Twitch Plays Pokémon (partially found footage of Let's Play channel; 2014)

The logo.

Status: Partially Found

Twitch Plays Pokémon is an ongoing "social experiment" that is run by an anonymous Australian programmer on Twitch.tv. The stream has spawned a cult-like following since its beginning on February 12th, 2014 with the highest viewership count being 120,000 at once and reaching a total of over 30 million.

Despite its popularity, the first day and a half of the stream was not recorded by anyone. The recording of the stream did not start until 1 day 11 hours 25 minutes and 48 seconds into the game after a commenter asked the streamer to archive it. This left the capture of important early characters lost. Thus, this period is known in the TwitchPlaysPokemon community as: The Lost Days. Since Twitch had deleted most archived streams, it's very unlikely that significant footage from this period will ever be found. There are chat logs available that begin at 1d 7h 48m 18s.

It's currently unknown what exactly happened before the first screenshot of Day 1 at approximately ~0d 9h 37m ??s. Several people have attempted to use various early screenshots and forum/image board posts to recreate a timeline of approximately what happened in the first 35 hours, however, exact events are unknown. It is also important to understand that between ~0d 17h 43m ??s - ~1d 1h 9m ??s the streamer's IRC bot crashed meaning no stream or progress occurred.

5 Screenshots of Day 1 have been documented. There are also 4 Videos, 19 Screenshots, and 5 (potentially 6) GIFs from the lost 35 hours that have been found.

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Details and Characteristics of Lost Stream

Start and End Periods:

The game began streaming on twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon with the run starting around 23:16:01 UTC on February 12, 2014, though this is up for debate. The recording of the stream began around 11:53:47 UTC on February 14, 2014. Any capture that was verifiably taken prior to this time is considered part of the Lost Days as it must from the first 35 hours.

Game time:

The stream began recording the run officially at a game time of 1d 11h 25m 48s, however there are exceptions. During the first day, 0d 0h 0m 0s - 0d 17h 43m ??s, there was no timer. There was also a crash of the IRC bot from 0d 17h 43m ??s - 1d 1h 9m ??s where no gameplay occurred. When the stream was put back up at 1d 1h 9m ??s, a timer was then present, the first evidence of a timer is at 1d 7h 4m 44s.

At 1d 7h 19m 54s the chat freezes, followed by a stream blackout at 1d 7h 20m 16s. The stream goes black for 2m 36s, then come back with the timer reverted to 1d 7h 10m 48s, losing 12 minutes of real time. This means that there are two potentials sets of footage with time stamps from 1d 7h 10m 48s - 1d 7h 20m 16s.

Layout:

The stream consisted of 4 main elements at the time. First is the game stream of Pokemon Red on the left hand side of the stream. Second was a logo in the top right reading "Twitch Plays Pokemon", with 'Twitch Plays' on one line and 'Pokemon' below. Below the logo was a timer stating the days, hours, minutes, and seconds elapsed, this is only present after the first day. Any footage without a timer is most likely from Day 1. Lastly, the right hand side of the stream featured the chat. This consisted of a user on the left and their typed input on the right. Only chats with inputs were shown.

Key actions in the game:

During the time of the lost stream, the game progressed from Pallet Town to Cerulean City after beating the rival on Nugget Bridge. While not every action has been documented between these two game states, reddit users u/jimmyg_123 and u/davidjl123 have compiled a relative timeline regarding the events that took place. For more details of what may have taken place refer to the timeline as well as user Desparae's testimony seen below. The major events that took place are:

• Entering... Viridian City, Pewter City, Mt. Moon, Cerulean City, Nugget Bridge
• Battling... Beating Rival 1, Beating Brock, Lost to Misty, Lost Rival 2, Beat Rival 2
• Obtaining... Helix Fossil, Moon Stone

At this time two the stream had obtained two Pokémon:

• Received/Evolved Charmander/Charmeleon named "ABBBBBBK("
• Caught Pidgey named "PIDGEY"

Contact and Leads

Several Twitch accounts from the Day 1 screenshots as well as members of the GBATemp forums thread have been contacted for any information. No media has been received as of 15 Mar '23. There is also GameFAQs, two Reddit, Something Awful, NEOGAF, Smogon, Skial, Skullheart, and NikeTalk threads, however they were posted on Day 2 and have not yet been contacted. 4Chan Archives from Day 1 do exist, however since they are anonymous it is impossible to contact them.

User Desparae from Day 1 has been contacted and his testimony can be found here. He was unable to provide any screenshots, but did give some new information about what happened in the ~5 hours he was present. He also said that two users: Undeadlibrary and Anon_agon (Twitch handles) were the two most active players and were there for almost the whole early game. These are the two biggest leads right now. Undeadlibrary's twitch has been inactive for years and twitter for ~3 years with only one reply tweet. Anon_agon's twitch seems to be deleted, and a twitter seems to have been found (located from an old youtube channel linked to the twitch account). Both have been contacted.

