It’s the beginning of February 2020, and most of us who made “exercising” or “losing weight” as our New Year’s resolution (like any other year lah) probably had already slowed down on working out. Let’s be real, we love food and lounging indoors, and some of us enjoy hiding in our caves playing video games.
An American YouTuber, Allen Pan, found a way to combat this issue for video game geeks.
He had a lightbulb moment when he was figuring out how gamers can stick to their New Year’s resolution to exercise, so he brought a dead treadmill home to work with the wiring by connecting the machine to his third-party PS4 controller.
Source: allen pan’s youtube
He chose the game Death Stranding because the game character basically walks/runs for most of the gameplay, so it would totally make sense to “walk in real life to walk in the game”.
Source: allen pan’s youtube
In Allen’s YouTube video, he successfully connected his PS4 controller to the treadmill, and he walked “harder” to make the treadmill belt start rolling. So, in order to move the treadmill belt, he strapped an elastic band to himself to generate higher tension. His genius yet hilarious idea only works with the character’s “walk” function, so he still had to use his PS4 controller for other functions like balancing.
Here’s a snippet of the trial that Allen uploaded onto his Twitter account (@AnyTechnology):
As you can see in the video, he was wearing an empty backpack, and a yellow elastic band was tied to him. After only a brief moment of gameplay with his treadmill, the electrical engineering graduate was already sweating bullets and panting!
Source: allen pan’s youtube
He quickly grabbed a few of his friends to try out his innovation, and although not everyone enjoyed the suffering, this “controller” worked out pretty well for them.
Netizens on Twitter were thrilled to see an action game becoming a reality, and they’re hopeful about the future of gaming, seeing how this is actually a win-win situation for gamers.
Source: twitter @anytechnology
We love how Allen chose to mimic the gameplay (without the tumbling) and encourages gamers to maintain their physical activity WHILE doing their favourite thing! Hopefully, his brilliant idea can be developed into a VR setup. some day!
Also read: Meet Pinda Dorji, The Engineer Turned Pro Gamer That Has Captured The Hearts of Māsian Gamers
