00:00:00

Gaming Minute

Gaming Minute: Giant Bomb Gaming Minute 02/20/2014 - Twitch Plays Pokemon

Jeff Gerstmann returns to tell you that he can't stop watching tens of thousands of people attempting to play Pokemon Red at the same time.

Feb. 20 2014

Posted by: Jeff

In This Episode:

Pokémon Red/Blue

76 Comments

Avatar image for ehker
Ehker

233

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 3

Clicked on play button in middle, felt dumb...

Avatar image for flappy
Flappy

2415

Forum Posts

20

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 4

@ehker said:

Clicked on play button in middle, felt dumb...

Smooth.

Avatar image for piggs
piggs

38

Forum Posts

16

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 3

Edited By piggs

Love these... wish my radio stations would play them.

Avatar image for rhombus_of_terror
Rhombus_Of_Terror

2544

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 3

@ehker said:

Clicked on play button in middle, felt dumb...

Join the club...

Avatar image for pimblycharles
PimblyCharles

1922

Forum Posts

102

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 1

@ehker: haha I just did too. D'OH

Avatar image for feller13
Feller13

35

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By Feller13

Jeffs fake ad voice is spot on, and stomach churning.

Avatar image for ilikepopcans
ilikepopcans

979

Forum Posts

3100

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 6

Avatar image for jonasc
jonasc

37

Forum Posts

2

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 1

I love Jeff's efforts to expose the radio-listening world to the insanity of the internet.

Avatar image for jeff
jeff

6357

Forum Posts

107208

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 20

@ehker said:

Clicked on play button in middle, felt dumb...

Yeah, I realized how weird that looked right as it was going live and changed out the image.

Avatar image for bybeach
bybeach

6754

Forum Posts

1

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 1

Edited By bybeach

Sound effect/editing in that little recording was outstanding.

You actually could look at it as a group mind thing, if the action is being followed. IDK if that is true or not.

Avatar image for themanwithnoplan
TheManWithNoPlan

7843

Forum Posts

103

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 1

User Lists: 14

Edited By TheManWithNoPlan

That stream is just pure chaos. It's kind of beautiful. Always love Jeff's Gb gaming minutes!

Avatar image for dezvous
dezvous

690

Forum Posts

4

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 2

User Lists: 15

I clicked the Twitch play button at least three times. Well played, Jeff.

Avatar image for orange_pork
orange_pork

726

Forum Posts

420

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 12

Edited By orange_pork

start9

Avatar image for kippers
kippers

450

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Watching it unfold in 15 minute bursts throughout the day is something beautiful.

Avatar image for benmo316
Benmo316

1153

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By Benmo316

I would listen to commercials if Jeff did every one of them.

Avatar image for mister_snig
Mister_Snig

791

Forum Posts

1665

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 4

Should the Helix Fossil talk?

Avatar image for development
development

3749

Forum Posts

61

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

This editing is the radio equivalent of doing a speedball. I don't think I could put up with more than a minute of it, and that's why it's great.

Avatar image for graham_nix
Graham_Nix

152

Forum Posts

2

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Jeff, I'm curious, can you say the traffic difference between minutes you tweet about and minutes you don't?

Avatar image for jacksukeru
jacksukeru

6864

Forum Posts

131

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 22

I want to meet a person who regularly listens to this gaming minute with interest, but it is the only exposure they've ever had to Jeff. What is their world like?

Avatar image for csl316
csl316

17004

Forum Posts

765

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 10

Edited By csl316

I don't listen to Jeff's Mixlr morning shows, but I assume they're all this manic and fancy for a full hour.

Avatar image for amyggen
AMyggen

7738

Forum Posts

7669

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 1

Edited By AMyggen

@graham_nix: I think it's more about which are featured on the main site and which ones isn't. Some get buried in the video section without getting posted on the main sites, and those will naturally get almost no exposure.

Avatar image for fram
fram

2132

Forum Posts

5

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 4

The idea of listening to the radio and randomly hearing a really well produced "ad" for Twitch Plays Pokemon is amazing. Jeff does good work.

Avatar image for dizzylemons
dizzylemons

132

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

I love the community and meme madness that has come from all this - fuck, i watched 12 hours straight of 'Red' trying to progress up the tower, DigRat's redemption as BigRat and the pain of Abba Jesus' futility.

In an internet full of forced jokes and recycled content is this not where the medium of reality TV is heading? Does the Drowzee Pyschic saga not ring truer than any told story thus far? Is emergent content not going to be attempts to replicate this going forward?

