What happens when thousands of Pokémon gamers play one game at the same time?

Twitch Plays Pokémon has provided the answer to the aforementioned mentioned, and it will likely frustrate fans of the franchise.

As of Feb. 17, 75,000 viewers have either participated or observed gamers play the first-generation game Pokémon Red/Blue Version.

"TwitchPlaysPokémon is a social experiment, it is a stream of the Gameboy version of 'Pokémon Red' (151 romhack) running on an emulator," described the creator of the multiplayer game. "An IRC bot translates buttons said in chat into keypresses (simulated in software, no fancy typist robots)."

TwitchPlaysPokémon started on Feb. 14, and four days later, gamers have finally managed to reach to the Team Rocket Hideout. The road to the hideout was not easy with thousands of gamers demanding numerous actions.

How does one play?

"Say the button you want pushed in chat (a, b, start select, up, down, left, right), please be aware that there is considerable input lag (see below) and will take awhile before your inputs are registered," the "TwitchPlaysPokémon" creator wrote. "Only one button per message is accepted, there's no combos or holds."

The result of thousands of gamers inserting countless demands at one time is lag time. Gamers should anticipate 20 to 40 seconds of lag time depending on connection quality.

"After watching the stream for awhile the lag may increase a tiny amount (enough for chat spoilers), refreshing may help in this case."

Frustration and slightly hilarity has come out of TwitchPlaysPokémon with the Start menu appearing at almost every five seconds, walking in circles leading to nowhere, and the Helix Fossil. With nonstop players inserting a command, the Helix Fossil has received notoriety and jokes in the comments section and various memes online.

A highlight of the game was when two Pokémon were released (see video below). The Rattata known as "JLVWNNOOOO," a slightly reference to comedian and former "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno, and Charmeleon, which was nicknamed "ABBBBBBK [" were released from the game during the weekend.

ABBBBBBK( and JLVWNNOOOO released:

"In order to progress we needed a Pokémon that can learn surf. We had 5 of our 6 Pokémon slots full, so if we bought, caught, or obtained a Pokémon, it would go into that sixth slot," described the folks from Cheezburger. "Eevee if evolved into Vaporeon works. Or we could be given Lapras which works. Or they could catch a Pokémon which is super hard to coordinate with 70k users. If eevee evolved into a non surf learning pokemon, we'd have to go to the pokemon PC to get a surf pokemon out of storage. We picked Eevee, evolved it into the flareon, tried to go to the box, and released two of our pokemon, including a starter, and deposited the helix fossil, which is being revered as a sort of God. If we didn't go with Eevee, we may still have our two released pokemon and our God. Instead, the false prophet killed them." 

"TwitchPlaysPokémon" is definitely an experiment worth watching but may become slightly addictive to see how and if gamers manage to accomplish a task, battle, etc.

"The biggest obstacle to overcome is the method of input, while crudely saying the buttons into chat works well enough for Pokémon and its turn-based gameplay it wouldn't work for games that expect a relatively (< 20 seconds) reaction from the player," the creator noted. "I don't think this obstacle is insurmountable but it will require further ingenuity."

Watch "TwitchPlaysPokémon" Live:

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