Early this morning U.S. Eastern time, after 16 days, seven hours, 50 minutes and 19 seconds, the combined strength of hundreds of thousands of Twitch viewers defeated Pokémon Red. You can watch the final battle against Blue right here.
After launching Feb. 12, the game began battling the Elite Four yesterday afternoon. Conceived as a social experiment, Twitch Plays Pokémon evolved into what likely will be remembered as one of video gaming's biggest stories of 2014. Twitch Plays Pokémon essentially crowdsourced the commands issued to the game, with the game taking action either by majority or supermajority vote.
According to traffic estimates, more than 650,000 Twitch viewers participated in in some way; at its height, more than 120,000 users were participating together. The channel gathered nearly 200,000 followers and generated millions of views.
It spawned a few imitators, including an attempt to crowd-play The Legend of Zelda and a game of Tetris whose directional commands mimicked those taking place in Twitch Plays Pokémon. Satires, memes and even "religions" also captured the mirth and enjoyment of the two-week phenomenon.