Last week, Constantin Lietard, a Pokemon fan and a 3D Programmer at Gameloft Montreal, started up a Pokemon Red playthrough that takes inspiration from Twitch Plays Pokemon. However, unlike Twitch's playthrough, Lietard's gives all the power to Twitter users and allows them to witness their actions unfold in Lietard's Twitter avatar picture.
It works like this: participants give their in-game avatar commands by commenting Game Boy-inputs such as "Up," "A," and "Start" under Lietard's currently pinned tweet. Every 15 seconds, a program will take the most popular action commented, perform it in the game, take a screenshot, and then upload that screenshot to Lietard's Twitter avatar for users to see their in-game progress.
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As one can imagine, a single-player game controlled by hundreds of people can become nearly impossible to manage. Trolls constantly fight against those trying to win, so it's a pretty impressive feat whenever players actually get something accomplished. Participants in Lietard's Pokemon Red's playthrough recently did just that by defeating Misty, the second Gym Leader, a feat that apparently only took a week to perform.
Twitter used a Pokemon team consisting of Spearow, Wigglytuff, Geodude, Abra, Oddish, and Wartortle, to win. Oddish turned out to be the MVP of the fight, which isn't too surprising considering it's the only thing on the team super effective to Water types — Misty's specialty. Geodude will be just as effective if Twitter ever makes it to Pokemon Red's third Gym Leader, Lt. Surge. It'll be immune to Surge's Electric-type team, so if everything goes right, it can sweep Surge on its own.
As the playthrough is nothing more than a bunch of screenshots, there's no back catalog for newcomers to checkout, so they won't be able to see how Twitter managed to defeat Misty, or even Brock, for that matter. With that in mind, it's not as interesting to spectate as Twitch Plays Pokemon was.
That said, participation is what makes these playthroughs fun, to begin with, and since this isn't a Nuzlock, the game should go until Twitter beats it. In other words, anyone can jump in and out at their leisure, so those that may be curious about the playthrough can check out and then leave whenever they feel like it. Lietard even created a Discord for anyone interested in better coordinating their efforts and has his Twitter banner displaying what Pokemon Twitter is currently using. That way, it's easier for people to keep track of what's happening.
Pokemon Red is available now.
