Today Lzuruha officially welcomes Paradox to the family. He'll be joining Lzuruha on the newly Super Smash Bros squad; specialized in "Project M". He recently placed top 8 in a LAN event in Alaska (Alaska Smash Bash 2017) against teams like Team Liquid. After sitting down and talking with Paradox, it was clearly a no brainer for us to move forward together as he shows a lot of promise with tournaments coming up this Fall as well streaming some speedruns over on his twitch channel in his spare time.
ElderFro's statement on the newly picked up member:
We are very excited to have Paradox join us, and represent us in Project M. Growth in the fighting game scene and smash community is something we are looking to do more so this year and I can see no better person than Paradox. He is very dedicated and shows a lot of promise with his drive to always practice and learn. He is someone to lookout for coming into the Fall/Winter tournament season and the New Year.
I started playing Smash when I was about 4 years old when my mom bought me a Nintendo GameCube and a copy of Melee. I played all the time with my brother when he would come back from college but never played seriously as I was just 4 years old. I picked up Smash again and started playing competitive Brawl in 2013, winning the first tournament I ever entered with Mr. Game & Watch (my main at the time). Around 2014, I found out about Project M and how it adds more stages, costumes, and adds Mewtwo and Roy to Brawl and started entering Project M tournaments for most of 2014. When Smash 4 came out, I was in love with the fact that PAC-MAN was added to the game and after some time, I dropped Project M for competitive Smash 4. When I was entering Smash 4 tournaments I was ranked #3 in the south part of Alaska and was placing around Top 20-Top 15 at a local level. I got back into messing with Project M around the spring of 2016 and ended up picking PM as my main game over Smash 4 because of its technicality, the way the game is played, and amazing player base.
Why have you chosen to main Luigi over the other Smash characters?
Even though Luigi is considered a mid-tier and hasn't won any national majors, I still think Luigi is an amazing character and fits my play style perfectly. Luigi has incredible combo strings and can overwhelm players with the fast and slippery movement. I wanna be the guy people talk about at tournaments like "Yo, did you see Paradox with that sick misfire?"
Where do you stand on Twitch not allowing Project M to be streamed on their platform?
I think Twitch not allowing Project M is a total punch to the face to the games' community. PM players choose to play PM because they love the game, if they didn't I'm sure they would move on to Melee or Smash 4, but their love for the game is so strong that they would rather help grow the scene and make it their own. There's a meme that Project M is a dead game and to some extent people actually believe that, but in reality it's far from dead and is going to just keep growing. Not being on Twitch hurts our viewership a lot and that's why players don't know there's an active scene around still even though our nationals are doing incredible.
Where can people find you?
People can find me speedrunning at http://Twitch.tv/AK_Paradox or on Twitter https://twitter.com/LZHParadox
Unfortunately, Elderfro has some hard hitting questions for you as well. Do you play any of the other Smash games and if so how do you feel about them?
Having played Brawl, Smash 4, and Project M competitively, and being a huge fan of the Melee scene, I have to say that I love and respect all smash titles and their players. I think each game takes a different type of skill set to play at high level. For Melee/Project M, I feel like the game appeals to those who like a more technical and fast paced game. For Brawl/Smash 4, I feel like the game pleases those who like a slowed down game that is more heavily about making reads on your oponent. When it boils down to the core, all Smash games are the same, you have to outplay your opponent to win, the differences are that each game has a different style and tools to do that.
What sort of other games do you enjoy?
Besides fighting games, I really enjoy the open world genre. I'm a huge fan of Rockstar Games, they're a publisher that I've always enjoyed. I've also slowly been trying to play more RPGs.
What do you enjoy outside of gaming?
I'm a huge Survivor fan! This year will be the 2nd year I've applied to be on the show and if I don't get picked, I'll be applying every year after that. I also love producing and making film.
What inspires you to playing fighting games and go to tournaments?
Smash is a lot like a journey for me; you level up as a player, beat better and higher ranked players than you, and be surrounded by an amazing community. I think what I love most about Smash that keeps me playing is that I can see literal improvement every time I play. Beating people 2-0 that I've lost to months before is an amazing feeling and gives me the drive to try and be the best.
What professional would you like to play against if you had the chance?
I'd love to train with ThundeRzReiGN or Ilovebagelz. Thunderz because he's currently ranked #1 in the world and taking advice and learning from the #1 player would be an absolute honor, and also Bagelz because he's the best Luigi main in today's meta and I'd like to unlock more secrets to playing Luigi optimally. Even though Armada doesn't play Project M, I'd love to talk with him about his mentality as the #1 Melee player in the world.
Pulled Pork or Pulled Chicken?
Definitley pulled pork.
Coke or Pepsi?
I'm more of a Dr. Pepper guy.
Lavender or Mountain Fresh?
Mountain Fresh, just like in Alaska.
Photos were taken by Jay "Nirv3" Frost.