He presses
The dog shows the best players how to gamble. The amazing success story of peanut butter is certainly one of the highlights of the year of video games.
Hamburg – Streamers and eSports athletes compete for every second in the video game’s fast-paced sprint. But the star of the show is a cute dog: Peanut Butter Shiba Inu. His owner reveals that learning to play wasn’t the hardest part, it was fighting tennis balls.
Dog wins €30,000 in video game competition – the story behind it
Very nice and very successful: Peanut Butter is not only a cute dog, but also a talented gamer. His master, speedrunner JSR_, trained him to play old Super Nintendo classics like Gyromite. Peanut Butter even holds the world record for the “Assistance Dog” category with a time of 25 minutes and 30 seconds. The dog earned a staggering $33,000 (around €30,000) at a charity event.
Owner JSR confirmed that the dog was never forced to train: “If he doesn't want to, I don't want to force him.“This is what peanut butter looks like in an old baseball game at a speedrunning competition:
Animal Gamer: “The hardest thing is not teaching a dog to play video games.”
This is how a dog becomes a player: Training Peanut Butter wasn’t easy, as his owner JSR recalled in an interview with Aftermath magazine. It took JSR just one day to teach his animal friend to press the correct button on the homemade controller. However, it took a full nine months of intensive training for Peanut Butter to stay focused and not get distracted by tennis balls flying around the room:
The hardest part was getting him to sit and focus his attention on me for 20 to 30 minutes at a time.
The recipe for success was patience and lots of rewards. The streamer shared that he adopted Peanut Butter during the 2020 lockdown and the two have since become best friends. They say their morning workout session usually lasts about 5 to 10 minutes; on command, Peanut Butter has learned to hold down the button and release it at the right moment, with JSR merely acting as the command giver. Perfect timing is especially important for sprinting, where every second counts.
What are speed rounds?
Speedruns are attempts to play video games as quickly as possible. Rather than playing in a relaxed manner, special techniques or gameplay bugs are often exploited. Players compete for the best times and share their runs in online communities or at events such as AGDQ (Awesome Games Done Quick).
Peanut Butter is now a star on the speedway scene. Arguably the best player of all time, he has already impressed in several major events.
If this is the biggest contribution I can make to society, my dog and I are having some lazy mornings. […] Spending time pressing buttons for candy and raising over $33,000 in donations made it all worth it.
In the future, other video game classics like Mike Tyson's Punch Out will be trained to be fast-running, if Peanut Butter wants to. However, other streamers get bitten by dogs because they overdo it.
“Unapologetic analyst. Infuriatingly humble coffee evangelist. Gamer. Unable to type with boxing gloves on. Student. Entrepreneur.”
More Stories
The Games Without Borders Awards were presented at gamescom 2024 – and Xbox was the big winner
Disney Epic Mickey: Rebrushed: Release date for the highly anticipated remake on Nintendo Switch
Yakuza Kiwami: The Prequel to the Famous Saga Coming Soon to Nintendo Switch – Trailer