Gameloft Montreal programmer Constantin Liétard has created a script that allows Twitter users to control a game of Pokémon Red playing out in his profile picture. It’s like ‘Twitch Plays Pokémon’ without having to deal with Twitch chat.
Launched on January 8 and then relaunched on January 9 to make sure frames get saved, Liétard’s ‘Twitter Plays Pokémon’ is relatively simple. Players tweet their button inputs as replies to the programmer’s initial post, seen below.
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/9RV383BGjW— Constantin Liétard (@screenshakes) January 8, 2021
Every 15 seconds, a script pulls the most popular commands from the thread and applies them to the game. The results of the commands are screenshotted and uploaded as Liétard’s 400×400 Twitter avatar. As I write this, players are fiddling about in the game menu.
From what I’ve seen so far, the game is going pretty well. The Twitter chorus picked Squirtle as their starter, which is a damn fine choice.
The game thread is massive, and it’s only going to get bigger as more and more people spam inputs in the replies. It’ll be interesting to see if they can make it to the Elite Four before the social media platform explodes.
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