Get to know the people who play great videogames
[Sup Holmes is a weekly talk show for people that make great videogames. It airs live every Sunday at 4pm EST onYoutube, and can be found in Podcast form onLibsynandiTunes.]
Sup Holmes is taking a break this week thanks to a wedding between one of the best programmers in the world and one of the most charismatic ex-Nintendo employees who ever lived. That ought to be good. In the meantime, here’s a rerun of last week’s episode withGonzalo “ZeRo” Barrios, the 19-year-old winner of this past summer’sSmash Bros.E3 2014 Invitational tournament. At the time of this episode, Gonzalo had been playingSmash Bros.for the 3DS for about three days straight. He had slept for about 10 hours total over that weekend. That didn’t diminish his levels of youthful sass though. If anything, it only increased it.
We talked a lot about the new game (tiers, changes, excitements, disappointments, new techniques) which I found endlessly fascinating, but I couldn’t pass up on the opportunity to learn more about Gonzolo himself — what lead him to become this good atSmash Bros., which games in the series he prefers, the economics of playingSmash Bros. as your full-time job, if he’s ever considered making a fighting game himself, and more. It hit me while we were talking that at 19, Gonzalo can barely remember a time whenSmash Bros. was not a part of his life. He won his first tournament at age 10, and has been playing professionally for the past three years. you may only imagine how he felt when he metSmash Bros.creator Masahiro Sakurai. He talks about that on the show too.
Thanks again to Gonzolo for appearing on the show! Hopefully it’s not the last time we meet. Who knows, maybe next time he’s on the show, it will be to talk about developing his first game. That went pretty well forMike ZandAdam Heart…
