Eleven years ago, the gaming community went crazy over the channel TwitchPlaysPokemon, where thousands of people tried to beat Pokemon Red together. The hysteria inspired several YouTube videos retelling the story, as well as plenty of fan art. Also, how could we forget about the incredible 16 days of bringing together the community, the haters, and the long-time fans?
Now, a new Twitch channel called ClaudePlaysPokemon uses Claude’s capabilities to see if the AI can become a true Pokemon Master.
According to the developer, “This is an experiment where a large language model (LLM) named Claude plays through the classic Game Boy game Pokémon Red entirely on its own. Unlike traditional game bots that follow predetermined rules, Claude can see what’s happening, understand the game state, and make decisions, similar to how a human player would.”
It’s been a couple of days since Claude AI started playing Pokemon Red. However, it’s having a hard time. For example, sometimes the AI can’t identify a door, and once, when he went to face Brock in the Pewter Gym, he thought the tips guy was actually Brock. Still, it’s interesting to see how the AI reasoned during battles.
The developer explains how Claude works: He can control the game interface by pressing virtual buttons, analyzing what’s going on on the screen, dynamically taking notes about the game world, and storing information about locations, Pokemon, and other game mechanics. It even has a memory reader, so it doesn’t get confused if it misinterprets the screen.
It’s still unclear how long Claude will take to get better at playing Pokemon. As I’m writing this story, there are almost 2,000 people following Claude’s journey through Kanto, and it’s been a blast reading all the comments.
You can watch the stream here. BGR will report back if Claude has what it takes to become a Pokemon Master.
