During a recent Dragon Ball FighterZ tournament a new player has been making a name for himself and is quickly turning into an icon. That player is Greg and he controls the game with a piano. Not a real piano of course, but a Rock Band keyboard controller. Most professional fighting game players like to bring their own controllers that they feel comfortable playing with, but this is the first time anyone has seen a tournament player use a piano to play the game.
Although it might just sound like a publicity stunt to make himself known in the fighting game community, he is actually really good at the game. He got all the way through to the loser brackets semifinal where he eventually lost. This gives him a 5th/6th place finish in a tournament that was overall pretty stacked, and he did it all while playing on a piano.
He started gaining notoriety on the internet when a clip went up in which we see him put on an extremely skillful performance on Vegeta. Both players just have one character left, and Greg goes in for a devastating combo, his enemy tries to turn the game around with a super attack, but Greg skillfully manages to reflect the super attack leaving his enemy completely open. With a quick final combo Greg finishes the game after which the camera cuts to his hands resting on a keyboard. A surprise to be sure, and since most people were not expecting that twist the video gathered a lot of attention in a short period of time.
To see him play on a piano may be surprising to a lot of people, including opposing players, he has reportedly been playing with the controller for a while now. According to a tweet in February, Greg had been playing the game with his piano shortly after the game was released and already managed to stomp players with his trusty ivory keys. He is definitely not new to playing fighting games on his piano.
My dude is out here getting top seed in pools at our #DBFZ monthly with a rock band keyboard controller pic.twitter.com/xQidkWwDud
— EMG | Seph of the 6 (@TorontoJoe) February 3, 2018
The piano set-up is very strange but there might be some smart reasoning behind it. First of all the game controller came with a rhythm game so the keyboard is supposed to have a really fast response to Greg’s input. He is also able to change the movement controls from a single pad/stick to multiple different keys, which most likely gives him a lot more precision. Although he is not yet on the level of some of the best players out there, it’s certainly interesting to see if the menacing keyboard players will make an appearance in future tournaments.
