The mathematical concept of Pi (which you may also recognize as π rounded to 3.14) has been present in Pokémon Sapphire since November 2021, and after all these years it still hasn't managed to escape the starter town.
We first wrote about Pi Plays Pokemon Sapphire back in 2023, and you can get a full breakdown of the idea in that article. But in short, each button on the Game Boy Advance is assigned a numerical value from 0 to 9, and every second, you press one of the buttons according to the next digit in Pi. In the most recent stream, we hit a total of 83,685,085 digits.
In all that time, Pi has managed to escape the starting area of Littleroot Town several times, but the gravitational pull of mathematics has brought him back to that starting village again and again. He hasn’t found the first Gym yet, but he’s wandered around the tall grass of the starting routes enough to level up with his starter Pokémon: a Sceptile that’s now reached level 88.
Pi achieved a major victory in June, as it finally managed to escape Littleroot Town long enough to reach the first rival battle. This fight normally takes place around 20 minutes into the game. A rough estimate suggests that it took Pi over 20,000 hours to get this far. The then-level 83 Sceptile needed exactly one attack to completely destroy the level 5 Torchic on the other side, but victory only came after around 12 minutes of fumbling through menus.
Pi may one day manage to beat Pokémon Sapphire, but at this point I'm not sure I'll be around to see it. In the meantime, you can follow the entire saga on Twitch and YouTube.
Check out our guide on the The best Pokémon games If you need help deciding what to do with your next weird Twitch bot.