Engineer Uses Smarts, Maths to Make Death Stranding Treadmill Controller

Although some weren’t big fans of Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding, others certainly found joy and promise in the peculiar title. But no matter how divisive the game itself is, watching someone play it using a treadmill certainly isn’t. 

YouTuber Allen Pan, who also happens to be an electrical engineer, is, in his words, “obsessed” with the game. He’s also pretty interested in exercise, which led him to conjure the idea of hooking a treadmill to a PS4 to play Death Stranding “as it was probably intended to be played.” 

The video above chronicles Pan’s journey from finding a wayward treadmill on the street to working with his friends and colleagues to turn that treadmill into an awesome example of ingenuity and creativity. 

By connecting two relays to the brains of the treadmill and then to the potentiometers in a third-party Dualshock 4, the team was able to simulate pushing forward on the control stick and “L3” button when walking or running fast enough on the treadmill. 

Pan’s first attempt is certainly a hilarious sequence of events, especially for our digital Norman Reedus, who quickly shows us the definition of “yeet.” Though it’s not a 1-to-1 correlation between real-life walking and running to digital walking and running, Pan quickly gets the hang of things and impressively navigates Death Stranding‘s treacherous terrain. 

In what started as a way to exercise more and keep up with his New Year’s resolutions, Pan may have created one of the most immersive controllers in gaming — and definitely one of the most exhausting ones. 

Now, we just need to get Death Stranding running in VR …