avid modder, occasional TO and montage video producer from Germany

top 12 in the Jawbreakers Stunfest Qualifier (artwork of Drop by Kagu)

What names do you go by?

I used to go by Troke for the entirety of April. Which was based on a dumb coincidence where I talked to Neer and had one of my usual mobile spelling errors and I wrote “I’m having ha troke” instead of “having a stroke”. I wanted to go away from “Hang Boy” since quite some time as I specifically wanted to get rid of the “Boy” and just “Hang” felt wrong and was still associated to Hang Boy anyway. But I guess I’m back to that now. Reason to why I wanted to rid myself of “Boy” was as simple as me linking my online persona to my OC (By choosing her for profile pictures on basically any platform) which then of course lead people to believe she is a male based on the thought “Hey this is Hang Boy. So the profile picture must also be Hang Boy”. The name Hang Boy btw occurred just as I started my first step into the internet, when I was a big fan of the Binding of Isaac. So i needed an online name and I ventured through Isaac related things. Which was when I came across the Tarot card “Hanged Man”. So I just took that and adjusted a bit.

How do you feel about your performance in this tournament?



Was pretty okay. I didn’t expect to get far into it. Although I’m a bit sad I didn’t make the Top 8 picture. Only needed one win more as well.

However I would have been disappointed in everyone else, if they allowed for me to reach Top 3. So good that didn’t happen.

What was your strategy preparing for and competing in the tournament?



I haven’t played Blaze in weeks. The only times I played recently was to get some recordings for a Toxic montage.

Right before the tournament I was more worried to finish my Isaac run. Which I did win! And during the tournament was pretty much just “Turn some nice music on, jam to it, play some Nitro, do some silly cuff shenanigans, do dumb parry grab down throws so the viewers can laugh over something”. I did “fly” with Nitro in one match but sadly it wasn’t streamed so only Hellraiser was able to see the glory of Flying Cuff™.

Which was your hardest match of the tournament?



Hellraiser I suppose. He did kick me out of it. I never really played him or saw him play and he didn’t fall for my aggressive playstyle, so it was a tough time.



What surprised you most about the tournament?



Cherry’s second place finish. I know he’s good, I think he’s underrated even.

But second place is a really good finish. Even more so beating JawDrop since, in my opinion, he has some of the craziest tech and can be really really confusing to play against. (Yea he also has weird lag even tho he lives in France but whatever :p)

Is there anyone you didn’t face that you wish you did?



I would have wanted to play Defur if possible. To some degree I see his entrance as a sort of meme entry.

But jokes aside and game aside, I can only take my hat off to this man and his effort for the tournament scene. Sadly didn’t get to play Daio. It feels like a tradition to face off against him in FellowsTV hosted tournaments.

Which always goes the same way tbf. He counters my playstyle hard, I’m annoyed to play against him, don’t bother changing my playstyle in order to win, get demolished.

But the tradition counts! I’d put Neer in the same boat. Hate playing against him but it just kinda has to be.

How did you get into Lethal League?



A friend bought it for me. We played a couple of games, he had to leave. I went into QM, found Garu, got absolutely demolished, he friended me and pulled me into it. I specifically remember seeing his Latch corpse juggles and thinking “Man this is so cool, I want to be able to do this too”. So right of the bat I started to play for the style, which is what I still go by. Style > Efficiency It feels bad not having paid for LL nor Blaze but I bought LL for a bunch of friends so guess that checks out.

What’s your current Lethal League experience?



450+ hours in LL

340 hours in Blaze (As of now. 26.4.2019)

And a giant bunch of hours of community interaction and modding. I was very excited when asked to be beta testing and it fulfilled a childhood dream of being in video game credits. Despite only getting into Beta a month before release, I stacked up 90 hours before the game came out. Lots of 9 hour playtime days. It was massive fun. I bought almost all of the merch…got most signed by Tim & Dion too. I went to the Netherlands twice to meet TR. It was fun, they are cool people. Watching Dion doing a live dance off was pretty rad ngl. I brought self made cheesecake the second time, but Tim had to get it into the building since they check your bags for normal visitors and it wasn’t allowed to bring food. I’ll never forget the sight of Tim with his big bag looking like he’s smuggling a bomb into a convention.

