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Staff Spotlight - September 2018 - The 3AM Show Episode 11 - (Ft. Linkdeadx2)


Impetus: Welcome once again to the 3AM show with Impetus, which is now at 6PM for me, but it's still 3AM somewhere. Today our Spotlit Staff is Linkdeadx2, a hack moderator who covers tough kaizo difficulty hacks for the site, and a streamer with a sizable following on twitch.
Linkdeadx2: Is this where I say hi? Hi.
Impetus: It is indeed. And now onto the part where I ask the questions!
Linkdeadx2: Ask away my friend.
Impetus: Let's start with the obligatory hack-related section of the interview. Kaizo difficulty is certainly an acquired taste, which a lot of people prefer to watch rather than play, so Kaizo hacks attract a smaller crowd of people than your normal hack. However, the fanbase is still sizeable and dedicated. So, how did you get into this fanbase and how did you learn the skills to play these kinds of hacks and levels?
Linkdeadx2: Kaizo is definitely an acquired taste. It all started when I got bored of speedrunning Super Mario World, which I did almost exclusively for 3 years. Someone (PangaeaPanga) made a hack dedicated to one of my friends (Dram55) and I thought it would be cool to try out the game. It was a slippery slope from there, I really enjoyed the challenge and the joy of overcoming such difficult levels. I felt like I was already apart of the fanbase since most of the players started out as speedrunners, and of course speedrunning the game for such a long time gave me a really good handle on the physics and skill needed to overcome the levels.
Impetus: Are you happy with the current status quo of how kaizo hacks are viewed by people? Would you try to get more people into playing them, who might not have even considered playing them or of been as interested in watching them?
Linkdeadx2: I'm not sure of how the general masses view kaizo, but in the past year its popularity has exploded. A lot of people who were playing Mario Maker have transferred over into the kaizo romhacking community and its as easy as ever to get into the genre. 3 Years ago you could probably find a handful of tool-less kaizo hacks to play, but now we have 70+ kaizo hacks with all kinds of difficulty covered. We have hacks that teach beginners all the tricks, intro level hacks, and of course stuff that makes you want to throw your controller through the TV.
Linkdeadx2: Right now we have a weekly kaizo race that is aimed at beginners to the genre and so far we've had amazing success with it. It's been going for about 7 weeks and we already have 500 people in our discord, which is dedicated to helping people find games to play and teaching the tricks of the trade.
Linkdeadx2: So I could say we are already taking big steps to help grow the community and get new people involved.
Impetus: That's good to hear ^-^ everyone else can now tell I didn't do enough preliminary research, but hey, maybe someone who didn't know about it now knows!
Impetus: In regards to moderating Kaizo hacks, do you feel there is any unique challenges for moderating them compared to normal hacks (outside of the difficulty, of course), and what do you look for when deciding to accept or reject a Kaizo hack?
Linkdeadx2: There are a few challenges that come up often. Kaizo-lite is such a broad category to moderate. Intro level hacks that take 30minutes to beat are in the same category as some hacks that take 40hours for an advanced player to complete. So you kind of have to judge what kind of audience the hack is intended for and go from there. I feel like moderating a kaizo hack doesn't differ to much from a normal hack. You look for the effort someone took to build the hack, did they try to build a nice overworld, are the palettes nice? Did they have people playtest the levels so that they flow smoothly. I guess one of the major differences for kaizo is that your level must not have major breaks in it. Example: Bringing Yoshi into a level and just walking over all the munchers or something. Its kind of a case by case moderation. Some hacks can get away with certain things better than others.
Impetus: Well, can I stretch out the hack questions a bit more I wonder? What are some of your favourite Kaizo hacks you've played, would you recommend them, and why?
Linkdeadx2: I get asked this question a ton. My favorite Kaizo hack by far is "Storks and Apes and Crocodiles" by Morsel. In my opinion this is one of the most influential kaizo hacks since Kaizo Mario World Series . Tons of custom asm, beautiful music, it just feels complete. I have a blast playing through it and I would definitely recommend to people who like really hard kaizo games. Pretty much everyone who has played and beaten it has really enjoyed it.
Linkdeadx2: I have to reiterate that it is very very difficult though.
Linkdeadx2: If i had to recommend some easier games for people looking to get into kaizo. Go for "Quickie World" by Valdio or "Backwards Mario World" by Westslasher2
Impetus: Hopefully those recs will help someone! I suppose the other topic everyone wants to hear about is your streaming, so lets head onto some streaming related questions!
Impetus: Tell us a little about your streaming first for people who may not know.
Linkdeadx2: I've been streaming for 6 years and everything I do is related to SMW. I started out speedrunning vanilla in 2012 and slowly evolved into playing Mario world romhacks.
Linkdeadx2: At this point I've already played every kaizo hack on smwcentral and that is considered beatable without savestates, and I play every new hack as it comes out. (part of the reason I thought about moderating hacks)
Linkdeadx2: Also my power went out while writing all of that. Yay.
Impetus: It's ok, there's no real hurry here so you can take as long as you like.
Impetus: The question that everyone asks streamers is probably, how did you manage to build such a large audience over time? One assumes if you made boring, low quality content you could stream for years and nobody would be interested.
Impetus: So, I guess a good addendum to that is, how did your streams improve over time?
