Interview with Matthew (Shock) Luongo of Kombat Network |

-Photo credit: Chris Bahn of Put That Back. http://www.ptbpro.org/

Jemmillion: How long have you been playing fighting games?

Shock: The first fighting game I ever played, technically, was Karate Champ Vs Edition, which came out way back in 1984, but I will say I probably didn’t play it until 1985 or ’86. Some people in the community don’t think I’m OG. OG that. Karate Champ. TWO joysticks, per player. So in the most technical sense, pretty close to 30 years. I grew up around arcades or places with arcade games, like malls, casinos, diners, boardwalks, pizzerias, video stores, etc. I was always exposed to the newest games, therefore the advent of games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. Although, I don’t remember seeing the original Street Fighter until many years later.

Jemmillion: What inspired you to become a part of the Fighting Game Community?

Shock: This story is actually very personal and long in order to really push the point. Most of the people who know it, are the ones who have been around a long time. When I was 18 or 19, working at a grocery store called Pathmark, I met a very special person by the name of Ryan Hutnick. I was a cashier at the time, and one day sometime around 2000, he came in, filled out an application and bought a wrestling magazine on my line. I noticed he was wearing a Mankind: Have a Nice Day! t-shirt, which I commented on “Nice shirt.” I noticed he came back the next week pushing carts. He worked in the grocery department, which is when we really got to know each other, recounting the time I saw him with the wrestling shirt. We started talking about what other things we were interested in; one of those things was Mortal Kombat. He touted himself as being one of the best players, at least in New Jersey. I also found myself to be virtually unchallenged in the Garden State, and had never crossed paths with him at an arcade.

This resulted in a little challenge. He came over my house, we popped in MK Trilogy on PSX, and he bodied me, badly. This was something I had not experienced in the game, ever. MK3 was a different story; it’s where I learned the engine. I took my beatings, but by UMK3, I was pretty established in the state during my travels, but I had never competed in official tournaments. Ryan had, and won. He also had competed against players like Tom Brady on a regular basis at the Menlo Park Mall, which was a hotspot for fighting games in the mid-90’s. So if anything, Bill Menoutis (TomBrady) knew Ryan before I did. Ryan is the direct connection between myself and the scene, and Bill in particular, as we are the seeds of the NRS portion of the FGC. I like to refer to Bill and myself as the Professor X and Magneto of the MK FGC.

Ryan went by the gamer tag “The Prophet” and played Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Mortal Kombat 4, Super Street Fighter II Turbo, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Street Fighter 3: Third Strike, Soul Calibur, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, Capcom vs. SNK, Tekken Tag Tournament, and several other fighters at the time. Soon after meeting him, he would move to play Soul Calibur II, Capcom vs. SNK 2, Tekken 4, Mortal Kombat Deadly Alliance and just about anything else he could get his hands on, because fighting games were just simply his thing. In between that time, he would introduce me to sites like mk5.org (mkonline), shoryuken.com, and tekkenzaibatsu. These sites would be very helpful in learning about upcoming tournaments. I always had an interest in fighting games, but the most competition I could get were local kids, or whoever I ran into in arcades. The highest concentration of players I met on a regular basis were ones who went to my local video store, which rotated out mostly fighting games on a regular basis. We trained on a weekly basis. He’d usually pick random games and was better at all of them, so I was learning. This was a great advantage to have, because with the exception of a few games, I wasn’t very interested in but played anyway. It took me several years to level up to Ryan and even out the playing ground, because he was also getting better.

In December, we will be celebrating NEC15. My first tournament was NEC2 in 2001. Since then, I have only missed NEC5 due to Ryan having food poisoning that weekend after tearing through an entire tray of raw cookie dough in the bakery department at work. At NEC2, I entered Capcom vs. SNK II, X-men vs. Street Fighter, and UMK3. There were maybe 150 total players there for all the games at the most, crammed into an arcade on UPenn Campus called University Pinball. We showed up, and there were some people playing casuals. One of them was TomBrady. He was bodying everyone with cross up spins using Kabal, friendshipping everyone. In typical TomBrady fashion, he didn’t enter the tournament if I remember correctly, but he was certain to talk plenty of trash! Love that guy. The tournament had 12 players. This to me was amazing, even though pretty pathetic in reality, but I wasn’t use to tournaments. I think CvS2 had about 130 players, but then again so did MvC2, and that was a share of all the players in the building. It’s sort of like SF4 and Marvel today, 250 players per game, about 300 players between the two. Unfortunately, the UMK3 cabinet had terrible controls, and not the kind of controls you can get use to. The sticks barely worked, and you had to slam them just to get movement. Ryan placed 2nd, losing to Julian Robinson in the grand finals, and I placed an unceremonious 5th. We knew we had to do better next time, but next time wouldn’t come for a while.

