Twitch streamer blows through Breath of the Wild with ocarina controller

Less than two weeks ago, Twitch streamer gv_mimi was struggling just to aim her weapon correctly to take down a Guardian in The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’s first shrine. Yesterday, she beat Thunderblight Ganon.

Using an ocarina controller, we should stipulate. And not the ThinkGeek one from 2017, either. She’s using a custom controller that converts the notes she plays into inputs for the game, with macros set up to accomplish some of the more complicated commands.

Yes, these modded controllers exist, and there’s software to map the notes to controls. Given the long history of using off-the-wall controllers to run fan-favorite games, I thought I would have found someone else who’d tried this sort of thing at least once since BOTW launched in 2017. As far as I can tell, gv_mimi is the first to take it on.

Probably with good reason; check out this clip of her first shrine. I gave up on piano lessons after less punishment than this!

With that frustration fresh in your mind, hum a few bars of this throwdown, which gv_mimi posted on Wednesday.

I can’t read music or identify notes, but I love that lilting pip-pip-pip-pip as gv_mimi lands a mighty combo. And then the fluttering sequence where she pulls out Magnesis to finish the job! Followed by the disbelief of actually doing said job: “We did it! Oh my gosh! We did it!”

Right now, gv_mimi is in the process of fighting a Lynel. There’s more tweeting and tooting in here than in Elon Musk’s bathroom. Tune in if you can, or catch her exploits later. She hopes to beat Breath of the Wild by the time Tears of the Kingdom launches on May 12.

Update (April 11): She just took down Calamity Ganon! Lest you think gv_mimi just breezes in and throws down, this condensed highlight reel from the stream shows there’s plenty of miss to go with the hits she lands.

But after persevering in the toughest of the two battles, all she’s got left is the epilogue fight with Dark Beast Ganon, and she’ll have finished this quest about a month before Tears of the Kingdom’s release.