The owner of the speedrunning Shiba Inu, Peanut Butter, has revealed the secret behind the good boy's success.
In a recent interview with IGN, Peanut Butter's owner JSR - who streams his own speedruns on Twitch alongside the canine - unveiled the technique he and his pet use to achieve the best times in games like Dr. Mario.
JSR explained that when he first started training Peanut Butter, he had to practice with his canine pal daily for a year to press the correct buttons on command on a custom controller. Though Peanut Butter was eventually able to pick up on these moves, JSR had to use his food as a bribe to keep the Shiba's attention. String cheese was a particular favorite for this very good boy.
JSR has also been teaching Peanut Butter to play Wild Gunman, as well as Excitebike and Dr. Mario. The streamer explained that he's training the Shiba Inu to play alongside himself for these particular titles with a single controller.
“The big restriction with him – don't tell nobody, it's a secret – but he's not really watching the game,” JSR said. “He's reacting to my commands. All of what he inputs has to be his reaction to my commands, plus my reaction. So games like Mario Bros. or other types of genres like that don't really work, because then it's a really complicated, convoluted arrangement for us to do the inputs. And usually by then we've already died.
"But…we're looking for ideas, and so far we're still kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel, but there's going to be some other games. This will not be the only time he makes his appearance. We definitely plan on him being a staple of GDQ going forward."
Last October, it was announced that Peanut Butter would be attempting a run of 1985 puzzle game Gyromite for the Nintendo Entertainment System at Awesome Games Done Quick's upcoming AGDQ 2024 event on January 18, 2024.
At the time, there was no official speedrunning category for canines, but JSR explained that a new "dog assistance" category was listed later on and Peanut Butter is officially competing in the Gyromite category: “Game B - Dog Assistance - NES."
Be sure to check out our list of every upcoming game of 2024 for more, as well as our list of the best Nintendo Switch games.
