A leader in the Super Smash Bros. Melee scene, Kris “Toph” Aldenderfer, sat down with Esports Heaven this week to chat about Melee, Overwatch, and who Toph’s most influential Fox players are. For those who don’t know, Toph is one half of the casting duo “Scar and Toph.” After casting numerous major events such as EVO, The Big House, and Genesis, Scar and Toph have branched out and partnered with Cross Counter TV to create some amazing content. If you’d like to go support an amazing group of guys, here is a link directly to the Cross Counter TV’s website. This is just a taste of a little show to get you acclimated to Toph and “The Reads.”

Just to jump straight into things, how are you? I know you just got back from Sweden. How was casting DreamHack?

Sweden was fun; I was there for about a week. I actually mostly went for a vacation and I just stayed for DreamHack because... I was there. It was cool; I haven’t been to Europe much. The only other time I went to Europe was actually for DreamHack and I made the mistake of only going for DreamHack and I didn’t do any vacationing outside of that. It kinda felt like a waste. So, this is my first time in Sweden proper. I was just sat in Stockholm just [relaxing]. There was a Twitch engineer that works there that was showing my buddy and I around. [From there] we went to London for a day or two. Got to see Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, and got to see Big Ben. We had afternoon tea because, you know, “when in Rome.” So, it was pretty cool.

I wanted to ease into some of the more interesting questions. I am going to give you two topics and you pick one out of the two topics to talk about. So, first up we’ve got Silent Wolf or WestBallz?

SilentWolf.

At APEX 2014, you and SilentWolf got top 8 in the doubles tournament. Any chance you and Otto would might team more often in the future? Any chance for you guys to get the band back together?

We used to team a lot. The thing was, he was my training partner—not even really a training partner, more so a mentor for a while when I lived in Seattle. That was back when I was in school before I graduated. There was a time period where we were teaming a lot and [SilentWolf] is still down to team. Well, I should say that we’re both still down to team, it’s just that he goes to a lot fewer tournaments these days—alf because of school and life, and the other half because of his hand injury. So, I went to Battle of BC and we we’re actually going to team at that [tournament] and he had to rest his hands a bit longer.

I was going to team with Lovage instead, but there was a miscommunication with the [tournament organizers] and they said they would put us in the bracket and I didn’t think to check. So yes, it could totally happen again. I’ve actually been playing a lot; I’m trying to enter more tournaments. I’m signed up for EVO and all that. It’s totally up to [SilentWolf], he just hasn’t been traveling as much. We’re still really good friends. We’re rooming together at EVO this year.

Speaking of EVO, do you have any player goals coming into the tournament? Is there a specific bench mark that you hope to hit?

I would love to just [play like myself]. The last two times I went out of state I almost beat a really good player in the winner’s bracket. I almost beat KirbyKaze at Battle of BC and I almost beat Overtriforce at DreamHack. They were really close sets and I lost and I kinda beat myself up over it. I never gave myself a chance to cool off before I played my loser’s [bracket] match. And then in the loser’s [bracket], I wasn’t mentally present and I lost pretty quickly to players of a much lower caliber than either of those players. I think it was because I just didn’t prepare mentally and I didn’t take the walk to cool off. My only player aspiration for EVO is to play like myself. I think that's one thing that if you haven’t necessarily been entering a lot of tournaments, even if you’re playing well physically and your skill is there, it’s really easy to forget the little things that propel you through tournament brackets.

To piggyback on that, would you say that, as a player, you’re an emotional player, or more calculated?

I am pretty emotional and the thing is I think I play really clutch after I enter a lot of local tournaments. In those stretches of time, I become really clutch, but if I haven’t been entering the locals and then I sit down at a tournament set, I get nervous. I think—for me, personally—it helps to enter a lot of locals to try and acclimate myself to the tournament pressure. I think it helps me to keep my emotions in check. What are your thoughts on the different stressors or pressure coming from the commentary desk to the player’s seat? How different, in your eyes, are the two from one another?

