The twice-a-year video game speedrunning and fundraising live event Games Done Quick has been a source of amazement and joy for years, but we're still saying "that's never happened before" even now, more than a decade after the first event.
Case in point: Awesome Games Done Quick 2024, which is streaming live 24 hours a day this week on Twitch, saw the very first speedrun performed by a dog.
A Shiba Inu named Peanut Butter (shortened to PB, also a speedrunner term for "personal best" finish time) completed a 30-minute speedrun of the 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) game Gyromite.
Gyromite was originally bundled with the nostalgic but failed ROB (Robotic Operating Buddy) accessory for the NES. It's a platformer of sorts, but not a conventional fast-paced one. Rather, it's a comparatively slow-moving game where you make inputs to raise and lower pipes to allow a character to pass through the level safely.
In the speedrun, PB took over for the robot in a category called B Game. PB didn't set a world record or a personal best (most GDQ runners don't at the event), as there were a couple minor mistakes, but he still finished the game under its estimate by dutifully sitting, pressing buttons, and holding down those buttons at the right moments at owner JSR_'s prompts. JSR_ also prompted PB to periodically bark "hello" to the stream's tens of thousands of viewers. PB received numerous treats throughout the run, including bits of cheese and ham.