Twitch Plays Pokémon (TPP) is a Twitch channel that mainly features an automated Pokémon stream which relies on input from users in stream's chatroom. The stream first launched on February 12, 2014, and it plans to run indefinitely as long as the channel can sustain itself.¹⁾

The concept of Twitch Plays Pokémon was inspired by SaltyBet,²⁾ and the Pokémon series was picked as it didn't require anything complex.³⁾ It formally launched on February 2, 2014 with Pokémon Red and shortly exploded in popularity, putting immense stress on Twitch's chat servers.⁴⁾ The first game concluded on March 1, 2014.⁵⁾⁶⁾ However, the stream would immediately move onto its second game, Pokémon Crystal.

During this, the viewership took an immense drop since the stream already answered whether a game could be completed, most people aren't familiar with Pokémon past the first generation, and people got burnt out since they played games back-to-back. They later realized that playing games back-to-back was bad, so they inserted long betting game sessions between the runs as a cooldown for the community.⁷⁾

On November 11, 2017, a developer named “The_Chef1337” leaked a new overlay to protest how poorly the founding “streamer” treated their volunteer developers.⁸⁾⁹⁾ Panicked, the streamer attempted to dox him.¹⁰⁾ The same developer would go on a live rant and killed the stream for 30 minutes.¹¹⁾ While the streamer wrote an apology to the community's subreddit after doxing him,¹²⁾ most users didn't believe it was genuine.¹³⁾

The streamer later stepped down and decided to give ownership to “Aissurtievos” on November 15, 2017 to appease the community,¹⁴⁾¹⁵⁾ so “The_Chef1337” came back to apologize to the developers in general for his impulsive actions during the whole situation.¹⁶⁾ On December 17, 2017, “Aissurtievos” gave ownership to “Chaos_lord” as the responsibilities stressed him out.¹⁷⁾

In 2021, a moderation fallout forced “Chaos_lord” to resign, so “asdf14396” (ax6) became interim owner on February 1, 2021.¹⁸⁾ Over the following months, it was revealed that “Chaos_lord” and “Red031000” both exhibited sexually inappropriate behavior towards members of the community, but these two weren't officially banned until June 26, 2021¹⁹⁾ when “m4_used_rollout” (vorpalnorman) was granted ownership.²⁰⁾

During the stream's lifespan, Twitch Plays Pokémon has played through the main Pokémon games, several randomizer hacks, challenging hacks, anniversary hacks, sprite hacks, a few Pokémon side games, hacks with tremendous amount of effort put into them, etc. The Bulbapedia and Wikipedia articles don't have links to the hacks in their respective articles, so I've compiled the links here.

^{Note: This list is not religiously updated, so some information may be outdated.}

The founder of Twitch Plays Pokémon was an Australian²¹⁾ programmer²²⁾ who programmed the stream to keep his mind of a recent breakup and had severe social anxiety²³⁾ since he lived alone with an abusive mother up until August 2016 when he was able to move in with extended family.²⁴⁾ Following the 2017 drama, he stopped justifying his drug habit in a realization and blamed withdrawal for the whole drama.²⁵⁾

He would eventually manage to leave Australia to live alone in New Zealand²⁶⁾ and that's all he wrote so far. As for generally known information, we know that he was a huge fan of Vinesauce (specifically Vinny), said that Slowpoke was his favorite Pokémon, and preferred bullet hell shoot-em-up games like Crimzon Clover and DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou.²⁷⁾²⁸⁾

• Twitch does not allow broadcasts to exceed 48 hours,²⁹⁾ so it will stop and reset every 48 hours.
• In the past, Twitch Plays Pokémon used to automatically host SaltyBet when it went down.
• Kotaku had a few articles on Twitch Plays Pokémon. I still consider the Pokemon Prism article³⁰⁾ to be a huge mistake as Nintendo was actively becoming known for its DMCA takedowns.
• The community had adopted “PRChase” to parrot Pokémon Battle Revolution announcer Rodger Parsons and then-Twitch PR director Chase acknowledged their use in March 2017.³¹⁾³²⁾
• According to Twitch's October 5, 2021 leak, Twitch Plays Pokémon had been ranked at #8405.

• Twitch Plays Pokémon - The official stream for Twitch Plays Pokémon.
  • /r/twitchplayspokemon - For years, this has been the official Twitch Plays Pokémon community.
  • @TwitchPokemon on Twitter - The official Twitter account.
• Rainbow Devs - Volunteer ROM hacking group, houses the TPP-specific hacks and Rijon hacks.
• Badge Trading - Data for badges in circulation, which includes trade offers and badge rarity.