Over the next 4 or 5 years, we continued to go to tournaments. I believe we attended NEC3, 4, and 6, EEC9 and 10, then some locals at the Break, an event called March Madness that eventually became Winter Brawl, and I believe a Summer Jam before it went on hiatus for a few years. We fought tooth and nail with detractors who felt that MK didn’t deserve any attention at FGC events, even some of the original Chicago players. Luckily people like Big E and another player JetPhi were willing to stick their necks out for their respective communities, and let us run MK events for them. After NEC2, MK was officially dead, and Big E noticed that we kept coming back, hoping players would show, but they didn’t. So Big E asked us to run MK and promote it. The first event Ryan and I ran an MK tournament for was NEC4, and we ran MKT on PSX, much to the chagrin of TomBrady.

In 2005, I discovered that Ryan had severe clinical depression and had attempted to take his own life, if not more than once. Eventually, he would take his own life in February 2006. His last tournament was NEC6. The MK community took Ryan’s death hard at the time, with players who never even met him in person showing up to his wake. After that, we made a website, Ultimatemk.com, which was dedicated to him, and some combo videos in his memory. To this day, there are still memorial posts for Ryan on Testyourmight, again, from players who didn’t know him and some who did. So, if any one thing or person in my life inspired me to get into the FGC, it’s Ryan. His passion for the FGC was instilled upon me, and I was determined to build the 2D community at the time and create a place for the future of MK (now NRS games) in the FGC.

Not many people who have come in since MK9 are aware, but there wasn’t always a place for MK games at tournaments. There was a huge effort to gain favor and have MK literally “allowed” and respected. The game that did was UMK3. Without the roots of the 2D scene, MK9 probably would have been a whisper in the wind, having but a cup of coffee at ECT that year, maybe hitting EVO with a low turnout, and never to be heard from again. I say this because of my experience with all the games between 2001 and 2011. None of those games received any extensive tournament play. Deadly Alliance might have been at two majors, and I believe there was one Deception tournament of note. Armageddon never saw the light of day. MKvDC didn’t see a recognized tournament until 5 months before MK9 came out, because we pushed the game to be run. So for those of you reading this, who thinks that the MK scene has always “been,” please understand that it wasn’t. Eventually, in 2010, UMK3 and MKII would really take off and start getting respectable turnouts, with UMK3 topping out at 37 entrants for Seasons Beatings 2010. It was also streamed that year for the first time and the respect garnered by the unyielding effort put forth by what then was an entire North East team of MK players, opened the door for MK9 down the road. A door that was welded shut previously. Everyone in the community can thank Ryan Hutnick for that.

Jemmillion: At both Summer Jam 7 and 8, I had the great opportunity to speak with you and learn more about the work that you’ve been doing within the community over the years. When and why did you decide to create Kombat Network?

Shock: Originally, in 2002, I started an online gaming group along with two people I still work with closely, called “DarkTemplarz.com” (DTZ) which was a mostly fighting game related site, with some StarCraft influence. It was originally going to be called DarkFighters.com, but when Ryan signed up for it via his credit card, he accidentally registered us as “DarkFighers.com” without the T, so we contacted them deciding that it was a sign, and went with Templarz instead. The site still exists in somewhat broken fashion. This site contained fighting game footage, artwork, WIPs, some blogging of sorts, and a small message board called “DarkAddictz” which was the actual competitive gaming division of DTZ. We mostly played on Kaillera, and some players would attend tournaments here and there. At the time, old games were gradually being emulated; it was an exciting time.

Over time, DTZ eventually evolved into an all MK site, the first competitive MK site at that, called UltimateMK.com. It would be a source of info for UMK3 and other 2D MK games, with some of the best players of the time posting there. The site was truly beloved by most of the community, but terrible behavior would eventually lead to the closing of the site. We eventually reopened for a short time before merging forums with testyourmight.com down the road. The goal of UMK was to educate players about the games, and get them to come out to tournaments. We had some success.

In January of 2011, I started making posts in our private mod forums about taking a new direction with a site that would merge the community, because of so many MK sites fracturing it. The name eventually decided upon was KombatNetwork, dubbed by my childhood friend, MK player, and long time FGC supporter DreemerNJ. A handful of us in the community got together and decided to do what was right for it, thus resulting into KombatNetwork. It was a necessary move in the right direction, bringing all of us together and allowing the sites and sections of the community to work and promote together so the FGC end of the MK community could thrive and we could use the many ideas we had in store.

Jemmillion: Can you explain to everyone a little more about Kombat Network and its involvement in major FGC tournaments?

