Pokémon played through Twitch brings “Games as Art” to new heights/lows

Blessed with a stroke of mad genius, a Twitch.tv user has jimmy-rigged the user chat to allow for an active userbase to control an emulated Pokémon Red through a handful of keystrokes, resulting in what you’re seeing below.

Why, even you yourself can play.

At the time of writing, over 10K active users have somehow managed to accomplish a handful of goals from naming their Charmander to actually leveling the thing to a full-fledged Charizard, along with making some legitimate progress through the game itself. Naturally, this should have gone no further than never managing to complete a username, but here we are with a slowly growing Pok?dex. Only time will tell how long this social experiment will last for, but at a couple days of uptime, it’s at least earned a status as a gaming art installation.

Enjoy the fascinating cacophony of a schizophrenic hive mind as they continue to attempt to perform normal functions that would otherwise take a four year-old at least a third of the time.