Professional Tekken 8 player SuperBrine is going viral after reaching God of Destruction using Alisa while completely blindfolded with a sleep mask.
SuperBrine has been streaming his run on Twitch in the form of seven separate broadcasts, starting in June 2026. The final stream from this series, broadcast in early October, has become a hot topic within the fighting game community, as he was able to reach one of the game’s top ranks from Beginner while obscuring his vision with a sleep mask.
It’s an impressive feat no matter how you swing it, standing as a testament to SuperBrine’s skill as a player and Tekken 8’s laudable sound design — but, perhaps unsurprisingly, his blindfolded run from Beginner to God of Destruction has sparked no end of debate about the game's difficulty and Alisa’s ease of use as a character.
I got the chance to sit down with SuperBrine to discuss his self-imposed challenge and find out if it was legit or not. He confirmed that there was no way he was able to see through the sleep mask (which are typically made out of thick material with dense cushions on the eyes), and reiterated that he’d streamed his entire run live on Twitch for all to see, so there was no way for him to cheat.
As for the ‘why’ of it all, SuperBrine said he wanted to prove that he could do something impossible, and is hopeful the challenge will help boost his visibility as a pro player. He also admitted that this undertaking was not, in any way, meant as a criticism of Tekken 8 as a game, despite the discourse surrounding his efforts on social media.
“My primary goal was simply to take on a challenge that most people will consider impossible and prove that I can do it,” he said. “I want to clarify that I didn't do this to criticize the game or suggest that it's poorly designed in any way. It's actually the exact opposite. I genuinely love this game, and I thrive on pushing my own personal limits through these kinds of extreme challenges. I am deeply passionate about it, and since my long-term plan is to pursue competing as my professional career, these kinds of challenges will directly support my career."
Outside of being unable to see, SuperBrine revealed that the hardest part of this challenge was that his eyes began to burn from being closed so long beneath the sleep mask. This, on top of being mentally drained from putting so much effort into the task, forced him to take frequent breaks.
“The physical toll was actually surprising. …Mentally, it required extreme patience, without it, completing this run simply wouldn't be possible,” he said.
Even a top player would have difficulty on ranked if blindfolded, so how did SuperBrine manage to pull it off? He told me that he relied on his foundational skills as a fighting game player and a keen sense of how people play on different ranks, as well as Tekken 8's helpful sound cues.
“It comes down to a massive amount of foundational experience. Playing on multiple smurf accounts over time gave me an exact read on the game knowledge players have at different ranks. Because of that, I knew precisely which strings and flowcharts would work and which wouldn't. Beyond that, precise hearing is crucial. You would be able to instantly differentiate specific sounds knowing whether a move resulted in a wall splat or not, if it was a hit or a block, and if you landed a counter hit versus a normal hit. Ultimately, it’s all about paying attention to the audio and knowing exactly the type of player you are facing," he explained.
For those who believe that Tekken 8 is so easy that anyone can pick up a blindfold and a controller and get to God of Destruction, SuperBrine invites you to try it; but it’s not that simple, because if it was, anyone would be able to do it.
“People are free to have their own opinions on it. There will always be positive and negative ones, and I respect that. But turning this into a criticism of Tekken 8 will not help the future of the game. You can't reach God of Destruction blindfolded just by picking a specific character and hoping for the best. It takes thousands of hours of game knowledge, knowing what kind of players you will face and what level of game knowledge they have, and relying entirely on audio cues. If it was just a flaw in the game or an easy character, someone else would have done it already,” he said.
SuperBrine chose to give himself this challenge; there are many other fighting game players who have reached top ranks and even become pros in spite of having actual disabilities. For instance, the late great BrolyLegs was a top Street Fighter player who could duke it out with the best of them using only his mouth to move his controller. And BlindWarriorSven, a blind Street Fighter 6 player who lost his eyesight at six years old due to cancer, won a livestreamed set at Evo 2-1 with E. Honda thanks the game’s impressive accessibility features that allowed him to 'hear' where his opponent was at on-screen.
