And on the 11th day, the lord of ‘Twitch Plays Pokémon‘ was brought back to life. After collecting six badges, after countless fan art tributes, after accidentally releasing over 12 Pokémon in a single day, after getting through any trees and ledges that stood in the way, and after successfully navigating the treacherous Safari Zone, thousands of players on ‘Twitch Plays Pokemon’ did it: They revived the Helix fossil by using the Pokémon lab in Cinnabar Island. It’s amazing.
This development is significant because, funnily enough, a ‘religion’ of sorts formed around ‘Twitch Plays Pokemon’ — having thousands of players try to control a single character often meant that players found themselves accidentally delving into a menu that held a fossil. Players constructed a narrative around the mistake: Red, the main character must be looking to the Helix fossil for guidance, right? That’s why players consult it so much, for guidance.
And because of that fixation, the Helix fossil started being regarded as a holy deity by players — a force so important that the real point of the game, some joked, was not to beat the Elite Four and beat the game, but rather to take the fossil to Cinnabar Island and turn it into a fossil Pokemon called “Omanyte” (pictured above). In doing so, players would show their devotion to the chaos that makes Twitch Plays Pokemon so special, since the Helix fossil is the god of anarchy… or something like that.
Now that ‘Twitch Plays Pokemon’ has revived the Helix fossil, the team line-up looks like this:
(Image via the Google doc that monitors progress on ‘Twitch Plays Pokemon’)
Omanyte is the only Pokemon that doesn’t have a doofy nickname, which is appropriate, really. Omanyte’s revival, along with the acquisition of powerful ‘mon like Zapdos, means that players on Twitch have a pretty formidable team. The Pigeot alone is leveled high enough that it can destroy most opponents, and Zapdos is a “legendary” — which means its pretty powerful. Eventually, the Omanyte will evolve into an Omastar.
As of this writing, Twitch players are trying to acquire the “secret key” — an item which will allow them to face Blaine, the gym leader of Cinnabar Island. From there, players will need to acquire one last badge before being able to head into Victory Road — the gruelling final portion of the game before the Elite Four. Whether or not they’ll be able to do all of this remains to be seen — but somehow, they’ve made it this far, right? I wouldn’t underestimate what Twitch players can accomplish, given enough time. We’ll keep you updated on progress.
You can watch the livestream here, if you’re curious:
Bets on how long until someone accidentally releases Lord Helix?
Comments
23 responses to “Rejoice, For ‘Twitch Plays Pokémon’ Has Revived The Helix Fossil”
I doubt it.. for that to happen they would need a reason to visit the PC, so unless they want that ghastly from the daycare this will most likely be their Elite Four setup.
Nice link bait back to your own article. I would have assumed that clicking on (Image via the Google doc that monitors progress on ‘Twitch Plays Pokemon’) would have taken me to the Google doc, not your previous post about Twitch Plays Pokemon. How stupid of me.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Twitch goes down at some point, when assholes try to organise a massive takeover of the game to release Lord Helix and simply destroy the entire game. DDoS attacks abound.
The Twitch stream has compelled me to do a sort of play-along in Fire Red. I just dumped my Helix fossil at the lab last night. Did you always get it back at level 30? For some reason I seem to recall getting my revived fossil back at level 5 back in the old days, which led to me never using the blasted thing.
Always level 30 in Red and Blue.
I had to look it up, but yeah it seems like in Red/Blue it revived at level 30. Maybe it just seemed uselessly low because by that point in the game you’ve normally got a solid team of reasonably high level Pokemon sorted out. There wasn’t much point in training up a Fossil Pokemon when you’ve already got something filling those roles.
Probably. I think I used to have a team of everything being 40+ by the time I got to Cinnabar because I generally had to grind a bit to get past the psychic gym. This time around they were only around 33 with my Charizard being level 36 or so (I beat Sabrina with nothing but Flamethrower after she wiped everything else in my party…)
I think I’m going to have to do some powerlevelling before I tackle victory road though. I remember it being a massive grind.
I did it a few weeks ago with Charizard as my main. Fire Red/Leaf Green felt a bit easier on Victory Road than Red/Blue, but it’s still long so you won’t go wrong having a few well leveled cave friendly Pokemon on your team. The big shock for me was post-Elite Four. The second run of them is way harder than I remembered.
I don’t even remember the elite four being harder on a second run, I used to just grab the Exp. Share and run through them repeatedly with maybe 3 of my best and use them to powerlevel whatever I had sitting around.
I guess they wanted to give you something to keep aspiring to.
For the record my current lineup is:
Gloom (41)
Primeape (38)
Pidgeot (34)
Vaporeon (41)
Raichu (38)
Charizard (40)
I have plenty left to do before I try Victory Road. I have to go back into the Safari Zone because I missed the Warden’s teeth and need that to get strength. Then I’ll go do the power plant to get Zapdos. The game now also includes Waterfall I guess, so there’s apparently somewhere on the Tri-Islands which weren’t in the original red/blue. Then I need to do the Seafoam Islands, which IIRC is where I find Articuno. Is Moltres supposed to be in the burned out mansion on Cinnabar?
Nah, in Fire Red/Leaf Green Moltres is in:
Mt Ember, which is far north on the first of the new islands. You’ll need Surf and I think Rock Smash.7 badges down, 1 to go. soon to leave cinnabar island and head north. just spent 2 hours stuck on a 2 tile trap between a wall, desk and an NPC that blocked us in but things are now progressing.
also
2 days…
They’re discussing/voting on what to nickname Zaptos, as the current one sucks horribly.
so far the top is “Battery Bird” which I think is AWESOME!
DabuSurvivor: “I’ve loved AA-J itself every since someone pointed out how well it works. AA = battery, J = “jay” = bird. His name already means “battery bird”; no reason to change it.”
source: http://www.reddit.com/r/twitchplayspokemon/comments/1yuiz9/nickname_for_zapdos/
Shortly after he was captured, I saw the name “archangel of justice” throne around. Then I saw birdJudas, which I thought was a nice counterpart to birdJesus, though I don’t think he’s done anything particularly heretical.
Battery bird is pretty clever though.
Right after they captured him, they released half of the team trying to retrieve him from the PC and deposited Bird Jesus and the Lapdos. They’ve labelled it as Bloody Sunday inside the Google Doc detailing the progress.
Wait, they actually managed to catch Zapdos? How?
Masterball, lol
Oh. Did they try to consult the SS Anne Ticket?
They will finish it eventually. Although this was the first and most popular, several other games have popped up, with one stream finishing pokemon blue with a peak of about 1300 players. They reamed the elite 4 with a level 92 blastoise, after grinding him up that high running again and again.
How the heck did they make it through the Safari Zone?!
They voted for democracy mode, its the same way they got past the Team Rocket HQ maze.
Ah, okay, I haven’t really checked on it in a while. This anarchy/democracy thing is new to me.
Democracy
Democracy mode?