In an unprecedented union of nature and technology, a Siamese fighting fish – or “betta” – has unknowingly dived into the world of handheld RPGs and devoted its life to the Red/Blue Game Boy version of Pokémon.
Grayson, a male betta, is doing better than expected.
OP was a pretty cool guy, and had this to say:
“Grayson has been playing for around 125 hours. Last time I checked, Grayson had acquired his first Pokemon, a charmander named AAAABBK and defeated his first opponent, the rival’s squirtle! (Grayson has been playing since the very start and selected his own name from one of the preset ones!)” – TheBloxer
In what game developers are calling “the ultimate betta test,” the onscreen controls are determined by Grayson’s position in his fishbowl. When he slept in his hammock Wednesday night, for example, he was lodged in the “up” directional button. The controls look solid, but are kinda finicky as indicated by a yellow dot that is supposed to track his exact position.
A controversial change was made to the control scheme Thursday, when the fish’s “owner” randomized the button mapping software, potentially interfering with the experiment by stripping even more control from the fish and placing Ash’s fate in the hands of a random number generator.
Perhaps the strangest element of watching a fish play Pokémon for 24 hours a day is the chat bar to the right of Grayson’s play area on twitch.tv: Viewers egg Grayson on during his sleep, with slogans like “Consult the hammock!” and ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ FISHY WAKE UP! ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ … and during his “gaming hours” a subculture of hero worship is burgeoning. ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ ALL HAIL THE MAGIKARP!
The feed is silent, of course, because yesterday twitch.tv shit the bed in fear of copyright lawyer-ghosts and muted any stream featuring music in any form (like Saudi Arabia!) – even their own.