User:Lord HDL

HDL is a Marth player from The Bronx, NYC. He is not part of any crew, and prefers to do things his own way. Although it has been a while since his last visit to the states, he remains an active competitor in the PR tournament scene. He plans to travel, primarily to the east coast, for the year of 2007.

Origin: New York City

Current Residence: Puerto Rico

Main Fighters: Super Smash Bros. Melee; Super Smash Bros.; Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike; Street Fighter Alpha 2

Main Character: Marth (SSBM); Pikachu (SSB); Chun Li (3S); Ryu (A2)

Other Characters: Everyone (SSBM); Everyone (SSB); Ken, Makoto, Ryu, Akuma, Dudley (3S); Sakura (A2)

Competitive Background
HDL got his first taste of competitive play with the classic fighting game “Street Fighter II: The World Warrior.” Although back then he did not know of tournaments and the serious depth present in the game, as time passed he felt more and more the need to win. It was finally with the release of Street Fighter Alpha 2 (A2) that he began to discover hidden techniques and strategies that were purposely included by the developers to make the game deeper for serious players. He didn’t go to tournaments yet, but he did play serious with various competition.

Being mainly a Nintendo gamer, HDL quickly found out about a new fighting game on the horizon that was developed by Nintendo themselves. Super Smash Bros. for the Nintendo 64 was released in 1999, and HDL quickly made the decision to play this game competitively due to his previous experiences with the Street Fighter series. Upon picking the game up, he refused (most of the time) to play the casual gamer-friendly free for all matches (FFAs) that consisted of 3 or 4 players, and remained strictly with the classic 1 on 1 format he knew from Street Fighter. This also resulted in rare item use, as he felt they detracted from competitive matches.

In 2001 when Super Smash Bros. Melee was released, he did the same thing. Seek to discover new things and learned about the new characters, stages, and found more competition that would help him keep pushing his level of skill higher. At this point in time he learned and applied, in a matter of weeks, things (wavedash, ledge tech, pivot, etc.) that other people took several years to discover. The tournament scene for Smash was still relatively small and not many people played the game competitively, although it was gradually growing.

In, 2003 HDL moved with his family to Puerto Rico, a small island and U.S. territory just southeast of Florida. Soon after, he found competition aware of SWF and interested in tournaments. He began to contibrute to the development of the competitive scene in PR.

Present Affairs
Currently, HDL continues to help the PR scene advance and organize successful events. The scene has already organized over 10 tournaments, including singles, doubles (teams), and crew battle events. HDL has difficulty in traveling, but is planning a trip to at least one major event in the states during the 2007 year.