100,000 simultaneous Pokémon players might actually end up beating the game

Two weeks ago, viewers of game streaming site Twitch.tv started playing a massively multiplayer session of Pokémon where each comment in the chat window translates to a button press on the gamepad — and somehow the resulting mess of over 10 million button presses has turned into successful gameplay. As of today, Polygon reports that players have managed to steer the game’s protagonist to collect all eight badges, the medallions of the Pokemon world required to proceed to the game’s final stages.

Players of the massively multiplayer streaming phenomenon known as Twitch Plays Pokemon have earned the eighth and final badge in Pokemon Red and are heading into the game’s final stages. Twitch Plays Pokemon is the work of an anonymous Australian programmer who set out to create an alternate version of SaltyBet, a Twitch stream that focuses on viewer interaction. In Twitch Plays Pokemon, viewers input chat commands to control the game or initiate its newly added anarchy or democracy modes. Anarchy enables chat-based commands to be input immediately, while democracy allows users to vote and act collectively.