Twitch Plays Pokémon Live, Highlights: What You Need to Know, Missed, Catch Up: Bird Jesus, False Prophet, Anarchy vs. Democracy [Live Stream]

By Michael Oleaga First Posted: Feb 19, 2014 02:19 PM EST

Almost a week since its launch, 14.5 million viewers have either participated or observed the chaotic progress of TwitchPlaysPokémon.

Touted as a social experiment, TwitchPlaysPokémon is a live stream of the Pokémon Red Version video game for the Nintendo Gameboy handset.

What has made the social experiment unique is the growing numbers of participants selecting commands at one time.

"An IRC bot translates buttons said in chat into keypresses (simulated in software, no fancy typist robots)," noted the TwitchPlaysPokémon creator, who has remained anonymous.

TwitchPlaysPokémon have eight options to type from the keyboards for the IRC bot to translate -- a, b, start select, up, down, left, right -- but gamers should be advised that there is "considerable" input lag and might take a few seconds before your inputs are registered.

"Only one button per message is accepted, there's no combos or holds," the TwitchPlaysPokémon site described.

The TwitchPlaysPokémon social experiment is on its sixth day and progress has been mixed.

With TwitchPlaysPokémon's sixth day and hour 18, 13 Pokémon have been captured but five has seen their demise, or release. A Spearow was traded for Farfetch'd, also known as "Dux."

In a modern day soap opera, "ABBBBBBK (" the Charmeleon and "JLVWNNOOOO," or Jay Leno, the first Rattata saw their release into the wild. The release of the two aforementioned Pokémon have been blamed on Eevee, which later evolved via the Fire Stone into Flareon. The Eevee evolution would be known among the TwitchPlaysPokémon community as "The False Prophet."

As Latin Post previously reported, "In order to progress we needed a Pokémon that can learn surf. We had 5 of our 6 Pokémon slots full, so if we bought, caught, or obtained a Pokémon, it would go into that sixth slot," described the folks from Cheezburger. "Eevee if evolved into Vaporeon works. Or we could be given Lapras which works. Or they could catch a Pokémon which is super hard to coordinate with 70k users. If Eevee evolved into a non-surf learning Pokémon, we'd have to go to the Pokémon PC to get a surf Pokémon out of storage. We picked Eevee, evolved it into the Flareon, tried to go to the box, and released two of our Pokémon, including a starter, and deposited the helix fossil, which is being revered as a sort of God. If we didn't go with Eevee, we may still have our two-released Pokémon and our God. Instead, the false prophet killed them."

A Pidgey has evolved to its final evolution Pidgeot and has gain attraction as "Bird Jesus." Pidgeot has helped gamers succeed through most battles notably against Team Rocket Boss Giovanni and rival Blue. Drowzee is in the party of six along with Oddish, which also goes by the name "x(araggbaj." Completing the party of six is "AAJST(????" the Rattata and "JJSSSSS" the Zubat.

As the social experiment continued, it was anarchy versus democracy.

"TwitchPlaysPokemon now has two modes, anarchy and democracy," described the stream's creator. "Anarchy mode is the 'classic' mode, where everyone's inputs are applied immediately. Democracy mode is vote-based and has a more sophisticated input system. In order to switch from one mode to the other, the mode that isn't active needs 75 [percent] of votes as indicated by the dotted line, the current percentage of votes is indicated by the black line."

The game has since gone back and forth on anarchy mode and democracy mode.

Gamers have managed to win four Badges from Gym Leaders Brock, Misty, Lt. Surge, and Erika.

YouTubers have captured major moments from the stream (see below).

Mock Pokémon Twitch Version Intro (Credit: ‪Dennis.J):