It's been a while since you last spoke with GotFrag; what have you been up to? How's life treatin' you?

Life has been pretty awesome lately. My lady is doing well, I've been skating, playing some quake, illustrating, and working. I hate working but, one needs cash.

How's the skating going?

Skating is incredible. I actually just got a new pair of rollerblades last week RAT TAIL THRONES!!!! I've been killing all the parks and street spots around here. I'm fortunate to have a few hobbies that allow me to express myself. Skating is great because it allows me to express my style of movement, and fashion. There is a lot of similarities between the flow of movement on a pair of rollerblades and the flow of movement in CPM. I often borrow from my aggressive, flowing style of skating and bring it straight into quake. I guess it works the other way around also, though I can't change directions in midair in real life.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you started with competitive gaming?

I used to play on lan against my uncle when I was a little kid, about nine years old. We played Rise of The Triads and Doom 2. Those were my first experiences with competitive gaming. I sort of put that aside for a few years until I had my own PC and Quake 3 Arena. Played some RA3 for awhile, then moved on to VQ3 and CPM 1v1.

You were signed up for CDC and then all the sudden, you weren't on the list of invites anymore. Why aren't you going anymore?

Money. I didn't want to spend 1000 USD all at once. The CPM tournament actually got canceled; really unfortunate.

You are still one of the top North American CPM players. How did you get so good at the game and how have you been able to stay at the top for so long?

When I started playing CPM, apheleon was in his prime. I think he beat me by around 60 frags our first game. I just wanted to beat people at his skill level so badly at that point. Gradius was more than willing to beat me horribly over and over again. After losing I would talk trash, then message him for 1v1s atleast twice a day. Gradius had the most appealing play style to me. He was so aggressive and raw. Originally I just began borrowing his moves and that got me to a decent skill level. But I had no brain for 1v1 until later on. The strategy aspect took me a long time to grasp, longer than any other aspect of quake. I definitely got my strategy from playing CPM against European players for several years. You can't really win a game when you have 80-130 ping unless you have a really solid strategy.

What do you like most about the game? What would you change?

I like weapon combos, the ability to dodge through advanced movement and finally the community! Instant weapon switch allows you to create numerous combinations. Learning to maximize your damage output in all situations through these combos is really challenging. I like challenges =). The same can be said for learning how to move in CPM. I mean, you might be able to run a map flawlessly using bunnyhopping, but can you flip between hopping forward and backwards seamlessly? Better yet can you dodge weapon fire in midair using strafe turning or on the ground using circle strafes? Those are the sorts of questions I asked myself when playing. Definitely paid off, but those kind of challenges are what I like most about the game.

There isn't much left that I would change. Maybe start experimenting with the spawn system again, or raising switch time a tad to give the game a little more of an on edge feel.