Twitter is playing Pokemon Red in a user's avatar

A programmer has crowdsourced a game of Pokemon Red that takes place entirely in his Twitter avatar. It's 2021 and anything is possible, baby

You can now play Pokemon Red in my avatar! 🥳Comment one of those buttons on this tweet:Up, Down, Left, Right, A, B, Start, Select pic.twitter.com/9RV383BGjWJanuary 8, 2021

Gameloft Montreal programmer Constantin Liétard has written a script that pulls the comments from the Tweet announcing the crowdsourced game of Pokemon Red. That script then selects the most commented input (Up, Down, Left, Right, A, B, Start, Select) and sends it to the game. Liétard's profile picture is updated as well, to give players an idea of where Red is currently at. There's a Discord if you're looking to discuss future moves with players, but if you're a fan of chaos, just keep refreshing the Twitter feed.

In the period of time that I was on the Twitter page, Red moved within the same four squares in a field several times. Comments including "LET ME WALK OUT OF THE HOUSE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD STOP GOING UP" give you an idea of just how chaotic this crowdsourced Pokemon Red playthrough is. Liétard's experiment is a lot like Twitch Plays Pokemon, where a robot follows commands via the Twitch chat, except with more disarray, as you can't watch the computer act out commands in real time.

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There's more than 35,000 replies on the original thread, and Liétard has restarted the game a few more times to make adjustments as the thread's popularity has grown. Let's see where this Pokemon Red game ends up, shall we? I'm just curious how long it's going to take Twitter to beat the Elite Four trainers - at this rate, I'm expecting sometime in 2022.

Here's the new games of 2021 to get excited about.

Alyssa Mercante used to be a features writer at GamesRadar+ and is now a freelance writer and editor. Prior to entering the industry, she got her Masters's degree in Modern and Contemporary Literature at Newcastle University with a dissertation focusing on contemporary indie games. She spends most of her time playing competitive shooters and in-depth RPGs and was recently on a PAX Panel about the best bars in video games. In her spare time Alyssa rescues cats, practices her Italian, and plays soccer.