Pokemon streamer builds a controller so bad that it takes them a full 80 minutes to walk to FireRed’s first city

We pretty much perfected the video game controller when the DualShock launched back in 1997; pretty much every controller since has been some adaptation of that layout (or whatever weird thing Nintendo was up to). And it’s maybe because of that fact that we see so many people play through games with weird, unintended control methods. There’s the streamer who is better at Elden Ring with a DDR dance pad than I am with any controller, or the streamer who beat Elden Ring using a boxing dummy (souls games are a breeding ground for this stuff).

Arguably the worst way to play a game is via a Twitch chat comments, which was popularized by Twitch Plays Pokemon. But now another streamer has found what is possibly an even worse way to play Pokemon, through the power of pachinko (or as scholars call them, the 2p machines at any dodgy arcade).

Streamer UWOSLAB went live earlier this week and built a controller on stream where dropping tokens into specific holes will input one of the GBA buttons. The problem is there are a ton of pins in the way, so where you want it to land isn’t always where it will go. After the tipping point machine was made, they booted up Pokemon Fire Red to test their creation out.

From there they took the journey every young Pokemon master has to take: getting your starter from Professor Oak, venturing out of Pallet Town, and making the journey to Viridian City. And after a metric ton of tokens were thrown through the machine and they finally reached it, they opened up the save menu, which held the news that it had taken them one hour and 20 minutes of real time to make it there.

For comparison’s sake, I decided to boot up Pokemon Fire Red to see how long it would take me. I forgot how the beginning of the game went and made a couple of mistakes, but after a long and grueling journey, I made it to Viridian City. I opened up that save screen and looked in awe as it took me a grand total of six minutes, which definitely puts things into perspective.

Speaking of Pokemon, it was recently announced that the cutesy stop-motion series Pokemon Concierge’s second season is launching in September of this year.