All the way back in 2014, one curious Twitch user decided to see if the Twitch chat could complete a playthrough of Pokemon Red in what became infamously known as Twitch Plays Pokemon. Viewers could control the game via the Twitch chat by simply typing in commands such as "up" to move the player character up, or "a" to select an option, and while this was rather chaotic to watch, Twitch Plays Pokemon quickly became more about the dynamic of Twitch chat and the chat's desire to either cause chaos or work together.
Ever since the Pokemon Red playthrough of Twitch Plays Pokemon, the event has become sort of a tradition with the release of each new mainline Pokemon game, even resulting in spinoff events such as Twitch Plays Tetris, and even Fish Plays Pokemon, where someone got their real fish to play through Pokemon Red. Despite this all seeming impressive enough, one Pokemon fan has created their own version of Twitch Plays Pokemon that allows for even more viewer control.
Although it has been a while since the original Twitch Plays Pokemon, it seems that some are still eager to experiment with the concept. On Reddit, user DmitrievStan posted a video showing that they have programmed a single Raspberry Pi computer in a way which allowed it to not only act as a capture card allowing the user to stream Pokemon Sword from their Nintendo Switch, but also allowing anyone online to control the game in real-time.
We used a Raspberry Pi 4 and Adafruit Trinket M0 to hook a Nintendo Switch for anyone to play remotely in real-time. from raspberry_pi
Despite taking inspiration from Twitch Plays Pokemon, this event doesn't take place on Twitch at all, and rather on Surrogate.tv, a streaming website dedicated to revolutionizing virtual gaming. In the Reddit post, DmitrievStan states that they are able to allow viewers to take complete control of the Pokemon Sword game for 60 seconds at a time after lining up in a queue. The user notes that their main motivation for this project was simply to see how long it would take viewers working together for 60 seconds at a time to complete a playthrough of Pokemon Sword. Since Pokemon is a turn-based RPG series that doesn't technically require low input latency, it works perfectly for letting viewers all over the world play the game in real-time.
Although the idea of allowing random strangers from anywhere control a playthrough of Pokemon is not entirely new, letting livestream viewers individually take complete control of the game for fractions at a time is a new venture in the world of Twitch Plays Pokemon. At the time of this writing, the viewers playing through Pokemon Sword currently have 4 gym badges and have been playing the game for over 15 hours.
Some have wondered whether Nintendo will copyright strike this stream for any reason, as they tend to be very particular about the ways in which individuals utilize their properties online, though other fans have noted that it doesn't seem they have done so to any other Twitch Plays Pokemon streams. It will be interesting to see how this new experiment pans out, and if it will lead to more ventures in the realm of Twitch Plays Pokemon.
Pokemon Sword and Shield are available now on Nintendo Switch.