Guitar Hero Controller Speedrunning - Soulcalibur II

If you've never heard the name Jervailin before, he's the guy who beat Halo 2 Legendary Most Skulls Deathless - one of the biggest achievements in the last few years. He inspired me to do something similar with games I love - the Gears of War series. When considering what kind of challenge I could try, I thought of no chainsaw, no shots, maybe pistol only? The game requires mandatory use of Hammer of Dawn, which makes some kind of challenge based around that impossible.

After failing to come up with something for one of my favorite franchises of all time. I thought what about another that I love with a passion - Soulcalibur. I joked around on stream that I thought how funny it would be to try playing with a Guitar Hero Controller so I did several attempts and my first submitted Arcade run I was glad being sub 1 min. Achieved January 9th, 2024.

If that wasn't enough I had the even crazier idea to do Weapon Master which is a collection of missions across ten chapters to beat. With differing objectives such as hot bomb, where you hit the enemy to attach a bomb but they can attach a bomb too if they hit you. Another with icy floor and having to do 20 hits. My hurdle was trying to get past the tutorial which requires you to do certain actions.

With a GH controller how it's done and what buttons are mapped is difficult. I tried several combinations and even looking up which one corresponds to which 360 controller buttons. Even then that didn't help and I guess my issue is Voldo's moveset. When I tried Nightmare was able to do all actions with ease. And so on January 10th I was able to beat Weapon Master with the GH controller.

After this, I went to do Extra Arcade and did them for both original and HD. I found HD to be easier for Weapon Master because it creates a new save file. If I were to do with the original I would need to delete my current one. For some reason, SCII doesn't have the same type of save file that can be copied or moved.

One more interesting and final thing I would like to add that left me speechless was this amazing run. If just one thing had gone differently I would have got WR with a guitar controller. Just think about that - I could have beat my run of 44.36 with a guitar. I ended up getting a 45.65. Unbelievably close to WR as of writing this.

My Final Thoughts

Do something for a game you love with some crazy challenge - or maybe if you want to, also do some GH guitar Soulcalibur runs! My current goal is to try to do Time Attack and Team Battle next or try Soulcalibur IV next.