We’ve been covering Twitch Plays Pokemon quite a bit on the site, mostly because I find it fascinating. There’s the social experiment aspect, the flood of creative memes, and the thrill of victory against the odds.

The latest run has been through Pokemon Crystal, using a slightly modified version of the original game (for example, the romhack allows for certain trade-evolution Pokemon like Scyther to evolve through leveling instead). There’s also been a couple new systems in place — democracy now automatically takes control at the top of every hour, and can be replaced by anarchy if it’s the leading vote-getter.

(There was also another system that essentially collected all the votes every 0.5 seconds and chose one of them at random. So if you had 4 ups, 2 downs, 2 rights, an A and a start, there was a 40 percent chance of up being picked. That mechanic didn’t last long, leading many to wonder if it was a test for the inevitable Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald run after Crystal is defeated.)

This run has had no shortage of drama, such as the ridiculously overleveled Feraligatr that divided the chat for quite some time. Some worried that he would be too strong and wanted to store/release him. (Those people turned out to be idiots, because even at level 77 he couldn’t do much against the Elite Four.) Eventually an Onix made its way onto the team, kept getting OHKO’d, but turned into a Steelix and became a beast. An Eevee plodded along for a bit before becoming an Espeon, and now that it finally has Psychic, it’s wrecking faces as well. And there’s a new Pidgeot, affectionally named Brian this time thanks to a Monty Python reference.

The team struggled against the Elite Four, needing nearly 40 attempts to finally break through. That’s right: in somewhat ironic fashion, Lance was defeated at about the same time Gary fell in the original TPP stream (aka EXTREMELY EARLY IN THE MORNING ARGH). Feraligatr managed to survive with 6 HP despite being paralyzed, and a final Icy Wind attack took down Aerodactyl and set off the celebration!

Granted, that’s not the end of the game, of course. One of the best features about the G/S/C era is the fact that you get to go after the Kanto badges now as well. Then it’s back through the Elite Four and a final, fateful battle with Red, who supposedly has been edited to use his team from the first Twitch stream, a cool twist. There’s still plenty of story to be told, but after almost 33 hours, the first huge chapter is complete, and Lance has fallen once more despite his blatant cheating (three Dragonites of level 50 or below? Really?).

This team is now set to beast through the poor Kanto gym leaders because of the strength it amassed grinding the Elite Four. It seems only a matter of time before the destined fight is upon us. And then we’ll see just what the collective can pull off.