The 5 Most Impressive Ways To Beat A Video Game

Sometimes just beating a game doesn't cut it. And sometimes just beating a game faster than anybody else doesn't cut it either. Sometimes, gamers make their own rules and impose challenges on themselves in order to fully prove their skill. 

Popularized recently with players challenging the Dark Souls series of games with a wide variety of self-imposed rules and restrictions, the trend of gamers playing (and beating) video games in ways that the creators never imagined possible has hit the mainstream. So the least we can do is pay tribute to the creative, hard-working, and insanely skilled gamers who have beaten games in insanely difficult ways. 

With A Dance Pad

The trend of using dance pads to beat video games that are not called Dance Dance Revolution has been around for a while, but streamer and YouTuber Rudeism has taken it to a new level by attempting to beat Dark Souls 3 with the pad alone.

Adding to the difficulty here is that Rudeism has never played Dark Souls 3 (or any Dark Souls game) before, so this is a truly blind run. He is currently streaming his adventures over on his Twitch page, and he has already somehow taken down 3 bosses since he began in late May. It's been a trying process for Rudeism, having died over 30 times trying to take down the first boss, but at least he's getting his cardio in!

Blindfolded

Rudeism's run of Dark Souls 3 might be a "blind run", but this run of Super Mario World by speedrunner PangaeaPanga is literally a blind run--as in he's blindfolded the whole time he plays. 

The impressive thing about this run isn't simply that PangaeaPanga beats the game blindfolded, but he manages to do it in under 30 minutes. It's simply astonishing to watch him speed through the game relying only on his memorization skills and the sparse audio cues the game gives him. So let this be a lesson to you: if you think you're good at a video game, try it blindfolded and be prepared to be proven wrong.

With Donkey Konga Bongos

We travel back to the realm of Dark Souls for this impressive run using the best controller ever devised by man or beast: the Donkey Konga bongo controller.

The really interesting thing about using the bongo controller to beat a modern game is that it necessarily means you have to cut down your movement or attack options. You can see in the video-- gbbearzly really only has 6 buttons mapped to the bongos, while Dark Souls was designed for a controller that featured 13 buttons (and 2 joysticks). These kinds of runs value more prioritization and lateral thinking that one might think necessary at first blush. 

But at the end of the day, the appeal here is clear. It's always fun to watch someone beat a video game with bongos.

With Voice Commands

We've told you about YouTuber Slimecicle before, and now seems to be a great time to bring him up again. He is well-known for a series of videos where he frantically (and hilariously) attempts to play video games using voice recognition software. 

While he never truly "beats" any of these games (at least, not in the videos), the voice recognition software is so buggy and works so infrequently that whenever any progress is made, whenever any small victory is achieved, that single victory becomes pretty much the most impressive thing anybody has ever done in the history of video gaming-- especially in a fast-paced game like Counter-Strike. 

Without Pressing The A Button

For those of you who might not be aware, the A button is pretty important in most games. It's especially important in Mario games, because, well, it's the jump button and Mario is the jump man. 

That didn't stop Pannenkoek2012 from putting together a variety of runs on his YouTube channel where, through glitches, creativity, and pure player skill, he beats Mario 64 levels without pressing the A button. The great thing about his runs is that he explains what he is doing at every turn, allowing any gamer who might want to try a similar run to follow along.

Have you ever tried to beat a video game in a weird or unusual way? We'd love to hear about it in the comments!