Talking with Tom Brady, Mortal Kombat Guru - News
by VGChartz Staff , posted on 18 May 2011 / 7,574 Views
If you haven't heard of Tom Brady (not the New England Patriot), he is, by his own admission, "if not the best, then at least the most popular Mortal Kombat player in the country." Justin Wong? Pfft. He plays Street Fighter.
Mortal Kombat is Brady's game, so much so that NetherRealm Studios brought him in to help test out their new MK months before the rest of the world got a chance to try it out. Because he helped playtest the game, however - even though it was just for a week - it was determined that it would be best if he didn't enter the national tournament held a few days ago in Las Vegas. That didn't stop him from entering money matches, though:
A money match is where people bet their own money on their skills (totally legal, I think, because it's Vegas, baby!). In this case, it was a quick eight-man single elimination tournament at the end of day one of the national tournament held on Saturday. Everyone (including me, because why not) put in $5, and the winner took all $40. Tom steamrolled everyone; the video above was the final match. Tom's opponent didn't win a single round.
I had a chance to talk with Tom for a bit after the tourney, asking him a little about exactly what he does. It turns out that he was only at the tournament to shoot a Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 training video with some dudes, and he's actually from Texas, where he spends his days in charge of Verizon sales in his region. He had dropped out of competitive tournament play for a few years until he got a call from a random buddy that somehow lured him back in - probably with cookies.
He told me how he would have loved to be in the MK tournament, but that allowing game testers to play in the first national tournament would be a very slippery slope. Even if he said, "But I only tested the game for a week," that's a bad road to start down. People could say, "How do we know it was only a week? He could be lying." In the end, he was just in Vegas to help everyone out, and not to cause a huge controversy when he inevitably won the whole thing.
He was even giving some impromptu lessons to the competitors. Here, he's teaching Hugo101 (another semi-big shot in the fighting game community, I learned) some tricks when battling Kung Lao, arguably the best character in the game:
What a helpful guy! Before I let him go, I had to ask him just one more question: "Why Sub-Zero? You're the only guy here using him, and you beat everyone. Why doesn't anyone else use him, and why is he your favorite?"
He then proceeded to lay some truth on me:
People don't use him because he's really hard to learn, and he's kind of a pain to play as sometimes. But I like him because you can only come at him in two ways without getting destroyed. You've got a 50/50 guess at what your opponent is going to do; I'll take 50/50. Some of these other characters, you can go at 'em 3, 4 different ways. I like Sub-Zero because he takes away all your options.
There ya go, kiddies. Study up on your Sub-Zero, because Cyrax and Kung Lao will only get you so far.
Also: thanks to Tom Brady for talking to me. Keep an eye out for him at this years EVO!
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Aha!!! I knew Tom Brady had a second life!
The Quarterback?????
Now why don't him take the bar up and directly challenge Justin Wong? Afterall the other is a SF player (don't matter he won the National Championship in a game he "don't know").
Would love to see who have the biggest mouth and skill.
