Streamer hello_kiko Turns Her Chest Into Drums for Taiko no Tatsujin

Twitch streamer hello_kiko continues to explore unusual wearable controllers. After experimenting with fabric buttons in August, she has now built a new version of her device: this time, she attached two round touch-sensitive pads to her chest, turning her body into a drum kit for the popular Japanese rhythm game Taiko no Tatsujin.

Rossini Overture and Custom Sensors

The stream with the new setup was bluntly titled “Turning My Body Into a Musical Instrument.”

During the stream, wires from two large round pads—one blue and one red, matching the drum colors in Taiko no Tatsujin—were connected to her clothing. Each rhythmic tap on the sensors was read by a board and sent commands to the game for center and rim hits. As a challenge, the streamer chose the overture to Gioachino Rossini’s opera “William Tell,” trying to hit combinations in time with the orchestral classic.

Evolving the Setup and Jokes About “Mass Production”

This isn’t hello_kiko’s first engineering experiment of this kind. A month earlier, she caught social media’s attention when she played Super Mario Bros. using her own chest, sewing conductive electrodes into a top and programming a board to emulate the NES controller’s D-pad. However, that version suffered from input lag and registered accidental presses when she took deep breaths.

In the second iteration, the sensitive zones were isolated and optimized specifically for sharp, fast claps. This resulted in more stable response on fast-paced tracks, though minor registration errors still occurred occasionally.

After clips from the stream spread across social media, viewers started asking about pre-ordering the device. The streamer played along, jokingly announcing a “one-year waiting list” and offering free samples to fans. Of course, there’s no factory production: the controller remains a hobbyist DIY build created purely for viral content and attention on streams.