Legend has it that the world’s greatest swordsman spent thousands of hours in training before ever picking up a practice blade. He would place tiny grains of rice through a narrow opening in a glass bottle with fine chopsticks. When questioned about this unorthodox method of mastering the sword the swordsman said:
“The human body is the most delicate and powerful instrument in the universe. If one can even gain a novice comprehension of this truth, he can easily learn how to play with a stick.”
Meet Terry Garrett, a master in every sense of the word. For five years, he has been training to complete a monstrous task, the beat arguably one of the greatest games of our time without ever seeing the game; to clarify, Terry is blind. You’ve heard of “blindfolded runs” in which people complete a game blindfolded. They usually play the game repeatedly beforehand to gain a certain degree of muscle memory from the times they played it with sight.
Terry has never been able to see any aspect of the game. He embarked on this journey quite literally in the dark. Terry uses surround sound speakers to immerse himself into the virtual world using sound waves instead of light waves. Sound effects produced by enemies enable Terry to gauge distance, depth, direction, and identification of the enemy.
So how does he overcome obstacles, puzzles, and challenges that don’t emit a sound? Well that’s easy, he just creates the sound by using items in the game (like the hookshot) to echolocate his environment. This allows him to navigate any virtual terrain, obstacle, or puzzle.
Forget about “speed run world records”, what Terry was able to accomplish in five years is an unrepeatable feat of greatness. It’s a De Vinci, a Van Gogh, a timeless masterpiece that serves as a monument to the greatness human kind is capable of.
Terry possess an incredible amount of dedication, tenacity, patience, skill and talent. This disability does not define him, he makes the rules of the world bend to the whims of his beautiful talents.
