Fish Plays Pokemon Channel

When we brought the news that the Twitch Plays Pokémon experiment had run its course, completing every mainline Pokémon game in existence, we figured that was that. Yes, the channel might find new life when Pokémon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire released, but for all intents and purposes we figured that was it for the "Plays Pokémon" fad. Boy, how wrong we were.

This week a new contender entered the Plays Pokémon realm in the form of Fish Plays Pokémon. As the succinctly named channel implies, rather than letting the chat take control over the Pokémon Trainer, this channel puts a somewhat active fish named Grayson Hopper in control.

Having popped over to the channel on several occasions, I can say that, although the gimmick is funny, this is nowhere near as compelling as watching Twitch fight for Democracy over Anarchy. In fact, the fish spends a ton of time just floating still, which not only is boring but has many of us wondering if it might die before even getting out of the Trainer's home.

That being said, the Fish Plays Pokémon channel is still generating a ton of buzz and nearly 20,000 viewers on average. And the fish has actually made some progress through the game, selecting one of the preset names and defeating its first enemy Pokémon.

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Even more impressive is the construction of the Fish Plays Pokémon channel, which is the product of HackNY participants Chris and Hannah. Choosing a fish may not have been their smartest idea, but the concept itself is actually really clever.

It's also worth pointing out that the channel has been active for several days now, but is only just now gaining traction. The channel couldn't have gained popularity at a better time for Twitch, though, as the streaming service has come under considerable fire for its recent copyright crackdowns. So rather than focus on the thousands of hours of content that are lost thanks to new policies at Twitch, the service would rather gamers focus on Grayson Hopper's quest to complete Pokémon Red. What a weird time we live in.

What do you think of Fish Plays Pokémon? What other crazy "X Plays Pokémon" spin-offs would you like to see?

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Source: Twitch

Follow Anthony on Twitter @ANTaormina