SGDQ 2024’s best run came courtesy of Peanut Butter, the good boy who spent nine months in training to become a world-class speedrunner

Peanut Butter, the now-famous speedrunning dog and certified good boy, went through nine months of vigorous training to become the world-class player he is today.

For the uninitiated, Peanut Butter is the awfully cute shiba inu that went viral last year thanks to a star turn at charity speedrunning event Awesome Games Done Quick, where he beat the SNES platformer Gyromite from 160 years ago (doggy years) in record time. I say record time because Peanut Butter is the only champ to have even attempted a dog-assisted run of the game. 

Peanut Butter didn’t become a miracle dog through sheer luck, though. “Training him to press the button was literally day one,” Peanut Butter’s owner and content creator JSR said in an interview with Aftermath. “Day one, he nailed it,” but training Peanut Butter to avoid distractions took daily training for nine whole months.

“The hard part’s not only getting [dogs] to hold it down long enough for you to do what you need to do in the game, but also for them to release the button and not go wander off and grab a tennis ball,” JSR continued. “That was probably the hardest thing: getting him to be able to sit and keep his attention on me for 20-30 minutes at a time. Now he’s capable of holding [the button] for 30 seconds before he finally gives up. He doesn’t wander off. I’ve had him on stream playing games for up to an hour.”

The training paid off at Summer Games Done Quick 2024 this past week as Peanut Butter finished a “win a game” speedrun of Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball with “an extra innings walk-off 2-run home run on the first pitch,” according to the tweet above. I don’t understand a thing about baseball lingo but I assume that means something to someone reading.