Linkdeadx2: A wise man once said you have to have 1 of 2 qualities to make it in streaming. 1. Be funny and entertaining 2. Be extremely good at your game.... well I'm definitely the 2nd one.
Linkdeadx2: I don't consider myself that big, but I just have a lot of fun playing games and streaming and people stick around when you are having fun.
Linkdeadx2: I'm taking it a bit more seriously lately since I have a dedicated stream schedule to adhere to. It's been really great for growing the stream and accomplishing a lot of goals I had in gaming.
Linkdeadx2: I guess the answer to how I built up my audience would be dedication and time.
Impetus: Did you have any particular inspirations or role models when you got into speedrunning, kaizo and streaming that inspired you to do so yourself?
Linkdeadx2: My friend showed me a speedrun of Super Mario World and I thought it would be fun to try and do it myself. Dram55 was the world record holder when I got into it and I watched his streams and videos to find out every little trick to help me improve. So you could say he was my major source of inspiration for really getting into speedrunning. Dram55 was also one of the first smw speedrunners to switch to kaizo speedrunning, which i thought was impossible at the time, and he really blew my mind with what he did with kaizo.
Linkdeadx2: my views on speedrunning really changed a ton after watching him play. It became less about just being the fastest and more about self improvement and playing your favorite games more.
Impetus: Last streaming related question, is there any particular thing you've done or streamed that brought in a larger than normal number of viewers, or you think is notable somehow?
Linkdeadx2: Streaming Mario Maker was when I had the most amount of viewers. When it first came out if you streamed consistently and were somewhat decent at the game it was really really easy to build a following. I think what made it so big was the interaction you had with the viewers. People love watching their levels being played, they love it when the streamers fall for their trolls. It was really the perfect streaming game at the time, and even to this day is probably still really good at bringing in the views.
Linkdeadx2: it boosted my normal streaming numbers by at least 10-20 times when it came out.
Impetus: That makes a lot of sense, it's cool that mario maker helped a lot of content creators in that regard with how easy it is to make and share levels.
Impetus: Are you ready for the quickfire questions round? Today's quickfire questions are 80% more random than usual.
Linkdeadx2: I feel like im going to be good at this... you know.. uh going fast and all
Impetus: Alright, let's go!
Impetus: What's your favourite kind of fast food?
Linkdeadx2: Burgers
Impetus: What would you do for a Klondike bar?
Linkdeadx2: Punch a polar bear in the mouth
Impetus: How much of your inner personal secrets does google know?
Linkdeadx2: 97%
Impetus: What's your IRL job?
Linkdeadx2: Casino Table Games Dealer/ Supervisor
Impetus: How many hacks have you beaten over your time as a streamer?
Linkdeadx2: 130+
Impetus: What's your favourite deadly disease?
Linkdeadx2: uh... heart disease?
Impetus: If every animal fought in a battle royale, which one would win?
Linkdeadx2: Pig
Impetus: Is your discord avatar pants? It looks like pants.
Linkdeadx2: yes.. with a bulge
Linkdeadx2: also I like your Corrin avatar
Impetus: Banned for NSFW. Also thanks =D
Impetus: Honestly though, they are the weirdest pants I've seen.
Linkdeadx2: you should see them on stream
Impetus: Do you play smash bros?
Linkdeadx2: When Smash Ultimate comes out I will.
Impetus: Who's gonna be your #smashmain?
Linkdeadx2: The lowest tier character possible. So no one has any experience fighting them.. also when I lose I can just blame the character...
Impetus: Where would your ideal place to live be?
Linkdeadx2: In a house.
Impetus: Snrk
Impetus: Fair enough.
Impetus: What's the origin of your username?
Linkdeadx2: Everquest. When you disconnected from the game because your grandma called the landline and interrupted the internet (yes kids this is how it used to work). You would go <LD> or Linkdead
Impetus: Huh, interesting. I assume most people think it has something to do with Zelda.
Linkdeadx2: You assume correctly. I also can't watch zelda streams because they are always screaming at link and I think they are talking to me
Impetus: What a heavy burden to bear.
Impetus: Without picking favourites, who's the best member of SMWC?
Linkdeadx2: wouldn't the best be my favorite?
Impetus: Yes.
Impetus: That's what we people in the interview business call a Kaizo trap.
Linkdeadx2: saw it coming from a mile away, you gotta work on your kaizo design.
Impetus: That's why I didn't do this whole interview as a Kaizo interview, it's just not my thing.
Impetus: Any closing words for the interview?
Linkdeadx2: am i allowed to plug a discord for kaizo races?
Impetus: Yeah, go for it!
Linkdeadx2: If you are interested in learning or playing kaizo. We have a really nice discord dedicated to intro kaizo races and helping people learn lunar magic so they can make levels for the races. https://discord.gg/DJxNFdE There are also ton of helpful streamers on twitch in the Super Mario World directory, and lot of us hang out in the kaizo channel on the SMWC discord. Its one of the most chill and helpful communities I've ever been in and we would love to have you join us.
Impetus: Well, with that, this interview is now a wrap. Thanks for joining me today for this staff spotlight!
Linkdeadx2: Thank you for your wonderful questions.


And yet I actually ended up posting this at 3AM regardless. Let it not be said that the name "3AM Show" is undeserved!
>favorite hack is Storks and Apes and Crocodiles

A man of good taste. Congratulations!
That was a totes interesting interview.
One of my favorite hacks is also coincidentally Storks and Apes and Crocodiles lol

Grats!
Windowless ride, feeling alive
Are you alive or just breathing?
Rad

A man of fine taste indeed

Congrats!!
>Not falling for the interview's kaizo trap.

Advanced player, who really deserved this interview. Congrats.








#smrpg{:P} give a man a spotlight and he'll give you super slope munchers
Ldad Origins dodeEyes Linkdead is the king of creating "unethical romhacks"