They are two totally different types of pressure. There are a lot of people in the Smash community that both play and commentate and I think people misconstrue one for the other. The pressure from commentary is more wide spread, in a macro sense. Your voice effects the entertainment of the people watching, whereas tournament pressure is very micro and very focused around your prep and your own emotions. You know you have to win; it’s a short time frame. You don’t sit down at the desk preparing for commentary and have the same pressure as a player does. But sometimes after you’ve finished commentating a tournament, you can end up beating yourself up wondering if you did a good enough job.

To bring it back to your roots, you grew up in Hawaii and you played rhythm based games for a long time. Was there anything else that drove your competitive spirit from a young age?

Not really. I did a lot of extracurricular activities when I was in high school. I was more of a geek, so I did drama, I was on the school paper, I did improv for a while, I was in the jazz band, and just stuff of that nature. Not really competitive arts, but you know, maybe that’s why I was drawn to rhythm games. I played rhythm games as my main genre of game for a long time because rhythm games don’t have that 1-on-1 element in the same way. It’s more you versus the scoreboard or you versus yourself rather than you playing against someone else. So that was a very new element to me when I got into fighting games and when I got into Smash. It was something that I had to get used to and I think it was good for me to [experience] the different types of mentality that goes into a you-versus-machine type of game rather than a you- playing-against-someone type of game.

Not to drive on a tangent, but do you think that the art of training and honing your own craft was learned through some of these types of games? Is this something that people could benefit from as their first game genre?

Yeah. I think even going to what character I play in Melee, I think people who play [Fox or Falco] in Melee are usually drawn to being very button press-y. They tend to be people who are drawn to the mechanics of the game, so that you can express yourself mechanically. I think that really came from me playing Beatmania IIDX and games like that. I think sitting in your room and practicing Beatmania for an hour is almost the same feeling as sitting and practicing Fox for an hour.

I’ve always thought there are a lot of parallels there, which is kinda the cool thing about Smash, is that there are different archetypes of characters that different types of people are drawn to. I mean you see this where there is a lot of variation in characters. Obviously, if someone's playing Jigglypuff and they don’t know how to L-Cancel, they’re a different type of person than the Fox player who learns how to multi-shine before he can Wavedash properly. They are playing the game for two different reasons. Both of those [reasons] are personal and completely fine.

Your new show “The Reads” over on Cross Counter has done fairly well. Once you meet your goal and bring Spencer's account up to rank one on the online Melee ladder, what's next for the show? Is there another game in the show’s future?

It’s a lot of fun. It’s a very different type of content from the “Scar and Toph Show” in that it’s gameplay based rather than talk show based. Even from the beginning, our main inspiration— and we’ve been very open about this—has been Gootecks and Mike Ross with Excellent Adventures. We asked Mike Ross for his permission, in a sense, when we started up the Scar and Toph Show and when we started up “The Reads.” But The Reads was kind of this cool thing where we were like, “Hey Mike, we wanted to get your spiritual blessing to do this show that’s literally just a rip off of what you and Gootecks do,” and what was funny was that he responded with, “actually, we were thinking about expanding our content category for Cross Counter and bringing more games under our umbrella. Maybe we could work together on this?” Which is why “The Reads” is partnered with Cross Counter. All of the videos are put up on CrossCounter.tv please subscribe [laughs] Yeah, it’s been scary and exciting working with a new audience too, because it’s mostly Street Fighter players that really flock to the Cross Counter brand and fighting game community (FGC) members who don’t really know me or Scar (Bobby) that well yet. It’s a learning process and it’s been fun.

In the Melee scene it seems like there is this weird “Venn diagram” of players. On one side you have the netplay monsters and on the other you have people who train at clubs or just at local events. Is there some really underground talent that could cross over from one or the other and meet somewhere in the middle?

I mean, yeah. Syrox is predominantly known for being a netplay warrior for lot of his competitive life span. You’ve got Michael41000, whose Rank 1 on the ladder and a Jigglypuff player—his claim to fame is that he beat Captain Faceroll at a tournament. So, he’s clearly not bad, I mean he beat a clear top 60 top 70 player in the world. Yeah, I’d say the potential is definitely there. I play people sometimes that I have to take a step back and go “Damn, this guy is pretty good. I don’t know who he is, but he’s pretty good.”

