In early 2014 Twitch Plays Pokémon was a phenomenon, taking audience participations to new levels and attracting headlines from the mainstream media. It was a chaotic but oddly entrancing affair in which thousands of viewers would enter commands and attempt to beat Pokémon Red.

It attracted tens of thousands of concurrent viewers in that early peak, and the channel has continued to tackle various Pokémon games over the past year. It's now celebrating the one year anniversary of its début by returning to Red, however, with the new run kicking off at 1pm Pacific / 4pm Eastern / 9pm UK / 10pm CET today. It'll be using a ROM of the game - which is a necessity - that's been tweaked so that it'll be possible to catch all 151 'mon, while the control system's been adjusted to hopefully make that an attainable goal.

The channel's hype levels are certainly picking up, and at the time of writing - before the run started - there are a good few thousand people watching, with the chat bar going all sorts of crazy.

You can watch it all kick off below or, if you want to participate, head on over to the channel's page.

Thanks to Bryan for the heads up.

[source twitch.tv]