Streamer beats Celeste ‘driving’ through it with steering wheel

The tough-as-nails platformer, Celeste is hard enough to play with a regular controller. The Mario-like sidescroller is a veritable frenzy of challenges — from boss fights that require dodging a barrage of lasers to levels with walls and floors lined with spikes, it’s known for being difficult to beat. And on Jan. 7, streamer MissedAWP beat the entirety of the game using a steering wheel and a gear shift.

The impressive run only took around three days to plan and finish. In the end, it took her roughly 2 hours and 14 minutes to beat the game, and she died 499 times during the run. Before her attempt to do this, the streamer would regularly speedrun the game on her Twitch channel. MissedAWP told Polygon via Twitter that she was inspired to undertake the difficult run because she thought it would be “funny to do.” She completed the run on the Windows PC version of the game and did “any%” which means she could break or glitch the game.

To do it, MissedAWP used a steering wheel and six-speed shifter. She used the wheel to control Madeline’s movements from left to right and used the back shift paddles for jumping and dashing. She put the dash on the left shift so she could still dash while shifting up and down. (Her six-speed shifter can be moved to the left and right, in addition to up and down.) “This meant you could do a lot while using both hands,” she said. You can view the stream below on her Twitch channel.

She told Polygon that the hardest section to compete was the feather section — which allows Madeline to sort of float through the air, giving players the ability to move her more freely in eight directions. “This is really cool when you’re doing it on a joystick, not when you’re panicking and screaming trying to do it with one hand on the wheel, and one hand on the shifter.”

When asked how it felt to pull off the run, she told Polygon, “I felt so proud. It’s wild to be able to say, ‘Hey, I’m that girl that beat Celeste on a steering wheel!’ But here we are!”