It’s always kind of hard to approximate how good someone is online, because it is not the same as playing on LAN and what not, but you can totally tell that if this person wanted to be a tournament player, they would get decently far. For example, I would expect Michael41000 to make it out of pools and probably fall somewhere in top 64. I think that’s pretty good.

Melee pro-player’s being good at other games is quite topical. Do you think you could see anyone from the Melee scene trying their hand at pursuing a career in any other esport?

I know Reno wants to become a professional Overwatch player. Outside of that, yes the players could cut it, but it’s that most Melee players seem to really focus on Melee. You can totally see some of the drive and skill roll-over onto other aspects of people’s gaming career. SilentWolf is a world class speedrunner for example. Actually, there is a ton of carry over between the Melee scene and the speedrunning scene.

I think if you have the type of discipline to play Melee at a professional level I think you totally could go pro at other games, but it’s twofold. One, the skillset doesn’t necessarily carry over with Melee and a lot of the other esports obviously. And two, it’s a lot of top Smash players don’t seem to invest a lot of their time into other games. It’s also a game where you have to practice a ton. If you’re a world class Melee player, you wouldn’t have the time to join a team for anything else really.

Melee, for me, tends to draw a lot of parallels to Starcraft in a way. I know that you and Scar are fans, so in your opinion, how close are the parallels from Starcraft to Melee?

Something that I enjoy about Starcraft is that it is a one on one game type, where a lot of the games more recently have been more about team based play and what not. Besides Starcraft, there is Hearthstone, Smash, of course the FGC, but there isn’t much else besides that. It’s nice to see the player-versus-player dynamic. I actually think one of the esports that Melee in particular is very similar too is Quake and the arena shooters. In those games they both have elements of advanced movement to where, if you can just move better than your opponent, then you can just run circles around them and there isn’t much they can do about it. Starcraft has that same barrier to entry with how fast you need to be able to move, which is similar to Melee as well, where if someone is just a better player you can just see it and you can just tell. The way you get better and train in the these games is all very similar in a way as well and they seem to take a similar mentality and rigor.

Recently you sat down with Akshon Esports for an interview where you mentioned you’ve been watching a lot of Overwatch. What do you think so far? Can Overwatch succeed? What are your thoughts on the competitive scene?

I think it’s an amazing game to play. I think the spectating experience is still a little difficult. That’s just because it’s a game that’s similar to a MOBA in that there are team fights that break out in a similar style, but the viewpoint is in the first person, rather than a top-down view. If Blizzard can sort out the spectator issues, then I think it could be a really good and high level esport.

I mean Korea is already taking Overwatch really seriously and pushing the meta in all these different ways and that’s really cool to see. Clearly the skill stratification is there, right? The skill ceiling is very high. The top teams are that much better than the second tier teams, and they are that much better than the third tier teams, and so on.

Now, you piqued my interest when you mention Korean Overwatch. I personally focus my content around Overwatch, so if you don’t mind me asking, do you have a favorite team or player that you look out for.

Yeah, like Ryujehong is my favorite player personally. What I like about Lunatic-Hai is that they were in a way the Chris G of Overwatch, where everyone knew they were the best, but they hadn’t won the big title yet. So when they won, it just felt right.

I think it was Emongg had mentioned this in a interview, the idea that the Western teams seem to be focused more around the DPS players. You’re either a star DPS player, or you’re “just a tank” or “just support”. Whereas Korea has Tank and Support players that really take pride in being “a great Tank” or “world-class Support”. That concept doesn’t really exist over here. . And it’s funny how the best players on Lunatic-Hai are the Tanks and the Supports. I remember, they asked a top Korean player, who was the better Genji—Haksal or WhoRU, and his answer was that “the only reason why WhoRU survives as long as he does, is not because of WhoRU, it’s because of Ryujehong.” So, Ryujehong, as a support, is so good that someone asked another top player who the best Genji was, and he came up. That’s just how good of a support Ryujehong is.