Meh, I don't care... Red is moving near the PC and I have to see what happens!

blah blah anarchy helix blah way thingy blah democracy

Avatar image for deburgo
DeBurgo

80

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 3

man i fucking love the giant bomb gaming minute. it somehow makes mid-winter video game news sound exciting and not like the funeral dirge it normally is.

Avatar image for larrydavis
LarryDavis

1698

Forum Posts

23

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 1

User Lists: 0

Avatar image for arch4non
arch4non

472

Forum Posts

7

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Praise Helix!

Avatar image for auron570
AURON570

1778

Forum Posts

1029

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 4

I tuned in to it early today after hearing it about it a few days ago... All i have to say is..

ALL HAIL ABBAJESUS!

Also I don't get what anarchy/democracy is all about, I'm guessing it has something to do with how commands from the chat are filtered/chosen?

Avatar image for mavs
mavs

399

Forum Posts

2

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 2

@auron570 said:

I tuned in to it early today after hearing it about it a few days ago... All i have to say is..

ALL HAIL ABBAJESUS!

Also I don't get what anarchy/democracy is all about, I'm guessing it has something to do with how commands from the chat are filtered/chosen?

Executing the first command read during an open input window (60 times per second) vs. executing the most popular command polled in a X-second window.

Avatar image for rongalaxy
RonGalaxy

4937

Forum Posts

48

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 1

User Lists: 1

I don't get this phenomenon at all... Wheres the fun to be had in taking part in this? Its just a bunch of random nonsense.

I mean, yeah its a cool idea, but I think its kind of sad so many people are just sitting at their keyboard typing in gameboy button commands into a chatroom so they can watch the game fall over on itself.

Avatar image for mdmac92
mdmac92

105

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By mdmac92

Awesome. I love the idea that ordinary, middle-age, non-gaming radio listeners are going to hear about this madness during their morning commute. Keep fighting the good fight, Jeff!

Avatar image for cocainemancer
Cocainemancer

61

Forum Posts

5745

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By Cocainemancer
Avatar image for maajin
Maajin

1184

Forum Posts

211

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By Maajin

@narujoe93: If you look at the moment to moment stuff it's pretty boring, sure. But try looking up all the stuff that happened since it started. It's unbelievable.

Avatar image for gnatsol
GnaTSoL

875

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

@fram said:

The idea of listening to the radio and randomly hearing a really well produced "ad" for Twitch Plays Pokemon is amazing. Jeff does good work.

This stuff actually makes it to the radio? Where on?

Avatar image for sooty
Sooty

8193

Forum Posts

306

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 2

User Lists: 3

I just find it incredibly funny that throughout this anarchy, they somehow managed to name a Pokemon that resembles a duck...Dux.

That is just glorious.

Avatar image for darkshaper
DarkShaper

1388

Forum Posts

1095

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 8

@sooty: The only Farfetch'd in the game is named DUX by default.

Avatar image for aidros
aidros

332

Forum Posts

5

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 4

Edited By aidros
@sooty said:

I just find it incredibly funny that throughout this anarchy, they somehow managed to name a Pokemon that resembles a duck...Dux.

That is just glorious.

The nicknamed poke'mon (A Farfetch'd) is given the name "Dux" by the game. The player trades for the poke'mon and the nickname is kept forever.

However, we have managed to bestow some hilarious and nonsense names that develop their own names we refer to them by, like:

JLVWNNOOOO (Jay Leno)

ABBBBBBK ( (Abby)

x(arraggbaj (xCabbage)

Avatar image for draxyle
Draxyle

2021

Forum Posts

2

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 1

User Lists: 0

@gnatsol said:

@fram said:

The idea of listening to the radio and randomly hearing a really well produced "ad" for Twitch Plays Pokemon is amazing. Jeff does good work.

This stuff actually makes it to the radio? Where on?

I think it's just sold to any radio station that will buy segments like this to pad time. If I recall, on a bombcast awhile back they mentioned it actually hitting around Rush Limbaugh's show, which is pretty darn weird.

Avatar image for ch3burashka
ch3burashka

6086

Forum Posts

100

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 3

@fram said:

The idea of listening to the radio and randomly hearing a really well produced "ad" for Twitch Plays Pokemon is amazing. Jeff does good work.

