Overwatch Player Controls Hanzo With Nerf Bow

‘Overwatch’ player controls Hanzo with a Nerf bow, manages to get a kill streak

By Gabe Gurwin October 21, 2016

Last week, we reported on Rudeism — a Twitch streamer who has gained popularity by playing games using unusual controllers — after he controlled Winston in Overwatch with a series of bananas. This time, he decided to play one of the game’s most underappreciated characters, Hanzo, and his setup might be even crazier.

Rudeism started with a Nerf bow (usually used for just firing foam arrows) and rigged it with a circuit board and a series of wires going to different sections of the weapon. A bolt and a metal washer, connected via gold ol’ duct tape, let Hanzo turn left and right in Overwatch, while two small chain links on either side of the bow let him look up and down. A few more washers on the side allowed him to use Hanzo’s two special arrows.

Of course, pulling back the string of the bow let Hanzo draw an arrow, and releasing it fired it.

The end result looks like a surprisingly competent way to play Overwatch, and Rudeism even manages to string together a few kills in a row with perfectly placed arrows. His form, however, is a little off. (I will mention that I taught archery at a summer camp, and Rudeism should definitely be pulling back that fake toy bow to the corner of his mouth.) Even so, his aim is solid, especially considering that other players usually don’t know he’s using an odd control scheme, and that Hanzo is one of the hardest characters to master in the entire game.

There are certainly still some configurations we’d like to see Rudeism try out. McCree with a toy revolver, Torbjörn with a real hammer, or Reinhardt with a garbage can lid all sound like perfectly reasonable control schemes, and if he pulls out a toy lightsaber to play as Hanzo’s misunderstood brother Genji, we’re going to lose it.

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