To double back a bit, in the Akshon Esports interview you mentioned MonteCristo as an influencer on your commentary. Could you go a bit more in depth there and give your thoughts on that subject?

I think that Overwatch is an insanely hard game to commentate and when a teamfight breaks out, a good Overwatch commentator can even miss out on some crucial things that can happen. There was one match where a Graviton Surge was eaten by D.va’s Defense Matrix and the casters [were] just going on about another player that was playing really well, but missing a play that big, in most esports, would be considered criminal as a commentator. Obviously it depends on what game and how the spectator shows you the match, but still, it’s a big no-no.

Overwatch is such a hectic game that this happens all the time. Huge plays go unnoticed because it’s just so hard to keep up with the action. And for MonteCristo to come into Overwatch, relatively recently in his professional casting career, he seems to have an extra level of insight that I just haven’t seen from other casters.

Scar recently was asked about his top 5 most influential Captain Falcon mains. It posed an interesting question that could end up being an interesting thought experiment: who are your top 5 most influential Fox mains?

The top 5 most influential Fox players is a much more difficult question, in my opinion, than the top 5 Falcons. To me, the top 5 Captain Falcons is a pretty clear cut list, but there are so many more Fox players than any other character. It’s really, really difficult to say.

So, we have to first define the word “influential.” An easy metric to go by is how many techniques that a player introduced to the scene. For example, with the Captain Falcon list, you can easily say SilentSpectre is in your top 5 Falcon list, because he pioneered the “drop zone” and he pioneered the non-aerial drift and fast falling style of Falcon. So, there is a style of player now that everyone draws upon that SilentSpectre pioneered.

So, it’s very easy to quantify something like that, where if you look at S2J—and we love S2J— but what is he doing that hasn’t been done before, right? He’s building on top of techniques and styles that other players before him have pioneered. That’s kind of the idea here. So, with that in mind, my top 5 influential Fox’s would have to be

PC Chris: He basically pioneered the “modern-Fox.” He laid the framework to what a lot of people are building upon. Before him you had a lot of gimmicky Fox’s but he was the first one to really put it all together.

Zelgadis: He literally made the world take notice to what shine could do as a tool, even though he was never that top level player. Me and a lot of other Fox players definitely took inspiration from watching Zelgadis and his combo videos (most notably Shined Blind).

Jman: I think he was the first solo Fox main that really showed what a high level, tournament winning Fox should look like. And he also really pushed the east coast defensive playstyle. Like, he was the best laser camper. Jman taught the world how to laser and  he taught the world how to nair.

Mang0: There are matchups that Mang0 completely revolutionized. Basically, all of the Fox versus floaty matchups, Mang0 just kind of blew wide open. Also, he pioneered the swag-a-licious, pure emotion, fiery, aggressive Fox. I think he did that better than anybody and still does.

Armada: I don’t even personally like Armada’s Fox as much as some of the other Fox’s I could put for number five. It really feels like a “world-class pocket Fox” rather than a “Fox main”, but you cannot deny the fact that every Fox started to punish differently after Armada came around. Armada basically shit-talked the Fox community for a while and he said “Fox players don’t understand how hard they could be punishing and if I ever played Fox, I would show them how much farther you could punish as Fox.” And then he starting playing Fox and he started doing the Armada Shine with consistency, he started doing the falling up-air combos with consistency, this third point is more Leffen in my opinion, but platform tech-chase combos. Armada did all of those with reliability. After Armada starting playing Fox, every up and coming Fox player all of a sudden was punishing way better. I have to give it to him, I don’t think we would be punishing the same way if not for Armada.

Honorable Mentions: Leffen, Mew2king, Hax$, SilentWolf, KoreanDJ, Chillindude829

At Smash Summit 2015, Wife posed to you a question of “if not Melee then what game would you play?” And you mentioned you’d explore your interest in 2D fighters like Guilty Gear or even Street Fighter. Has this changed at all?

