When Dr. Doot took the stage on the final day of AGDQ 2025, the pressure was on. The speedrunner, whose nickname is surprisingly descriptive–he has a doctorate in music composition–was attempting a live run of Elden Ring using a digital saxophone as a controller. Beating Elden Ring’s toughest bosses via traditional methods is difficult enough, but Dr. Doot put that PhD to good use and quickly slayed the final boss, as well as the maddingly difficult optional boss Malenia.
GameSpot had the chance to chat with Dr. Doot (who wished to only use his handle rather than his real name), and we were surprised to learn how the saxophone speedruns came to be. Rather than coming about simply as another way to beat Elden Ring or Dark Souls, they were an extension of Dr. Doot’s practice on his digital instrument, the Roland Aerophone.
“The Aerophone actually became a game controller initially as a joke,” he explained. “I actually got the Aerophone to help me with my music composition, because I play saxophone. And then I found the program that you can use to translate MIDI input, which is what the saxophone sends to the computer, to [computer] keyboard input. Then I realized, ‘Oh, you can play games that way then!'”
The setup is relatively intuitive and undeniably hilarious. The keys of the Aerophone are mapped to different functions in whatever game Dr. Doot is playing. In the case of Elden Ring, only his character’s movement is handled via an analog nub on the back of the device. Everything else, including moving the camera, is accomplished by pressing down the corresponding keys and blowing into the mouthpiece. This produces a “doot” noise, which is funny on its own, but hilarious when it’s accompanying violent sword attacks finishing off a deadly boss. This, naturally, elicited plenty of laughs from the packed Wyndham Grand in Pittsburgh, and there have been some occasions when he’s accidentally composed a new melody on the fly.
“Every once in a while, something wacky will happen, where I’ll have a very specific script, and I’ll play a jazz lick out of nowhere–it’s really funny. And it always catches me off guard, like, ‘Wait, that actually sounds like music!'”
Other games have allowed for more literal applications of the Aerophone, such as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, in which Dr. Doot matched the button inputs for the ocarina songs to the keys of the Aerophone. Still, it sounds like using the instrument for… unintended gaming purposes seems to be a priority now, and he has a very lofty goal.
“There are only a handful of people who have done a full hitless run of the Dark Souls trilogy back to back. So, playing through all three games back to back without taking a single hit in any of the games.”
But that isn’t his Mt. Everest: Dr. Doot’s ultimate goal is to complete what the community calls “God Run 3.” This consists of beating not only the three Dark Souls games, but also Demon’s Souls, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring–all without taking a single hit. Only a few people have been able to do this using traditional means, which would make a saxophone run one of the most legendary gaming accomplishments in history.
Still, one genre proves nearly impossible to play using this method for Dr. Doot: the shooter. Controlling the camera and weapons using the Aerophone proved to be maddening with playing Doom 2016, as did the third-person shooting in the Resident Evil 2 remake. Perhaps someone will create the first true FPS (first-person saxophone) game and allow him to finally cross the genre off his list. For now, however, beating some of the hardest games in the world in one of the funniest ways possible is plenty impressive. Doing so with thousands of people watching, both in-person and online, is even more mind-blowing.