Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a series of social experiments in which commands representing buttons on an original Nintendo GameCube (up, down, left, right, A, B, X, Y, Z, L, R, start, and C-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 XG Remix is the fourth run of the ninth season of TPP, and ran from July 9th, 2022 to July 17th, 2022. The game featured is a hack of Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, itself based on another hack known as Pokémon XG: NeXt Gen, which was previously played on stream in 2019. On top of reprising all of the major gameplay and story changes of its predecessor, XG Remix introduces a brand new type chart
◊ comprised mostly of brand-new elements, with even returning ones having their respective effectiveness mixed up. All Pokémon typings are changed accordingly, with some even being changed to new species in the process, receiving a different name or even a Palette Swap as a result.
The run featured a Host named "XG", who started off with an Eevee that later evolved into the Light-type Spectreon, and a Porygon that ended up being the source of a particularly nasty glitch that kept making the game crash until it was "patched" by using an Ability Capsule on it. Throughout his journey, XG managed to once more dismantle the Cipher organization, snag and purify every X Pokémonnote , and even go one step further than his predecessor by successfully defeating Hacker Stars, the final opponent of Mt. Battle.
See also here
for the archived status of the run.
Twitch Plays Pokémon XG Remix contains examples of:
- A Dog Named "Cat": The Voices usually refer to Fossil Pokémon by the name of their respective fossil, such as Omanyte and Omastar being called "Helix" or "Lord Helix". However, Amberith, a Palette Swap of Anorith, was named "root" after the Root Fossil, aka the counterpart of the Claw Fossil that Anorith is resurrected from. Conversely, when Cradily joined the team, it was likewise named "CLAW" despite being the evolution of Lileep, which is resurrected from the Root Fossil.
- Anti-Frustration Features: A "!typechart" command was added to the stream, which provided a direct link to the revamped type chart of XG Remix. This helped the run avoid one of the shortcomings of Twitch Plays Touhoumon, which was that memorizing an entirely new type chart was more trouble than most players were willing to deal with, by making it readily available at all times for both invested players and newcomers while still leaving them to either figure out or remember the typings of the Pokémon they faced.
- Artificial Stupidity: When facing against Hacker Stars, XG managed to get a lucky freeze only two turns in on its Shiny Latias, which was arguably the biggest threat on his team by far. Thing is, Latias could have thawed itself at any time as it knew the move Flamethrower... but because none of XG's Pokémon were weak to Fire, it never actually picked that move over super effective ones, thus remaining frozen for the remainder of the battle. This single fact arguably ensured XG's victory, as Olympace swept through all of Stars remaining Pokémon (earning Attack boosts with each one thanks to its Moxie ability) while Cradily slowly drained the helpless Latias' HP.
- Game-Breaking Bug: Towards the end of the first day, XG evolved his Porygon into Porygon2; however, upon sending it out against Lovrina, it proceeded to immediately make the game crash with the music getting stuck in a loop. Despite a save state getting reloaded, this happened every time it was sent out; it was eventually figured out that the issue stemmed from the Download ability it had earned after evolving, and using an Ability Capsule mid-battle to change it to Trace resolved the glitch.
- Interface Screw: Early on Day 4, the capture card used by the stream glitched out, causing the video to suddenly shift to the side◊, cutting the overlay in two.
- Missing Secret: While scrolling through the list of X Pokémon left to catch, players stumbled upon an entry for an Alolan Ninetales◊, with its status listed as "Purified" and its location as "Gone", along with the cryptic mention of "Snagged from !" without a Trainer name. While some thought this meant it had already been caught and was likely released at some point, there seemed to be no actual trace of XG ever owning a Ninetales at any point until then. It later turned out that the game in fact did not feature Alolan Ninetales as an X Pokémon at all, but that its internal data overlapped with the Togepi received from and later returned to an NPC in the Outskirt Stand, causing the game to get the two confused.
- Non-Standard Character Design: Spectreon is the first Pokémon with both an associated run badge and a sprite on the stream overlay and run status pages to feature any kind of animationnote , with its rings cycling through the entire color spectrum just like they do on its in-game model.
- One Extra Member: Discussed when Cipher Peon Yellow offered XG to become part of the Hexagon Brothers, with the chat remarking that if they did, the name of the team wouldn't make sense anymore since they'd be the seventh member of a group name after a six-sided shape.YugnatZero: Also does this guy realize if we join them they'll have to rename the teamCheeseboy100: heptagon brothersCheeseboy100: or we kick out brownhajimeilosukna: you really think about they can plan that far ahead?
- Protagonist Title: A retroactive example, with the name "XG" being picked for the protagonist from the list of default names.
- Shout-Out: RoboGroudn and RoboKyogre were respectively named "TOM" and "JERRY".
- Sixth Ranger: Upon being defeated, one of the Hexagon Brothers offered XG to become part of their team, and instructed him to pick a color. The chat immediately started to discuss the idea of becoming part of the "Heptagon Brothers", and collectively agreed that pink would be the best choice of color.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: One of the conditions to end the run was to purify all X Pokémon; however, there were a few instances in which this proved impossible without the developers intervening.
- Two of the X Pokémon owned by Greevil, namely RoboGroudn and RoboKyogre, were erroneously given catch rates of 0, making them literally impossible to catch when first facing him. This was later corrected, although this actually resulted in the inverse situation, as their new catch rate was set all the way up to 255, making them guaranteed catches. Chat members looking at the stream's API actually noticed it, and used it to their advantage to catch them each at full health with a single Poké Ball.
- Two of the X Pokémon ended up missing from the game altogether. The first was Eldes' Slaking, which fainted during the battle, and was erroneously not coded to go to Mirror B afterwards, which meant it simply became permanently lost instead. The second was Gorigan's Registeel, which was simply completely missing from his team altogether. Both Pokémon were later added back by the developers.
- You Are Number 6: Exaggerated with Wobuffet, which upon purification was named "4354977611".
