Twitch Plays Pokémon’s Final Boss: Professor Oak

Holy shit. Twitch Plays Pokémon could not have ended in a more perfect way.

For those of you that haven’t been following it lately, Twitch Plays Pokémon, the stream that lets thousands of people come together and control a single game of Pokemon, was holding a throwback game of Red — the game that started it all. To make things interesting, the creator of the stream modified the game a bit, adding more challenge, as well as all 151 Pokémon to the game (thus allowing players to capture them all without having to trade). They also added an extra surprise that nobody could have guessed.

Yesterday, Twitch caught all 151 Pokemon — an fantastic feat that made it seem as if there was nothing left to do. But today, Twitch found a new challenge: after defeating the Elite Four and the Champion, Professor Oak himself challenged players to a final battle.

As hardcore Pokémon fans know, Professor Oak was originally in the Pokemon Red and Blue games, but the developers, Game Freak, decided to cut him out. The data remained in the games, however — that’s how people know that the Professor owned a Tauros, an Exeggutor, an Arcanine, and a Gyarados. It was the sort of epic show-down that made me wish it hadn’t been cut from the game in the first place — what better way to end things than to defeat the man who sent you on your journey in the first place?

Most people will never get to experience a battle like that. But Twitch Plays Pokémon did, because they were playing a modified game that included him. Hell, Oak even gave TPP a small speech right before the battle:

I’ve watched you from the beginning of your journey. And I must say, it is truly astonishing how you’ve managed to discover and tame every single POKéMON! Now that you are a POKéMON MASTER, you must prove to me that you are deserving of that title. Please, do not hold back on this one.

Let us begin!

He appeared to have many of the same Pokémon that the originally-cut Professor did, such as Tauros, Exeggutor, and Arcanine. What made things particularly nail-biting was that Professor Oak appeared right after the Champion battle, and players didn’t have the ability to heal in-between those battles. Making things worse, every single Pokémon that Professor Oak owned was level 100. He’s no cakewalk. Twitch Plays Pokemon was stuck battling Oak all night, trying over and over again, until this morning — when they finally beat the old man.

God damn.

The final team consisted of Slowbro, Venemoth, Cloyster, Dragonite, Zapdos, and Victreebel. The playtime came to be about 40 days total, completely overshadowing how long previous TPP runs took.

You can watch the battle, along with chat, here — courtesy of CrazyBlue Review:

Right now, the stream displays a number of mini-games, and they promise that they will be back to regular programming soon enough. But after everything that’s happened so far, what else is there left to do?

Thanks for the tip, @tashasghost.