Twitch Plays Pokémon/Season 3

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Twitch Plays Pokémon's third season began on February 14, 2016. It is anticipated to be its first 'routine' season, consisting of four runs (after the second season was extended to five runs).

Each run is the equivalent to a season episode, and can be referred to by number (e.g. S01R03). Timestamps mentioned in this article follow the format of "#d #h #m #s" (day, hour, minute, second).

R01: Pokémon Anniversary Crystal

In the same manner as how Season 2 began on the one-year anniversary of the original run, Season 3 began on the original run's two-year anniversary, with a modified version of Pokémon Crystal where all 251 Generation II Pokémon can and will need to be caught to complete the run. The run started on February 14, 2016 at 21:00 UTC. As of approximately 0d 2h 0m 0s, the players are currently proceeding to Pewter City via Viridian Forest.

ROM changes

Based on confirmed information so far, the game looks to be more ambitious than the previous anniversary run. The channel's streamer has stated that over $1,000 has gone towards the development of the game, and the development team is known to be larger, including acclaimed creator of the hack Pokémon Brown, Koolboyman. The game features a sophisticated external AI engine created by user Beesafree.

A list of known changes to the ROM are:

• New protagonists replace Ethan and Kris. The player not picked becomes their rival.
  • The male character resembles Red as he appears in Pokémon Adventures's Red, Green & Blue arc.
  • The female character, like in Anniversary Red, resembles the scrapped design of Leaf that was supposed to appear in the original games, which became the basis of Green's design in Pokémon Adventures.
• The opening sequence and title screen have both been redesigned. For example, the opening sequence Unown now spell out "TWITCH" rather than "CRYSTAL", the top of the title screen now displays "Twitch Plays Pokémon Crystal Anniversary" with Twitch's logo in place of "Pokémon Crystal Version" with Suicune's emblem, and the title screen now has a scrolling background and silhouettes of the two new protagonists replacing the silhouette of Suicune. The title theme has been custom remixed, and the bottom of the title screen adds "2016 TPP" to the right of "©2001 Game Freak inc.".
• The game begins in Kanto rather than Johto and appears to follow Kanto's plotline; for example:
  • The player must receive the Oak's Parcel from the Viridian City Poké Mart clerk, and must deliver it to Prof. Oak before the old man near the north of Viridian City will allow them to pass.
  • The player will be required to select one of two Fossils in Mt. Moon in order to traverse the location.
• On the nickname screen, the cursor now starts off pointing at a random character instead of "A".
• Before the start of every turn, the screen will display "Waiting..." as it would in a link battle, at which time the game will communicate with the external AI. At this point, the script will also accept inputs for "military mode" (see the Gameplay/input changes section below).
• Some wild Pokémon locations appear to at least partially match that of Anniversary Red, with for example Cubone, Pikachu, and Exeggcute able to be found on Route 1.
• The time of day mechanics appear to have been altered, with for example the in-game clock starting at midnight regardless of the player's choice at the start of the game, and transitioning to morning about 1 hour and 40 minutes later.
• Some features from later generations have been implemented, including:
  • The Physical/Special split from Generation IV has been implemented. The category of a move can be seen in-battle when it is highlighted.
  • From HeartGold/SoulSilver, Viridian Forest has been restored as its own separate area, after having been removed in the original Generation II games.
  • From Generation IV, the background music of an area will pick up where it left off after a battle, rather than restarting.
  • The Coin Case appears to be able to hold up to 50,000 Coins, and some version of Voltorb Flip is known to be playable.
  • The Pokémon status screen has a new page describing where the Pokémon was caught, at what level, and gives it a characteristic.
  • Tackle has been confirmed to have its base power changed to 50.
  • The player's Pokémon will gain experience after catching a wild Pokémon.

Gameplay/input changes

The run restores the anarchy/democracy "tug-of-war" system from the first original Red run where voting is allowed at any time; the bar now also displays the current percentage of democracy votes. However, like in later runs, vote inputs are displayed under each side of the bar rather than as part of the main input feed. Vote inputs count toward the percentage for 15 minutes before being removed; they may be renewed for another 15 minutes by voting again at any time.

The switching thresholds were originally set equal to the original run, where switching to democracy required an 80% supermajority and switching back to anarchy required a 51% majority (or a 49% minority voting for democracy); about four hours before the main run began, the streamer increased the democracy threshold to 90%. ProjectRevoTPP, one of the developers, has stated that at least one area will require democracy mode to complete. Unlike in previous games, it is now possible to perform simultaneous inputs (for example, "a+b") during democracy mode.

New to this run is an input system dubbed "military mode", performed by inputting the commands "move", "switch", "item", or "run" with relevant parameters. These commands will be accepted only during the "Waiting..." screen and are independent of anarchy/democracy mode (the commands can be entered during either mode).

Interface/Side games

As the start of a new season, the stream interface has been thoroughly overhauled:

• As with the first anniversary run, the current party is displayed to the left.
• Below the party display is the chat log, which now scrolls vertically, replacing the previous horizontally scrolling chat bar. Donation messages also appear here.
• At the bottom left is a side game of Pokémon Pinball, replacing the slots from previous PBR intermissions. As with the slots, tokens are used to start a game and bet on its outcome; the more points that are scored in the game, the more the payout will be (with exact multipliers varying both on the table and over time). The game's inputs are performed automatically once started and are not chat controlled.
• Main game and stream statistics are displayed to the right of the Pinball screen, including the player's money, Badge count, and Pokédex completion along with the current UTC time, the stream's view count, and the current run's timestamp and input count.
• At the bottom middle is a horizontally scrolling feed of various information, including subreddit pictures, donation records, an explanation of the Pinball sidegame, the five most recent stream followers, a screenshot and stats from the marioparty247 side stream, a subscription ad, and the stream's current view and follower count.
• At the bottom right is a sidegame of Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Red Rescue Team, played in "Congress mode" with a single democracy-mode input every 240 seconds. It is also possible for a user to bribe others to vote for a certain button (perhaps as a further satire of "Congress mode") by allocating tokens for that button such that voters who choose it will have a chance to receive those tokens.
• As usual, the current list of inputs as well as the anarchy/democracy bar is displayed to the right.

2 days and 19 hours before the start of the main run, the streamer took down the Season 1-2 PBR interface and hosted the marioparty247 side channel for approximately 1 hour while the new interface was set up. After the new interface was put up, the streamer put on Mario Golf (Game Boy Color version) to test the emulator and input system, followed by a continuation of the previous intermission's Pokémon Trading Card Game save file. The Twitch players completed the remainder of the save file about 19 hours before the main run started, after which the streamer put on a fan-translated English patch of Pokémon Card GB2: Here Comes Team GR!. The stream was switched to Anniversary Crystal's title screen 20 minutes prior to the run starting.

Pokémon

For more information regarding Pokémon captured and items obtained, see here.

Evan Route 1 Anniversary Crystal Reward: $23
Types: Grass Poison Held item: None ul:::utx♂ Lv.10 Tackle Normal   --       Growl Normal   --       Leech Seed Grass   --       Vine Whip Grass   --       Type: Normal Unknown Held item: None /UluUDCC?T♂ Lv.3 Tackle Normal   --       Struggle Normal   --       Struggle Normal   --       Struggle Normal   --

External Links

• TwitchPlaysPokemon.org Current Status for Anniversary Crystal
  • Live-update thread for Anniversary Crystal