Shock: Building upon everything I’ve already stated, the combination of events, duties, mergers, and creativity resulted in KombatNetwork a little less than 10 years after I entered the scene. We have developed a reputation with many TOs for delivering a quality tournament and/or level up session that will do nothing but enhance their event. TOs come to us, we rarely have to look for an event to run, and we also run our own. We typically provide enough equipment to adequately accommodate about 64 players, all standard EVO ASUS monitors, on XBOX 360s or PS3s, and classic UMK3 standard sticks for 2D games if requested or known to be needed. If a stream is also needed, we can also do that, too. We’re known to be, regardless of what a handful of people seem to think, the most over-prepared scene of the FGC. If you need something, we got it and it’s yours, and most of the time, our setups are too big and need to be downsized. This, coming from running a single UMK3 setup for about 16 players only 6 years ago.

Jemmillion: Why Netherrealm Studios games?

Shock: UMK3 has been my favorite fighting game since it came out; I loved MK3, played the Hell out of MKII, and had a passing interest in MK. I loved UMK3 so much and was good enough at it, that I tried extremely hard to find competition in it even after the arcade scene was gone. Because I wound up joining the FGC in 2001, I wound up carrying on the purpose of finding competition, documenting it, putting up videos, and spreading the word. After 4 installations of MK failed to garner tournament interest, finally MK9 came about and cemented itself in the NRS brand as a game that players were willing to travel for, and with this, a new spark of life into the scene that capitalized on the foundation of the 2D games. The whole thing can really be described as a snowball effect. Injustice is probably the first game that had the chance of being successful outside direct influence from the old Midway base due to the DC exclusivity and back to block defense, yet it still yields a strikingly similar popularity timeline to that of MK9, though more popular upon release and the first year. MKvDC, we witnessed come and go with not so much as a cup of coffee in the FGC. Hopefully MKX will exceed both MK9 and Injustice.

Jemmillion: Does Kombat Network currently sponsor any players?

Shock: The most recent sponsorships were this year: RM/EMP members KDZ and Darth Arma both received free rides to MLG. KombatNetwork (KN) covered flight, car rental, venue, entry fee, amenities, and arranged stay at local Injustice player Krayzie’s house, who was also sponsored by KN for the event through venue fee payment, along with Slayer, another NRS gamer, who also received venue fee coverage.

Most notably, CDJr, currently sponsored by TheSteamCo, received a covered flight to EVO, and won the Killer Instinct tournament at the event.

Other than this, we have sponsored Crazy Dominican, the brother of CDJr, to 4 majors including MLGs, DetroitBalln to 5 majors, one of which he won an MK9 MLG tournament, and two majors for Perfect Legend – EVO, where he won his second MK9 championship, and also to an MLG event.

There are currently no plans to sponsor anyone until after the New Year. A few players are on the radar and some know who they are!

Jemmillion: Do you stream outside of major tournaments?

Shock: We run locals all the time and stream them if need be. Most of these events are at YesterCades in Red Bank and Somerville, NJ, either as KN or KN in conjunction with Red Bank Rumble, or Monster Island Tournaments. Various locals on Long Island here and there where requested. We also handle some regional events, like GUTS and have been invited to others like Civil War and KIT. We can’t always fulfill these events due to scheduling, but we try to at least get players to run the tournament who are in KN and near the event, or supply some kind of equipment. KN however, is known to hire outside streamers like 8WayRun to do their events if they are understaffed. You have to know when you can’t do it all.

Jemmillion: What are your goals for the upcoming year within the FGC?

Shock: KN has done a lot of spending this year on sponsorships and equipment, so my goal is to perhaps run one local at YesterCades and just chill out, finishing the year with the other events coming up and recoup a bit of the money spent.

Jemmillion: What events will we be seeing you attend in the future?

Shock: Right now, I have a local and a major on my plate to prepare us for: the next Monster Island tournament in November, which I believe KN is only supplying additional equipment and advertising for, and then NEC in December, where we’ll be doing our normal thing, with a great deal of involvement and streaming.

Jemmillion: If you could be one superhero and fighting game character, who would it be? Why?

Shock: I’ve never been too big into superheroes, much less ones from DC comics, so I’d have to go with Marvel. I suppose having Wolverine’s healing factor would be pretty damn convenient and not too unrealistic. If I chose that, I’d probably then pick Sabretooth, so we’ll go with him.

As for fighting game characters, sorry, not from MK…Hugo!

You can follow Shock at the below social media sites:

https://twitter.com/umkshock

https://www.youtube.com/ewashock

https://www.facebook.com/umkshock

For the latest updates/information from UMK, DTZ, and Kombat Network, you can follow:

Kombat Network:

http://kombatnetwork.com/

https://www.facebook.com/KombatNetwork

https://www.youtube.com/user/KombatNetwork

https://twitter.com/kombatnetwork

http://www.twitch.tv/kombatnetwork