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Last year, a phenomenon overtook game streaming website Twitch. This phenomenon was the concept of allowing thousands upon thousands of people play a game simultaneously using the chat service built into Twitch, an idea born as Twitch Plays Pokemon.

Twitch Plays Pokemon was a ridiculous and epic adventure, with plenty of hilarious moments and memes coming from the experiment, such as a religious following for the Helix Fossil. Overall, Twitch Plays Pokemon was a success, with the players not only defeating Red, but eventually catching all of the 151 original Pokemon.

Thanks to the immense popularity of Twitch Plays Pokemon, copycats were to be expected. For the most part, many assumed that these copycats would stick to games like Pokemon, which, while still incredibly difficult to complete with thousands of people participating, is still feasible. However, the Twitch channel Twitch Plays Dark has decided to see if thousands of people can band together to complete one of the most notoriously difficult games ever, Dark Souls.

That's right, Twitch is now trying to beat Dark Souls. The stream has been going on for over 20 hours, with little progress made, but let's not forget that it took almost 400 hours to beat Pokemon using Twitch, a game that typically takes a fraction of that time to complete.

There is no doubt that the Twitch community will have their work cut out for them when trying to complete Dark Souls like this, and it may actually be legitimately impossible. Then again, the same was probably assumed about other unusual methods that people have used to beat the game in the past.

We've seen the extreme challenge of Dark Souls tackled using a variety of strange control methods. It's been beaten using the Donkey Konga bongo peripherals, a Rock Band guitar, Rock Band drums, and most recently, a player has conquered From Software's gruesome masterpiece using only his voice.

It will be interesting to see how much progress Twitch Plays Dark Souls is able to make. Hopefully they are able to beat it, but the odds are definitely not in their favor. Still, it will be interesting to see how far they are able to progress in the game before giving up, and watching the Twitch community attempt to get through the game's unforgiving boss battles is sure to be good for a few laughs, and applause, assuming they're up to the task.

Will you be watching or participating in Twitch Plays Dark Souls? If the Twitch community does the impossible and manages to beat the game, what game would you like to see them play through next? Dark Souls 2, or a different game entirely?

Dark Souls is currently available for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360.

Source: Ars Technica