Twitch Plays Pokemon Evolves to Pokemon X and Y

Earlier this year, Twitch channel Twitch Plays Pokemon created something of a sensation by allowing viewers to control the in-game action by entering commands in the chat window, creating a unique and bizarre cooperative single-player experience. Previously, Twitch Plays Pokemon was limited to 1998’s Pokemon Red/Blue for the original Game Boy, but some cleverly modded hardware has allowed the channel to upgrade to 2013’s 3DS release, Pokemon X and Y.

Twitch Plays Pokemon started out on an emulated version of Pokemon Red running on PC instead of its native Game Boy handheld console. In May, however, a Reddit user named dekuNukem built a special 3DS rig that allows the console to accept external commands via USB and stream audio and video to the computer. By using a real 3DS instead of an emulator, Twitch Plays Pokemon is able to utilize all of the handeld’s abilities, like wireless connectivity, allowing the streamed game to interact with other players’ games in real time.

Polygon reports that dekuNuke believes that the new rig will open up “the possibility of not only [Twitch Plays Pokémon X and Y], but also anything that runs on a 3DS," and lists other titles like Super Mario 3D Land, Fire Emblem: Awakening and Pokemon Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire as potential candidates for future play sessions.