The mathematical constant of Pi is playing Pokémon on Twitch—after 25,000 hours it's curbstomped two children and power-levelled its starter, but is yet to escape the first town

It's all gotten out of hand. They've got concepts playing games now. Specifically, the venerable genre of Twitch Plays—those times when a swarming Twitch chat competes for control over games like Pokémon, and Dark Souls—has evolved to the point that Pi is currently playing Pokémon Sapphire. Actually, it's been playing it for three years (via GamesRadar).

That's Pi as in the mathematical constant. The one you probably know as (at least) 3.14 but which goes on, well, forever if you let it. The way it works is this: Every digit between 0 and 9 has been assigned to a button on the Game Boy Advance (some buttons have two digits assigned). The computer then simply proceeds through digits of Pi sequentially and makes the corresponding input. For example: The first three digits—3.14—would correspond to a push of B, then A, then the left D-Pad. 

At time of writing, the game had just passed its 86,452,000th digit of Pi. That's over 25,000 hours of game time since the experiment began on October 16, 2021.

Want to guess where all that effort has gotten it? If you chose 'not even out of the starting town' then my friend, you're half-right. Pi—or Seth, as its character in the game is called—has made it out of Littleroot Town a few times. Alas, the fickle finger of maths seems to have since led Pi crawling all the way back to Littleroot, losing all that progress it had made in the course of several thousand hours. 

Still, it has accomplished some things. It even recently managed to absolutely curbstomp rival trainer May after finally reaching its first battle with her last, uh, May. The reason? All that meandering has power levelled Pi's starting Treecko to a level 88 Sceptile. May's Torchic got turned to thin paste once the right digits got put in for Sceptile to actually make an attack.

In fact, per the channel's chatbot, the farthest Pi has made it is to Petalburg forest, where it annihilated Bug Catcher Lyle's sextet of level 3 Wurmples.

I'm pretty sure it has to beat the game some day, though, although whether or not that's before the last star in the universe goes out is an open question. Theoretically, you can find every possible sequence of numbers in Pi, including several (well, infinite, I think) that would take our hardy hero all the way through the Elite Four. We just have to find them, and maybe get out of Littleroot Town once and for all.

TOPICS
Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

Read more
A pack of real life Balatro cards.
Turns out that Balatro, like Tetris before it, can only be 'finished' by scoring so high it crashes the game
The cover art for Majora's Mask showing Link and various other characters from the game.
I'm enraptured by this Zelda maniac who worked out there are 1 quadrillion 83 trillion 414 billion and 90 million possible permutations for a dog race in Majora's Mask
Civilization 7 leader image
'This task is both more wonderful and dreadful than you could imagine': After 638 days of drawing badly until Civ 7 is released, one dedicated YouTuber can finally put their skills to rest
Pint, a lalafellin mage, looks towards the sunset sky and closes his eyes in gracious defeat in Final Fantasy 14.
FF14 streamer yields to the MMO's bounciest catgirl, after inspiring them to beat his new speedrunning record 3 times before he could finish making a video about it
A Path of Exile 2 sorceress casting flaming skulls in a hellish landscape
Path of Exile 2 numberlord spends 16 straight days killing rare monsters to prove that a stat that makes loot better makes better loot
Hands pushing poker chips on a table
Winning $2.6 billion in this poker videogame has completely ruined fake poker for me
Latest in RPG
Alligator skull with glowing eyes on human body and cords coming out sitting at piano with "The Norwood Etudes" ready to play
My new most anticipated RPG let me be a kleptomaniac gourmand set loose in a noir city on a quest to make 'the perfect sandwich'
Rise of the Ronin review
Rise of the Ronin review
Wyrdsong concept art
Wyrdsong, the RPG from ex-Bethesda talent, isn't dead—but it's no longer an open world: 'We're down to a skeleton crew'
A lolporrit squeals in excitement while being driven in a moon buggie in Final Fantasy 14: Dawntrail, patch 7.2.
Final Fantasy 14 patch 7.2's trailer has me finally hyped to get stuck back in—and to go to the moon and pilot some mechs, because why not
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 barbers change hairstyle - Henry sitting on a horse wearing armour.
How to find a barber and change hairstyle in Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2
Key art of the videogame Lunacid, showing a pale, long haired knight in purple armor contemplating a purple, flaming sword surrounded by the different phases of the moon.
One of my favorite indie RPGs is getting a follow-up made with FromSoftware's 25-year-old Super Mario Maker for first person dungeon crawlers
Latest in News
A woman with an arcane slingshot uses it to light a distant fire
Deconstructeam's next game is about training to shoot a single fireball at an impossible target
assassin's creed shadow naoe
We asked two parkour athletes to rate the realism of Assassin's Creed's acrobatics, and a surprising 'crime against parkour' might actually be one of the most realistic things they saw
Aooster's G-Flip 370 mini PC
This palm-sized PC has removably memory, a flip up screen, and a Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 processor
Mechs fight on the outside of a spaceship
MechWarrior 5: Clans is getting DLC with playable Elementals and a fight on the outside of a spaceship
Aloy - Horizon
'I feel worried about this art form:' Unsurprisingly, the real Aloy from Horizon isn't a fan of AI Aloy
Crying laughing emoji with disturbing realistic elements for REPO
REPO's first update will add a new map and a 'duck bucket' so we can finally give that pesky quacker a time out