No, I still love those games, more casually obviously. I love watching 2D fighters, I watch them every chance I get at tournaments like CEO or EVO. Yeah, I think i’d have to say the same answer. If Melee wasn’t around I’d try to play something like Guilty Gear or something like that competitively. If you’d personally indulge me, is there any bizzaro-world where Toph and Scar come over to Overwatch?

Probably not Scar, but I would love to! With the way things are now, you would probably catch me as a more of a streamer over being a progamer. I feel like being a progamer is hard; you kind of have to throw your life at it, in a sense, having to move into a team house and what not. But I could see myself streaming that game, I feel like that's very much doable. I think Overwatch is an amazing stream game.

Let’s look ahead in time. imagine a world where the Big 6 don’t exist, it could be 5-10 years down Melee’s life cycle. With Melee seeing very nice and steady growth the past few years, who are some of the younger players that could come up and climb to the top of the Melee mountain?

Plup obviously has it in him. I think that everyone acknowledges the fact that Plup plays on the same level of other top players consistently, but doesn’t seem to bring it home for whatever reason. I don’t really know him well enough to comment on why that is, though. Climbing the mountain is hard. It’s one thing to train the skills necessary to beat some of the best, but it’s another thing to really have the grind and the determination to really “champ it out.” Mentality is this whole other side of things that sometimes it doesn’t even matter how skilled you are. A lot of the time it comes down to who really has the will to win. SFAT could do it, but it’s hard to say. I almost feel like it would have to be someone who is completely new, or someone needs to go up into the mountains and go threw some zen training. No one in the top 10-20 really has the same mindset as a Mang0, Armada, or HungryBox. Sometimes priorities happen and you could grind all the way up to around top 20 or 30 in the world and just go, “Yeah you know, I’m really enjoying the attention and I’ve made a name for myself,” and you don’t really feel the drive you did when you were improving. And Armada himself has said that he finds it way easier to win when you haven’t been winning, because you have to prove that you can win and you're not just sitting at the top of the mountain. It’s easier to be bloodthirsty when you have someone to beat, rather when you just don’t want to lose.

Smash is known for it’s amazing community and how everlasting it has been through the years. Why do you think that is? What has kept a core of tens of thousands of people playing such an old game?

At least when it was in my day, which was in 2008 when Melee was actually really small, I remember we would drive to tournaments hours and hours away, like 10 hours away and you would sleep on the floor. And every chance you get, you wanted to money match someone. There are a couple of games like that, where playing it just feels so good that you almost have to play it. It’s almost like addictive and once you start playing you cannot put the controller down and Melee is one of those games.

Why Melee? What about it captivated you attention so heavily that you have climbed the rungs of the community to become a leader? Why do you, Kris “Toph” Aldenderfer, love Super Smash Bros. Melee after all these years?

The answer to this has changed for me over the years. Back when this started I was following the competitive community longer than I had been playing, because I was just a fan in 2004-2005 when Ken was the best. I start playing in 2008. When I started playing I was just really drawn to how Smash, particularly Melee, where it applies to a wide range of audiences and skill levels. You can be a total casual, like I was back in the day, where I would just play with my friends in high school. You can play with items on or you can play with the tournament rule set. It’s just one of those games where no matter what level of skill you are, it’s just fun to play.

Personally, I’ve always found that to be really, really cool. And it’s a stark contrast to some games where you feel that you have to either play it competitively or casually. The reason I kept playing was that I felt like I could still leave my mark on the game. Like, even at the top level you still see the game evolving and changing. People back in the day knew Melee could be pushed further, so in my head, I still thought that I could be the first to do that combo that no one ever thought of or what have you. These days top players have really stylized the game, that now that keeps me coming back. There are so many different ways that you can be good at something that it consistently makes it interesting, at least to me.

Joseph “Volamel” Franco has followed esports since the MLG’s of 2006. He started out primarily following Starcraft 2, Halo 3, and Super Smash Bros. Melee. He has transitioned from viewer to journalist and writes freelance primarily about Overwatch and League of Legends. If you would like to know more or follow his thoughts on esports you can follow him at @Volamel.

Images courtesy of Nintendo, Toph, CrossCounter.tv, and Akshon Esports