\n<\/p>\n
Though Awesome Games Done Quick<\/a> will go on for the rest of the week, the charity speedrunning event may have already peaked with a run performed by Peanut Butter… a Shiba Inu. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Using a custom-made controller and spurred by commands and treats, Peanut Butter button-pressed his way into our hearts and the speedrunning history books with his run of Gyromite <\/em>in the first-ever speedrun done by a dog. Gyromite<\/em> is a game where the player guides a sleepwalking scientist through his lab by pressing buttons to raise or lower colored pillars in the scientist\u2019s way. To successfully complete a level, players must not get squished by releasing a pillar too soon and avoid monsters called \u201csmicks\u201d that can kill the player in one hit.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n For the run, Peanut Butter pressed either a red, yellow, or blue button pad to control the pillars, rewarded with treats of ham, kibble, and cheese. JSR, Peanut Butter\u2019s human and himself a speedrunner<\/a>, said that he\u2019d been working with Peanut Butter for more than a year, teaching him the commands as well as training him to have the patience and attention required to complete the run. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n For the first half of the run, Peanut Butter was on world record pace, despite some human error hiccups where JSR mistakenly gave Peanut Butter (also known as PB, which, in speedrunning parlance, means \u201cpersonal best\u201d) the wrong commands. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the chaotic environment of live speedrunning, runners often can\u2019t account for when a game\u2019s randomness (known colloquially as RNG, or \u201crandom number generator\u201d) with enemy spawns, pathing, or attack patterns will throw them a curveball. This happens so often at GDQ events that the phrase \u201cThat\u2019s never happened before\u201d has become a meme signifying all the little ways a run can go sour. Though PB was indeed on world record pace, his run was thwarted at the last second by an enemy smick waiting for him at the finish line, prompting JSR to say the old phrase, \u201cThat\u2019s never happened before.\u201d PB\u2019s lost WR (world record) didn\u2019t matter to his 70,000 viewers on Twitch, who cheered him on for a successful run anyway.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n With four more days left in the weeklong marathon, there\u2019s still a lot more to look forward to. There\u2019s a Hades<\/em> run later today. On Friday, there\u2019s a relay race of The Legend of Zelda: Majora\u2019s Mask<\/em>, and of course, I\u2019m looking forward to the Baldur\u2019s Gate 3<\/em> run late on Saturday. Part of the fun of GDQ is just running the marathon in the background and looking up at odd hours of the day to see people with alien sunglasses running an obscure platformer from the Sega 32X. I encourage viewers to check out the schedule<\/a> and go beyond the big-name games to watch runs of games you\u2019ve never heard of before. That\u2019s where the hidden gems are<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n