A dude has just beaten the classic 1998 Zelda game (and best of the series, imo) Ocarina of Time while blindfolded. *Actually* blindfolded.
Like, he wore a pillowcase over his head:
And he managed to complete a game where literally one of the first things you have to do is walk straight across these tiny ass bridges:
It took gamer Runnerguy2489…
4 days
7 hours
10 minutes
and 8 seconds
…of gameplay to save Hyrule from Ganondorf, rescue Princess Zelda, and 100% complete the game. No song not learned, no Gold Skulltulla not collected.
“I’m like, shaking,” he says when he FINALLY defeats Ganondorf in the ruins of Hyrule Castle (with one and three-quarter hearts left, we might add). “I’m shaking. Holy shit. That was incredible. Oh my gosh. What a battle.”
Runnerguy2489 is no stranger to Ocarina of Time – it’s pretty much the only game he plays – but doing the whole thing blindfolded is a whole other level.
“You never know what might just become an impossible task blindfolded,” he said. “There were times when I thought I wasn’t going to get 100%.”
“You think you know a game really well but you don’t, man, there’s so many little things that pop up that you’re just not anticipating, because you take it for granted. You take your eyesight for granted. Being able to see is something we do take for granted.”
He managed to pull off this ridiculous tasks by working with fellow gamer genuinescorruption, who has been blind since birth. Back in 2008, Genuine S Corruption (as we’re writing it now) asked for Runner Guy’s (ditto) help in beating the game.
“We wrote steps together,” says Runner Guy. “We’d have long Skype conversations together, back and forth, like ‘Okay, I tried this, it didn’t work, oh I’ll change it here, try this now’. Then we’d move on to the next room. It was an on-and-off process from like 2007 to 2009, and he ended up beating the game in 2009, completely through. It wasn’t 100%, but he beat the game.”
At this point Runner Guy wanted to try it himself, and after he beat the game blindfolded in 2013 but not with 100%, wanted to see if it could be done. “It was something I wasn’t even sure was possible.”
“What I really like about this is that every room, every little thing becomes a big deal. Just getting through one room in a temple, or just getting one Gold Skulltula can become just this huge triumph. Or this crushingly frustrating part of the thing that you didn’t even think was going to take that long, and that’s what makes it so much fun.”
Runner Guy (real name: Drew / real job: civil engineer) kept meticulous stats on his entire run, including the NINE HUNDRED AND FORTY SEVEN attempts it took him to complete the Shooting Gallery minigame. You can check it all out here.
To be honest with you, we’re struggling to think of anything we’ve ever done that’s a bigger accomplishment. Graduating uni? Yeah, okay, but there was no subject on SHOOTING TARGETS WHILE ON HORSEBACK AND BLINDFOLDED, now was there.