That was exactly my first thought. Maybe that 50-year-old career blue collar worker gets intrigued and visits giantbomb.com. I'm glad Jeff expanded his coverage - as long as you have a minute on public radio, you might as well go balls out with it and report on idiots playing Pokemon on the internet.

Avatar image for disabilityfishy
DisAbiLityFisHy

1185

Forum Posts

5926

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 5

Love all the fanart that has come with this. Hilarious stuff

Avatar image for shtinky
shtinky

1247

Forum Posts

22

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 3

I think this one's way too niche for a casual/non-gamer to understand.

Avatar image for pop
Pop

2769

Forum Posts

4697

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 8

Edited By Pop

That's fucking amazing! I love how he wrote this! I can't watch twitch plays pokemon for more than 5 minutes cause I get really frustrated. And I've never seen democracy and wanna see how it looks.

Avatar image for bisonhero
BisonHero

12793

Forum Posts

625

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 1

User Lists: 2

Edited By BisonHero

@jacksukeru said:

I want to meet a person who regularly listens to this gaming minute with interest, but it is the only exposure they've ever had to Jeff. What is their world like?

@shtinky said:

I think this one's way too niche for a casual/non-gamer to understand.

Whenever I listen to these, knowing that they go out to all sorts of radio stations where the listeners are almost certainly not gamers or remotely young people (because Jesus Christ who willingly listens to radio), I always try to pay attention and see if Jeff uses jargon that would completely prevent old people from getting what is going on.

The only thing in this one is that Jeff refers to an "enterprising streamer", and old people may not know that that means "someone putting on a live internet video". He mentions hooking it up to a "chat room" which I thought was a good way of dumbing it down, but never says the word "video" or "live" when describing what Twitch Plays Pokemon actually is. I know it would've burned precious time explaining what Twitch.tv is, or what an internet livestream is, but I do wonder what the average radio listener gets out of these. Especially the super inside baseball ones, like "I didn't like Gears of War: Judgment, let me summarize why in like 30 seconds".

Avatar image for sooty
Sooty

8193

Forum Posts

306

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 2

User Lists: 3

@sooty: The only Farfetch'd in the game is named DUX by default.

Dreams shattered

Avatar image for mikeeegeee
mikeeegeee

1638

Forum Posts

8

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Edited By mikeeegeee

Just watched 45 minutes of the stream. 50,000 people in the chat.

Hypnotic in a way. Long stretches of absolute tedium... the most mundane of tasks seemingly impossible. But with great patience...

After 30 minutes of trying to go into the gym and challenge the boss, we finally got through the door (a chorus of "yay"s in the chat). After another 10 minutes navigating the maze to get to the boss, we arrive next to him and manage to press A. The chat gets tense ("FUCK HIM UP!").

After our weak Ghastly (lovingly referred to as "Rick Ghastly" by the chat) died quickly to the boss's first pokemon, we manage to sub in our extremelyoverleveled pidgey, named something like "abbbbbjsssss." The chat erupts,

"JESUS BIRD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"JESUS BIRD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
"JESUS BIRD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Jesus Bird does 'gust' attack repeatedly and crits the fuck out of all of the boss's pokemon, killing them all, some even going down on one attack. The chat explodes "ALL HAIL JESUS BIRD!" "FUCK YEAH JESUS BIRD!"

The game says:

"You won! Abbbbbbjssssss gained 11200 experience for defeating muk! Abbbbbbjsssss reached level 57! Abbbbbjsssss is trying to learn Mirror Move, but Abbbbbjsss can't have any more than 4 moves! Delete an older move to make room for Mirror Move?"

The game, in anarchy mode, responds to the spam of commands: 'a' 'a' 'a' 'a' 'a' 'a' 'a' 'a' 'a'

....and in doing so, deletes Gust and replaces it with Mirror Move.

The chat fucking imploded. It was the most hilarious, spontaneous shit. It felt special to have witnessed it.

Avatar image for kerse
kerse

2496

Forum Posts

42

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 8

Praise be to the Helix.

Avatar image for gerrid
gerrid

784

Forum Posts

0

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

twitch plays pokemon is the greatest challenge that has ever faced the human race. it is beautiful to be a part of it.

Avatar image for rmanthorp
rmanthorp

4654

Forum Posts

3603

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 1

User Lists: 14

Edited By rmanthorp  Moderator

anarchy

Avatar image for aceofspudz
aceofspudz

937

Forum Posts

56

Wiki Points

0

Followers

Reviews: 0

User Lists: 0

Yay!