Interview with The Gaming Contest CPMA winner Atul Karanth

‘The Gaming Contest’ is officially over and its time to experience the aftermath. Today , we speak to the winner of the CPMA tournament, Atul ‘Salaxzar’ Karanth. Well known among Quake 3 players to be absolutely ruthless in the arena, this young man is quite different in real life. Read on to find out more about what makes him tick and his views on the recent tournament.

AshR : For those who don’t know you yet, please go on and introduce yourself.

Salaxzar : Hi there, I’m Atul Karanth. I’m 21 years old and I just finished my engineering course. I love playing around with Photoshop, Dreamweaver etc. I also love playing chess and watching animes like Naruto.

AshR : When did you stumble upon the world of PC gaming?

Salaxzar : It all started with my cousin introducing me to Atari , my parents at that time were unwilling to buy me one; so I used to sneak off to his place on weekends and play all day long only to be grounded the next day . My first PC game was Motorhead, a racing game which I used to play when I was in the 11th standard at a local cafe until I got busted by my mom :P. Then came Half-Life, UT and Quake 2 which kept me going for quite sometime.

AshR : You were a good UT99 player in the early days. When did you switch over to Quake 3 and why? Most UT players hate Quake and vice versa.

Salaxzar : I used to play it online before I even knew about the existence of sites like kawabonka.com and was part of some Swiss clans which broke off eventually … I even took part in a few clanbase matches with 200-250ms ping .. those were good times. I came across Quake 3 when Gr1M and Siddharth, two guys who were decent q3 players at that time, got a LAN server running. Since then it’s been OSP/CPMA etc.

AshR : Do you practice everyday?

Salaxzar : When I get the time, yeah. Now that the Frag-Shack server is temporarily down, I either play on foreign servers for kicks. Of course, you know very well that I also pester both you and Frazer to host to get a few games going.

AshR : You have participated in many Quake 3 tournaments, both CPMA and OSP. Could you tell us a bit about them?

Salaxzar : There have been many local tourneys going on at various colleges. I’ve taken part and won some of them. Apart from that I entered the Quake tournament scene pretty late. I couldn’t go to any of the annual Surfs Up tournaments at Pune for some reason or the other but I really don’t regret it. My first big win was the Frag-Shack online OSP tournament which was sponsored by Logitech. We all bore the brunt of our horrible ISPs and managed to finish the games on time. The final was against you and to be quite honest, I really had a tough time there. Blitzkrieg ‘04 CPMA tourney was a huge success and I stood 3rd which wasn’t disappointing considering the fact that I had not practiced for it at all. I was still in vacation mode. ‘The Gaming Contest’ was a good result for me though although I would have liked to face a few potentially good players in the later rounds like Frazer, for example.

AshR : How was the transition from OSP to CPMA for you?

Salaxzar : The first CPMA demo I ever saw was Rat vs Vo0 which was about a year back. I had one look at the demo and I just sat there shaking my head because I couldn’t believe the stuff they pulled off in that match. I remember trying a few early versions of CPMA during my OSP days but since everyone was playing OSP back then, I didn’t give it much thought. The transition was easy initially but specific jumps took a longer time. Thanks to the help I got from guys like spammah, mike and you, I was able to nail them pretty soon. CPMA movement and weapon switching is much faster, so it is never that easy to simply switch mods. I had to increase my sensitivity and reduce my mouse acceleration a bit. I love both mods though.

AshR : ‘The Gaming Contest’ made a bad impression on many gamers due to many reasons. Word is around that the tournament was a complete disaster. What was your experience playing there? Could we get your opinions on the event?

Salaxzar : Well, the management didn’t expect so many people to turn up. There were 85 clans for CS alone. Due to that, the schedule was disrupted and entire tournament suffered. I think I speak on the behalf of everyone who played there when I say that the whole organization was very poor. Firstly, the registrations were free. Every Tom, Dick and Harry registered and it made an impact on the overall gaming experience. Secondly, the prizes were quite bad. The winners for the individual games got a wireless keyboard and a mouse each which was nothing compared to what we’ve seen from other tournaments. Runners up got 10 CDs which were quite useless. Who wants encyclopedia, Charlie Chaplin and SOF2 as prizes for a gaming tournament? Ok, it’s educational in a way but geez! Finally, the actual games didn’t follow a set of rules. They were changed as needed. No offense to the organizers. I’m not saying I know how to handle a tourney but cutting down on the publicity and the weird dancing disco lights may have saved them some cash for prizes. If you ask Sagar (SAiNT2K), he says “eh? Crossroads phir se? Hall book kar ke aaraam se cash bachtha tha, the music’s driving everyone crazy for FPS games, no sound only!”

AshR : It’s clear now that this tournament was a bad experience for you as well as for others. Do you plan on continuing to play the game hoping that it will be productive for you in the near future or are you hanging up your Railgun for a while?

Salaxzar : Obviously yes, I’m looking forward to Blitzkrieg ‘05. I’m sure Peter, Sanjay, Yogi and the rest of the guys will be back with a back to give us another great tournament this year. They say Q3 is dying but then they’ve all been saying that for a very long time now. I know Q3 CPM for one isn’t. In the eventuality that it does ‘die out’, we’ll always have Quake 4 for the next FPS game, yeah?

AshR : How was the competition? Were the opponents tough enough for you? Gr1M surely must have given you a really hard time in the final. The score shows it.

Salaxzar : Yea, it was CPM1A, his favourite map. I lost the toss. The organizers didn’t let us play a 3-mapper due to time constraints. He was leading by around 10 frags halfway into the game. I somehow managed to comeback.

AshR : And how about the level of Quaking in India, be it CPMA or OSP. What are your views on that?

Salaxzar : Compared to the international scene, we don’t come close. Seeing the average European player flying around on a server leaves me a bit frustrated as I cannot compete with them given the current scene here. What I mean is the lack of sponsorship. However we do have a few players who are really skilled. Given the right exposure and support, they may be able to do very well even in international events in upcoming FPS games. There’s you, AshR for one, my Q3 OSP/CPMA rival for years lol. Trunks is another really steady player. I like his style a lot. There are other players in Nasik and in Mumbai like Frazer and Gr1M who are good.

AshR : Are you playing for any clan at the moment? Or are you walking down the solo road?

Salaxzar : I’m currently in the FPS division of VirtuaSport. It’s a new multi-gaming clan with skilled players for many games. The most prominent division as of now would be the Warcraft 3 TFT division which has got some of India’s best players.

AshR : Are there any upcoming FPS games that have caught your eye?

Salaxzar : Quake 4 is the only one I’m really looking forward to. I haven’t kept in touch with what’s new as I’ve been having exams and stuff.

AshR : Tell us your current gaming PC configuration, please.

Salaxzar : Pretty low end in my opinion, AMD Athlon XP 2000+, Asus a7n8x mobo, 512 mb DDR 266 RAM, Geforce fx 5200 ultra , Microsoft Wheel Mouse optical, Samsung Keyboard etc .

AshR : Alright, thank you so much for your time and patience. All the best to you for your future plans. Any shoutouts to friends?

Salaxzar : AAAAH, to all my friends in Goa, for quite a ‘memorable’ experience. To that cute attender girl at ‘The Gaming Contest’, I along with Trunks could recognize her anywhere. To all the nasik TH clan guys for their presence and making it quite funny and memorable out there. To my old friend, Sandy. To umm mom dad? for not suspecting that I even went to such a tourney { ok whoever calls them up gets sumthing up his arse}… and to you =D. Thank you.

Ashwath Ravee