User Speci4lEffx from Day 1 has been contacted and has said that he may have screenshots and is currently looking for them. He also mentioned that another user, Sir_belvedere, may have information as well.

Finds

From Mid '14 to Feb '16, reddit user u/jimmyg_123 was able to compile several videos, screenshots, and GIFs from the lost 35 hours. These are detailed in his timeline found here. These were posted to various sites, reddit, and image boards at the time. He was able to find 5 screenshots from Day 1, all of which originate from 4chan. Due to the nature of 4chan's image boards getting periodically deleted, it is unknown if there are any other screenshots from boards at the time.

On 10 Feb '23 to 12 Feb '23, four screenshots were found from twitter. They were the following times: 1d 7h 11m 50s, 1d 9h 24m 36s, 1d 9h 31m 52s, and 1d 10h 11m 35s. These images did not come up via search engine image searches meaning looking through tweets during the timeframe may bring up new media.

On 16 Aug '23, three new screenshots were found from a NEOGAF thread around Day 2, but not directly from any contacts. They were the following times: 1d 10h 26m 49s, 1d 10h 58m 17s, and 1d 11h 0m 13s. Another screenshot was also found via a news article on Darkzero, a small UK news blog, at a time of 1d 8h 12m 41s. These images did not come up via search engine image searches meaning looking through old forums and news sites may bring up media.

Gallery

Screenshots from Day 1

• 

  ~0d 9h 37m ??s

• 

  ~0d 9h 57m ??s

• 

  ~0d 16h 11m ??s

• 

  ~0d 16h 29m ??s

• 

  ~0d 16h 51m ??s

NOTE: Timestamps are approximate.

Videos from Day 2

1d 7h 14m 2s - 1d 7h 20m 16s; 1d 7h 10m 48s - 1d 7h 12m 2s

1d 7h 14m 2s - 1d 8h 28m 47s (Various)

1d 8h 23m 5s - 1d 8h 28m 53s

1d 10h 57m 41s - ~1d 10h 58m 12s

Screenshots from Day 2

• 

  1d 7h 4m 44s (broken link)

• 

  1d 7h 10m 52s

• 

  1d 7h 11m 50s

• 

  1d 8h 12m 41s

• 

  1d 8h 47m 37s

• 

  1d 8h 56m 46s

• 

  1d 9h 24m 36s

• 

  1d 9h 31m 52s

• 

  1d 9h 35m 9s

• 

  1d 9h 50m 38s

• 

  1d 10h 3m 53s

• 

  1d 10h 11m 35s

• 

  1d 10h 14m 5s

• 

  1d 10h 17m 40s (broken link)

• 

  1d 10h 26m 49s (forum)

• 

  1d 10h 54m 21s

• 

  1d 10h 58m 17s (forum)

• 

  1d 11h 0m 13s (forum)

• 

  1d 11h 13m 13s

GIFs from Day 2

1d 7h 42m 28s - 1d 7h 42m 32s

1d 8h 33m 43s - 1d 8h 34m 8s

1d 9h 40m 14s - 1d 9h 40m 49s

1d 9h 42m 16s - 1d 9h 42m 25s

1d 10h 57m 42s - 1d 10h 57m 57s

Possibly between 1d 9h 50m ??s - 1d 10h 2m ??s

See Also

Online Content

• Chuggaaconroy (found early Pokémon Platinum videos from YouTuber; 2008)
• Pokémate (lost inaccessible "Pokémon" Japanese mobile phone app; 2006)
• PokéPark: Asari Taikai DS (lost "Pokémon" Nintendo DS Download Play game; 2005)
• Pokémon Crystal Version (lost Japan-only Mobile Adapter GB content for Game Boy Color role-playing game; 2001-2002)
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Gold Rescue Team -Challenge the Gold Rank!- (lost South Korean promotional demo of Nintendo DS game; 2007)
• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Rescue Team (partially found official website content of Nintendo DS/Game Boy Advance games; 2006)
• Pokémon 2000 Adventure Game (partially found browser-based online game; 2000)
• Pokémon.com (lost online games from website; pre 2010-2011)

Video Games

• Pokémon Gold and Silver Versions (found early SpaceWorld '97 demo build of Game Boy Color role-playing games; 1997)
• Pokémon PC Master (partially found Japanese educational PC game; 2006)
• Pokémon Picross (found build of cancelled Game Boy Color puzzle game; 1999)
• Pokémon Pink Version (lost build of cancelled Game Boy role-playing game; existence unconfirmed; late 1990s)
• Pokémon Stars Version (lost enhanced Nintendo Switch port of "Pokémon Sun and Moon" Nintendo 3DS role-playing games; existence unconfirmed; 2017)
• Pikachu: DS Tech Demo (lost "Pokémon" Nintendo DS tech demo; 2004)
• PokéROM (found "Pokémon" edutainment series; 2000)

External Links

• Bulbapedia page on Twitch Plays Pokémon.
• All footage from 1d 11h 25m 48s onward.
• All chat logs from 1d 7h 48m 18s onward.