The world of speedrunning is fascinating. Beating a game as fast as humanly possible leads to very interesting scenarios, most of them not even planned by their developers. And while it may seem like something forbidden for most players, that’s not true. The speedrunning community is inclusive, based on mutual help and sharing information. Including for its non-human members.
This was demonstrated on January 16th during Awesome Games Done Quick. This is a biannual celebration where speedruns are held for twenty-four hours a day and donations are accepted for a charitable cause. In the case of this edition, it was to fight against cancer. And the peculiar thing is that one of the speedrunners we could see that day was named Peanut Butter and it was not a human being, but a cute dog.
With an adapted and assisted controller by its owner, who gave it commands to help it overcome the game, Peanut Butter managed to complete the B Game mode of Gyromite, a classic NES game, live, in just 26 minutes and twenty-four seconds. Although it achieved the world record for the fastest dog to complete the game, it is far from the record of the fastest human, which is 24 minutes and thirty-nine seconds. This does not diminish Peanut Butter’s achievement, who, to begin with, doesn’t even have thumbs.
The owner of Peanut Butter, JSR, has clarified that this has taken years of training. Stating that Peanut Butter has been trained since he was a puppy, thanks to demonstrating greater intelligence than the average dog, he has achieved a feat that seemed impossible for a dog. All while remaining adorable, we add.
Although Peanut Butter has fallen far from the world record, we hope to see more speedruns from him. Watching him beat the game is fascinating and a demonstration that, for a speedrun, you don’t need to be the best or necessarily be human: you just need the will to practice and do your best. If a cute little dog can remind us of that, it’s even better than if it’s reminded by another human being.
