He built this LEGO rig that would both hold his 360 controller and press the required buttons, at a rate of 34 times a minute. This means he was able to “earn” the achievement in around an hour.
Sure, it’s cheating, technically, but the word cheating makes it sound like he broke the game. This thing isn’t just cool, it probably took longer to build than it would have taken to press the buttons manually, making it totally OK in my books.
V&A Steamworks’ photostream [Flickr]
Gears of War Lego Hack [MAKE]
You can contact Luke Plunkett, the author of this post, at plunkett@kotaku.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
Maniacal
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 5:50 PMthere is clearly a piece of paper sitting there saying ’67 times per minute’in the very first picture. as I can’t watch the video at the moment (says try back later…grrrr) is there something you guys at kotaku are missing?
or am I?
PiMan
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 6:25 PMWithout watching the video or understanding the achievement, I’m going to guess that it is 67 button presses per minute and two buttons are required to be pressed (perhaps one after the other).
Half 67 is 33.5, which has been rounded to 34.
Wanderer
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 8:08 PMDid you watch the video? He’s playing the piano about once per second. You can hear the piano sound and see it on the screen.
To get more detailed, I counted 25 piano plays in approx 22 seconds. That calcs out to around 68 piano plays per minute. The given 67 piano plays/min figure is likely correct.
The lego button pushing device is operating at around two times that speed, ie. 2 button presses per piano play. So, we’re looking at about 130-140 presses per second. I didn’t count too closely and the video of the button pushing device is fairly short length to get a proper gauge on it anyway.
It’s not entirely fair to blame the “rate of 34 times a minute” on Kotaku, however. They got that figure from the sourced Make article.
Chazz
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 8:41 PM2000/67 = 29.85
The guy said it took an hour. Therefore even though it was pressing it 67 times a minute, only half were registered by the game which is where I think that “34″ came from. So the wording, although not the best way of saying it, is technically correct.
(I can’t believe I defended a KotakuUS article…I feel dirty)
chris
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 12:59 PMYou dirty, filthy man, wipe yourself of that filth at once… i can feel it coming through my tv.. yuk
trollface
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 5:56 PMif the cheating is not software related…it’s not cheating:)
DAN!
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 5:58 PMThe only thing he’s cheating is himself by playing on a CRT.
Yucky.
Shepard
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 6:06 PMstrapping a pokewalker to a washing machine works too, if shakey enough
Lucid
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 6:57 PMReminds me of a guy who couldn’t beat that dang canary in Banjoy Tooie where you just mash the A button to make your minecart or whatever go.
He took apart the N64 controller and made a circut that turns on and off several times a second and wired it up to the A button.
Neo-Kaiser
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 7:20 PMSad thing is, you’re not supposed to mash the A button, not at first. The canary flies at a set pace above you based on how fast you’re pressing the button. So you’re supposed to press the A button slowly, until the very end where you mash it and the A.I. hasn’t had enough time to catch up.
Kentucky
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 9:03 PMWow! I never knew this. Thanks.
JK
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 11:03 PMThanks x2
Dr Z
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 7:31 PMUmmmm thats not an achivement thats got something to do with one of the medals
toasey
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 7:49 PMit wouldve probably taken him more time to build and program the lego contraption then push the button 67 times
Chazz
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 8:37 PM67 times a minute for a total of 2000 activations of the piano, however if it took an hour as stated then only half those presses were registered.
Either way, it would’ve only taken him 20 or so minutes to build.
Edward
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 11:36 PMbut he also used his brain, which mashing button(s) doesn’t really.
N0NEoftheAB0VE
Tuesday, October 25, 2011 at 10:33 PMY’know Gears of War has some frakking pointless acheivements.
John
Wednesday, October 26, 2011 at 12:22 AMI’m just going to plug in my arcade stick and use the turbo button