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| Ahmet Kurter |
Where are you from, and how did you get into competitive
Smash?
I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin! I got into competitive
smash when Brawl came out because my cousins were obsessed with it, and entered
my first tournament in 2014.
You tend to play as a fair number of different
characters. Who are some of the more common ones and what do you like about
them?
I
have used over dozens of characters in my local smash scene. But some of my
favorites are Sonic, Aegis (Pyra/Mythra), Joker, Wolf, Dark Pit, and much more!
I use most of these characters because I like how they feel to play, or are
from my favorite series (Sonic, Persona, and Xenoblade.) Of course, the
characters my opponents are playing also tend to influence who I pick in
bracket.
What happened in the earlier parts of the tournament?
My bracket run was pretty funny to me, because in winner's semi-finals,
I fought Fatalis, who I knew from my local scene, and I knew that would be my
hardest matchup for sure. After I won the first set we basically told each
other "See you in grands" which was funny, and correct!
Fatalis uses Sheik from the Zelda series. How did that
affect your overall strategy?
It affected my strategy a lot, to be honest. I like to rush
in a lot, but Sheik is really scary for a lot of different reasons. Her frame data (timing) is so unbelievably fast and has very little cooldown so I often had a
lot of trouble figuring out what I could punish. She is also very quick so
running from her does not work that well, plus she has a projectile that is
very quick and goes very far. Eventually my strategy consisted of me trying to
kill Sheik earlier than she could kill me and beat out her hitboxes with bigger
and more active moves.
After losing the first game in grand finals [against
Fatalis], you switched over to Wolf from the Star Fox games. Why did you choose
that?
That was a result of the experience my opponent had-they already
fought two of my characters in winners’, specifically Sonic, and Aegis. I won
game one there with Sonic, lost game two, then switched to Aegis which allowed
me to win game three (with a convincing two-stock). But even after I won that
first set it felt very stressful because I felt like I was not hitting him
enough, and making a lot of incorrect decisions in advantage.
In the first game of grand finals I started with Aegis, but
I lost (he two-stocked me this time), so I decided to try Wolf because I
was not feeling comfortable in the matchup. Wolf having a projectile is already
a huge change to the pace for the matchup, with Sheik having an incredible
projectile in needles I also wanted a strong projectile to bait him into making
mistakes when approaching me. Wolf also has very consistent and active hitboxes
which allowed me to get combos more consistently than my other characters. The
MVP move for the set for me was Wolf's neutral air. I used it a lot to punish
his unsafe hits on my shield and to use when he is jumping at me from the
ledge, so I could knock him back offstage again to reset the situation.
Technically, your opponent could have switched characters
for later matches, but didn't. Did that surprise you?
Nope! Not at all. I have only seen him pick Sheik at locals,
so I knew I was only going to fight his Sheik.
What else did you do at MadEX this year?
This was actually my first con, so when I first got there I
walked around the whole convention to see everything, met up with my friends,
talked with them the whole time, and talked to my GOAT Max Mittleman. For the
whole tourney, I rocked Ryuji's codename Skull for my in-game name, so
shout-outs to Max Mittleman for indirectly powering me up.
A press pass was provided for this event.
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