A speedrunning dog named Peanut Butter just beat an obscure 1985 NES game live for charity, is the day's goodest boy

In a decade of tuning into Awesome Games Done Quick, I've seen runners speed through gaming history while blindfolded, with hands tied behind their backs, and even two runners sharing a single controller, but I've never seen what happened today at AGDQ 2024: a dog and his owner teamed up to speedrun an NES classic live, and they smashed it.

The dog is an adorable Shiba Inu named Peanut Butter, and his owner is speedrunner JSR. Together, the pair ran Gyromite (in Game B mode), a 1985 Nintendo platformer that launched with the NES, using a custom-made dog-friendly controller with large colored buttons. Amazingly, Peanut Butter got it done in 26 minutes and 24 seconds, with only a single game over and minimal breaks for belly scratches.

While JSR guided Peanut Butter with hand signals, credit really does belong to his very good boy for pressing the right buttons exactly when needed. PB's controller sports big red and blue buttons that correspond to the pipes they open in Gyromite to guide the sleepwalking scientist through levels. Open the wrong pipe or release a button too early and the scientist gets squished. Thankfully, Peanut Butter is an experienced professional and only gave up a few deaths over almost half an hour. JSR says Peanut Butter's skills are the result of «a year of training, every single day» to press and hold buttons with accuracy.

When you see it in action, it's clear why JSR chose Gyromite for the run: the simplistic platformer was originally designed to be controlled by the NES add-on R.O.B. The Robot, a motorized robo companion who could slowly press A or B on his own. Since the scientist in Gyromite moves right automatically, all ROB (or Peanut Butter) has to do is make sure the correct pipes are open as he approaches. Not that it can't get tricky. A few levels required that Peanut Butter press a yellow button on his controller to open both pipes at once. No problem for a good boy, except the yellow button was a smaller target and JSR indicated