Who are your main/side/counter character picks?



Everything. So yes random, it’s random. However I most enjoy playing Nitro because of all the dumb things he can do. Especially flying, cuff storage (specifically for down angle on the ground, to just pull a little bit forward) and half pull. Doombox is also very fun. Special>bunt>smash>parry>special>repeat can chain pretty often on some opponents and is hilarious. The only characters I “despise” playing are Toxic and Sonata. But only because I’m really bad with them.

What are your favourite character outfits?



Dust and Ashes. Just their whole design. For real tho. There’s not really skins that stick out to me since I use my own modded ones.

Can you share your favourite/most used custom outfit?



Hm I missed that that’s not “outfits”…well take a load of skins!

In order Mothyman

Jeviman

Spacetor

Golden Switch

Drop Palette Sonata

Supercharged Latch

PaDice-a the Rapper

Skull Grunt

Supercharged Grid

Supercharged Doombox

Dropbox

FYouBox

Nitro with a blue, white and mint color scheme I made for every character

and lastly my Toxic skin with that same color scheme

What are your stage preferences?



Idc. I play random so who really cares. I guess insert the usual “Paradise field eclipse succs!!!”

What input method do you use?



PS4 Controller

Dpad for movement

L1 Bunt

R1 Swing

R2 Grab I used to play LL on a cheap SNES controller using only face buttons. When I was over at Dutch Comic Con with Serchiot I played a couple games of Blaze with his PS4 controller and really liked his layout and the feel of the controller. So I just sneakily stole his layout and got myself a PS4 controller. Coming from all face buttons, I needed some time to get used to it.

But in my opinion it’s just superior this way.

How do you make your character montage videos?



I have two ways of recording clips. Just consciously recording with OBS or putting Shadowplay on and saving every time something cool happens.

I usually just boot up Blaze and jump into ranked to get some games in.

With the Toxic montage it was a bit different since I now have a 4K monitor but 4K can hardly be recorded at 60fps and setting the output resolution in OBS to 1080p got me weird screen effects.

So every time I went to record, I put the resolution of my monitor to 1080p in order to at least get that in good quality.

Then I just cut all the good clips out of the recordings and mix ‘n’ match ‘em.

What’s usually the hardest decision is what music to use. There’s been a couple of songs that I’d like to use, but they either don’t fit over Blaze gameplay, don’t fit my playstyle or were just the wrong length. My two favourite Montages are definitely for Candyman and Nitro. Candyman took a long way to develop, because I just wanted to show off so much.

It’s one of the few montages where I actually asked higher skill players for games instead of jumping into ranked.

Picking the song was really hard, I was only sure I wanted a Klaus Veen track, but OD V2 was too mainstream and most others were too short.

So in the end I opted for two songs with a break in between the montage. Splitting the clips into two sets, each song one. With the second part containing what I considered the more hype bursts. And for Nitro I actually had the montage pretty much done, but I wasn’t too happy with it. Still planned to just upload it like that tho.

However when I saw the Nitro voice actor interact with a community member in a way that could only be described as “incredibly wholesome”, I was inspired to redo most, if not all, of the clips and do the best I could.

For the first time actually going into training mode to lab some combos (mostly corpse juggles tbf) and eventually learning Flying Cuff™ too. Watching JawDrops Blazin’ Combo video and taking a slice off the Nitro plays there.

Which resulted in a montage I am very happy with.

What other games do you play?



It differs from time to time. The only games I always come back to are retro games like SMW, CTR or something like Mario Kart 8D.

Which I always enjoy playing at local tournaments and pretty successfully so even. People just can’t handle it when someone plays with one hand. Atm I also like playing TBoI Rebirth.

Will you come to Stunfest?



Probably not. Driving/Flying over to France is just very expensive. I would love to meet all my Baguettes (Lusked, Jawdrop, Aru and Lalou, who stated he can’t make it due to exams, yes I know). But exams and the neer-ing end of my apprenticeship is leaving a lot of work to be done.

So it probably won’t fit into my schedule. However never say no! Trips to Blaze events aren’t uncommon for me.

Is there anything else you’d like to say to the community?

