Twitch Plays Pokemon is Making a Comeback for 10 Year Anniversary

In celebration of its tenth anniversary, the Twitch Plays Pokemon social experiment will be making a comeback on February 12. Back in 2014, an anonymous programmer conducted an experiment on the live-streaming platform, where several users across the world would attempt to beat the original Pokemon Red together at the same time. This was done by users who would type into the stream's chatroom, with commands being read from these comments, which essentially led to several users fighting over who controlled the player character. This idea ended up becoming extremely popular, that it earned the Guinness World Record for «most participants in a single-player online video game.»

The popularity of Twitch Plays Pokemon stemmed from its unique interactive element, with the chaotic nature and challenges faced resulting in not only widespread media attention, but dedicated lore being spun revolving around these events. Despite the struggles viewers faced, viewers of Twitch Plays Pokemon went on to collectively beat the original Pokemon Red, along with several mainline games after it. The Twitch experiment has gone through various iterations over its tenure, playing through various ROM Hacks and other fan games, with special runs being done for its anniversary.

In celebration of Twitch Plays Pokemon's tenth anniversary, the official Twitter account posted how it would be doing another anniversary run. This was accompanied by a special image that referenced certain memes and phrases from the original Twitch Plays Pokemon run, such as «START9» and «ANARCHY.» This new anniversary run will kick off the 11th season of the stream.

Twitch Plays Pokemon has been going on for ten seasons, with seventy «main» runs and several other intermission games being played through. Last year's run was a return to the fanmade Pokemon Prism ROM Hack, six and a half years after its original run. Based on past anniversary runs, which saw viewers revisiting an older game, it's likely that Twitch Plays