Before a pair of streamers identified as JSR and PB took the stage at this past weekend's Summer Games Done Quick in Minneapolis, organizers announced that they would restrict access to the arena after the run began to ensure the "most comfortable environment for PB." They took such a measure because PB, short for "Peanut Butter," is a dog.
There's nothing in the rules that says a dog can't be a speedrunner. Peanut Butter set a new mark for "win a game" on Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball, playing as the Seattle Mariners and defeating the Minnesota Twins in extra innings. The dapper Shiba Inu is an experienced gamer, first hopping on the sticks last July on his third birthday to play the NES platformer Gyromite on a controller custom-built for him by his owner, the speedrunning streamer JSR. PB's successful completion of Gyromite in 25 minutes and 29 seconds set the table for his competitive debut at this past January's Awesome Games Done Quick, where JSR streamed him beating the game, albeit in a slightly slower time of 26:24.
PB has done most of his gaming on a modified controller with the A and B buttons mapped out onto big pads. JSR has trained PB to press those buttons at specific times by tempting him with a bit of food motivation. During his run at SGDQ, JSR had to get PB to press the swing button at just the right moment, which took some trial and error. He struck out a ton and fell behind early, and though he finished eight minutes off his previous record, he gave the crowd a perfect moment when he smacked a walk-off dinger in the 12th inning, which can be found at the 32-minute mark in the video below:
"This took years of training," JSR wrote in the description of a YouTube video from PB's birthday last year. "I wanted to train him to do something special, when I realized as a puppy that he was much smarter than most other dogs I've seen. Since I'm a speedrunner (and PB was literally named after, you know, getting a [personal best] in a speedrun) it only made sense to me." Peanut Butter is a pristine sweetie and a serious thinker; for him, the question "Who's a good dog?" is purely rhetorical. The next step in PB's gamer journey is clear: Let this pooch play Elden Ring.
