Trainer on the list, but has a Wattson ranking of 1.57+, with the + indicating that, because she was only defeated with the help of Democracy, she technically remains undefeated.
- Godzilla Threshold: After a whole day spent trying to defeat Azure, with little to no pause between each attempt, the chat was made aware that it had two more attempts left before Democracy was made available. Two more losses later, the chat was actually desperate enough to activate it.
- History Repeats: Like many others before it (including but not limited to aaabaaajss, BBBBBD, Mightyena, 00 00 06, and BUTTERBAE), HHHIIIIHGH is a common early-game Pokémon that ended up becoming one of the most memorable members of said team.
- Important Hair Accessory: HHHIIIIHGH the Furret was given a Pink Bow to hold on Day 8, which was included in the majority of fanarts depicting it. Given the difficulty of the hack, the boost it granted to Normal-type moves was greatly appreciated, especially against the Elite 4. For some of those who viewed it as a drug addict, said bow marks the moment when it turned over a new leaf.
- Inverted Trope: While Whitney is usually regarded as The Dreaded among the Gym Leaders of Johto, it only took 3 attempts for her to be defeated here, which was the least amount needed out of all Johto Leaders for this run. By comparison, Falkner and Bugsy required 7 and 10 attempts respectively.
- Lampshade Hanging: Considering that every Legacy Boss Battle until now had featured a playable character from a previous run, the opening line from Azure, the rival from Crystal Anniversary, is quite appropriate:Azure: Were you expecting someone else?
- Legacy Boss Battle: Following the trend established by FireRed, HeartGold, and Crystal Anniversary, the battle against Red on Mt. Silver has been replaced by a character from a previous run; in this case, it was Azure, the rival from Crystal Anniversary, although her team from that game was replaced with a new one composed of Snorlax, Lapras, Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, and Mew.
- The Nameless: Several pieces of lore revolve around the idea that people have lost their names an that EWWYPPP is on a quest to restore them; said idea follows upon the fact that Trainer names in Chatty Yellow and Randomized White 2 had been replaced with Voices names, and is further supported by the fact that her in-game name is usually interpreted as a Verbal Tic rather than an actual name, and that she owns a Magmar named "-".
- Unreliable Narrator: The Live Updater bot wasn't the most reliable source of information concerning the events of the run.
- There were several instances when it reported a whole box of Pokémon as having been released, only to report every Pokémon in said box as a new catch right after. There were even reports of Eggs having been released, which is actually impossible to do.
- The bot counted how many attempts were needed to catch wild Caterpie, because it mistakenly thought that the first eleven Pokémon in the Pokédex were Legendary Pokémon.
- After Magnemite was renamed, the bot ceased to acknowledge its presence in the team for a few hours. A few days later, it reported that Dewgong had evolved into Magneton and learned four new moves in the process, then immediately after that Magneton had evolved into Dewgong and learned four new moves in the process.
- Verbal Tic: The name of the Host, "EWWYPPP", was interpreted as a verbal tic of hers, which led to the idea that she is a rancher.
- Video Game Caring Potential: Despite having visited Johto three other times before, this was the first run during which the chat completed the sick Miltank sidequest, with #SaveMooMoo trending for a while.User 1: we can go to the house next door to claim our rewardUser 2: Why do we need the reward? We saved Moomoo, and that's all that matters ♥
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