by KelcyusTwitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a series of social experiments in which commands representing buttons on an original Nintendo 3DS (up, down, left, right, A, B, X, Y, L, R, start, and select) and touchscreen coordinates 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 Rising Ruby is the eighth run of the seventh season of TPP, which ran from August 8th, 2020 to August 21st, 2020. It features a more challenging hack of Pokémon Omega Ruby by Drayano60, who is well-known to TPP players as the creator behind Blaze Black 2, Storm Silver, and Volt White. Said hack, called Pokemon Rising Ruby, places great emphasis on giving the player as much versatility as possible when it comes to building their team: each area contains about a dozen unique species, evolutions have their trading requirements removed and their necessary items available for sale, and many Pokémon species benefit from improved stats, wider movepools, better abilities, and even new typings.
The character picked by the Voices for this run is a male protagonist named ébneert, who unsurprisingly chose Torchic as his starter. He notably spent a lot of time participating in Pokémon Contest Spectaculars, allowing the Voices to once more look through the 3DS camera to watch a variety of anime, cartoons, and other random videos inside the stream operator's basement. Consequently, ébneert became the first Host to earn a Master Rank in all five Contest categories and to face Lisia and Wallace in a Pokémon Contest Spectacular.
See here for the archived status of the run.
Twitch Plays Pokémon Rising Ruby contains examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: Particularly noticeable this run, as two of the mainstay Pokémon of the team were "fish" the Kingdra and "noob" the Dunsparce, while the rest included severe tongue-twisters such as "AZZ TTTXXSSS", "!edr", "!whhy", "♥", "TTYIOTBBHWTI", "Lg", or "CEO’’(+ ~##~".
- A Lizard Named "Liz":
- Kingdra, the design of which is based on the seahorse fish species, was simply named "fish".
- Among other catches were a Meowth named "CAT." and a Stantler named "ADEER".
- Kingdra, the design of which is based on the seahorse
- Apple of Discord: AZZ TTTXXSSS the Lilligant quickly became this among players. Many wanted it off the team due to being severely over-leveled compared to the other members, being a repeat from a previous run, or simply disliking its design for being too anthropomorphic. On the other side were people who grew attached to it due to having been on the team for most of the run and thus becoming one of its flagship Pokémon, and/or argued that the rest of the team would eventually catch up anyway, and that other team members (Excadrill, Latios, Shedinja) were also repeats themselves. There were several PC wars over it as a result, which resulted in it being deposited on Day 4, retrieved nine hours later, then finally deposited again for good on Day 6.
- Ascended Meme: The video shown on the basement TV seen through the 3DS camera during the first attempt at a Pokémon Contest Spectacular was an episode of The Joy of Painting, a series that became popular among the TPP community due to the official Twitch channel of Bob Ross being the intermission of choice whenever the stream has to go down for long periods of time. A Smeargle plush was also present next to the TV, appearing to be painting along.
- Big "NO!": A Froslass caught on Day 9 was named "NO".
- Breaking the Fourth Wall: As was the case during the Ultra Sun and Randomized Ultra Moon runs, the basement of the stream operator was visible through the 3DS Camera, in this case when participating in Pokémon Contest Spectaculars. This time around, on top of the usual plushes getting into all kinds of shenanigans, a small TV was present that broadcasted all kinds of shows and videos, among which The Big O, Tenchi Muyo!, Touhou Musou Kakyou, Ace Attorney (2016), Sheep in the Big City, Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, The Simpsons, Inspector Gadget, The Joy of Painting, and even this viral video.
- The Cameo: The Goose from Untitled Goose Game made several appearances during Pokémon Contest Spectaculars among the many plushes of the stream operator basement seen through the 3DS camera. Co-Op Multiplayer happened to be announced for the game while the run was going, which led to a second goose eventually joining it.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The final battle against May was extremely one-sided, with Diancie alone managing to take down every single of her Pokémon in a single hit, while only taking two hits itself (and one of these was because ébneert wasted a turn using a healing item on a Pokémon already at full health).
- History Repeats: The Voices are still unable to pick anything other than Torchic when it is a starter option in a main run, no matter how hard they try to. After Emerald, Omega Ruby, Alpha Sapphire, Theta Emerald EX, TriHard Emerald, and Gauntlet Emerald, this is now the seventh time in a row that this has happened.
- Master of All: By the time the run ended, !whhy the Delcatty and Lg the Cradily both had their stats maxed out in every Contest category. The latter also became the first Pokémon in all of TPP to earn all five Master Rank Ribbons.
- The One Guy:
- When obtained, Latios was the sole male Pokémon on the team, with the other five being female. This lasted for a little over a day, after which Lilligant was replaced by a male Lileep.
- Said Lileep would later evolve into Cradily and itself become the only male Pokémon among the final team when first beating the game, the rest of it being composed of four female Pokémon plus the female-looking Diancie. Some started calling the team "Lord Root's Harem" for this reason.
- Overused Running Gag: Pokémon being nicknamed some variation of "ASS" became a running gag during The Gauntlet, which kept going in Sirius. It was however subverted twice during this run: first by a Wingull named "A SSTKUKKDY" which was lost half a minute later to a game crash, and then by a Purrloin which was almost named "ASSSASSSUSH" but had its name shortened to "SUSH" at the last moment.threefourthstime: unfortunately we lost our assCiphriusKane: We're assless
- Pre-Mortem Catchphrase: "Welcome back, ébneert" became this for May when the game froze on it after beating the Champion for the first time, then proceeded to do so two more times before the issue was finally fixed.
- Put on a Bus:
- AZZ TTTXXSSS was caught early on as a Petilil, and was present on the team when earning the first six Gym Badges and defeating May for the penultimate time, evolving into a Lilligant and reaching Lv. 64 in the process. It was however a clear Apple of Discord among players, and after causing several PC wars, including one where it was deposited for almost nine hours before being retrieved again near the end of Day 4, it was finally deposited for good on Day 6.
- AUUUU6 SUUQ was also caught early in the run as a Panpour, and stayed on the team long enough to evolve into Simipour, rise to Lv. 44, and even participate in the fight against Wattson. Near the end of Day 3 however, it was deposited in the PC and never retrieved.
- ja the Shedinja was obtained during Day 2; while the plan was always to get rid of it, it stayed on the team until Day 5, when it was finally left in the Daycare at Lv. 40 until the run ended.
- !edr the Latios was obtained right after leaving ja in the Daycare. The plan was also to quickly replace it with another Pokémon, but it ended up staying on the team when earning the last three Gym Badges, and only ended up deposited in the Daycare after 7 failed attempts at beating the Pokémon League.
- Recursive Reality: During one of the Pokémon Contest Spectaculars, the TV seen through in the stream operator basement was broadcasting the TPP stream, within the TPP stream itself. This happened again during some later Contests.
- Temporal Paradox: Due to an issue with the 3DS the game was played on, the game kept crashing right before the credits. The solution to this ended up being to switch to a backup 3DS in order to play the end of the game, before going back to the original one. However, said backup 3DS did not have its clock up-to-date, the result being that ébneert entered the Hall of Fame eight years before actually starting his adventure◊.
- Trolling Creator: One of the videos showcased through the 3DS camera during Pokémon Contest Spectaculars was a certain infamous music video performed by English singer Richard Paul Astley.
