Modders are playing Trombone Champ with trombones

After writing about Trombone Champ in VR yesterday, modders are bringing everything full circle and making my dreams come true.

People are sharing their attempts at playing Trombone Champ with trombones.

Custom-made trombones? Check. An actual brass trombone? Check.

Modder and streamer Rudeism is no stranger to playing games with unconventional controllers. He’s previously played Elden Ring with a Fisher Price controller, Sifu with punching motion controls, and played through Dark Souls 3 using one button and Morser code.

At a similar calibre to his Untitled Goose Game goose controls, Rudeism has created a trombone controller for Trombone Champ. The trombone is a plastic one bought online, as 3D printing was taking him too long.

He posted a log of the controller’s development on Twitter, culminating in a video of him trying it out with Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies, and I have to say his attempt is not that bad.

I appreciate how difficult it is to play brass instruments, which Rudesim fully demonstrated about a minute into the track.

The trombone is controlled with movement and breath, and Rudeism manages to move the slide quite accurately all things considered. He wasn’t able to use the full range of the slide due to limitations of the ultrasonic sensor measuring its position, but Rudeism said he has ideas on how to improve the range for his next iteration.

In what I think is the ultimate controller for this game, YouTuber Hung Truong uploaded a video showing his version of a brass trombone controller.

Truong used a smaller, soprano trombone and hooked up sensors so the controls mapped the same way as Rudeism’s did. Truong’s results, however, were not as successful, which he attributed to buying a $7 flight sensor rather than something a little better quality.

Truong didn’t run out of breath whilst playing, thanks to his experience as a trumpet player, but you can see the concentration in his face as he attempted to deal with the erratic movements from the controller.

The next step, I guess, would be getting slide positions to accurately map onto note positions in-game, though I’m not sure how feasible that would be for modders. For now, I’m delighted to see Rudeism and Truong’s trombollers (trombone controllers) actually had rather decent levels of success!