When I was a kid, our big hack for winning at Konami's Track & Field was to lay a butter knife across the two buttons and slap the middle of the knife. If only I'd thought to bring Mom's, uh, personal massager to the arcade.
This video is by RocketNews24 of Japan and it is outstanding. Someone on their team got the bright idea to take a "neck massager," — commonly called a Hitachi Wand — and use it on its highest settings to tap the buttons on the Famicom controller. The result is four world records shattered by something that sounds like a chainsaw.
And I'm not making that up, either. The wand shows how Track & Field — called Hyper Olympic in Japan — seems almost unlimited in its ability to recognize button tapping input (this video shows they're able to hit the Famicom's buttons an astounding 24 times per second).
Here are the times and distances set in the video (Hyper Olympic on Famicom had only four events) versus the real-life world records of 1983 (the game's release date) and present-day.
100-meter dash:
Current world record: Usain Bolt, 9.572 seconds (2009)
World record in 1983: Calvin Smith, 9.93 (1983)
Vibrator: 8.55 (-1.02 seconds)Long jump:
Current world record: Mike Powell, 8.95 meters (1991)
World record in 1983: Bob Beamon, 8.90 meters (1968)
Vibrator: 9.65 meters. (+0.70 meters)
110m hurdles:
Current world record: Aries Merritt (12.80) (2012)
World record in 1983: Renaldo Nehemiah, 12.93 seconds (1981)
Vibrator: 10.48 seconds. (-2.32 seconds)Javelin:
Current world record: Jan Železný 98.48 meters (1996)
World record in 1983: Tom Petranoff 99.72 meters (1983)
Vibrator: 117.44 meters (+18.96 meters)
* The IAAF outlawed javelins with serrated tails in 1991, reverting the record to the 90.98 set by Steve Backley in 1990.
But wait, there's more. Not content to destroy the 100 meter record by a full second, these guys hook up a dildo to an electric jigsaw (1:40 of the above video), crushing the world record in a time of 7.90 seconds with a sex toy that looks like this thing from The Naked Gun.
Then RocketNews24 faces off the vibrator user with a human opponent, who appears to be quite skilled, in a legitimate button contest. His opponent, Sato, snips the wire in 8.74 - damned impressive in its own right. The other guy whips out the vibrator and just obliterates him, 8.19 to 9.40.
It's barely noon and this is the best video I will watch all day. Japan's ability to make incredibly entertaining videos, especially when they're applied to Olympic events, knows no limit.