Humanity loves potatoes. It gives us french fries, hash browns, tater tots, and apparently, it could also be used as a spare controller for our favorite video console.
A five-minute clip from YouTuber BOOM, LLC Robotater displayed the tech-capabilities of our favorite tuber as it showed a gamer playing the popular role-playing game “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim”—with a bunch of potatoes as the joystick.
Apart from aiding our daily nourishment, vegetables and fruits can be turned into electronic power sources because of the juices inside them, according to a report from TechTimes.com.
Batteries generate electricity through a chemical reaction between two different electrodes and one electrolyte, which is a liquid.
In the case of the potato battery, the juices inside the vegetable act as the electrolyte, the report said, while copper and zinc electrodes are attached to its body.
In order to play ‘Skyrim’, BOOM had to use six potatoes on each side, which acted like a modified axis.
He simply pushed down in a certain direction, with his fingers on the potato, to control the characters’ mobility.
Getting a current to run through so many different potatoes without an unplayable amount of lag is no easy feat, yet BOOM managed to play the game with ease, as if he was using a PC gamer’s traditional keyboard and mouse.
For those interested, the dedicated gamer also shared his potato controller guide on the Steam Community page.
This is not the first time a classic video game was played in an unconventional manner, as the popular game ‘DOOM’ was also modified to be played through an old piano and a set of toasters. Khristian Ibarrola