Panda is happy to announce that speedrunning extraordinaire Simply is joining the team. He’s a real superstar from what we hear. The speedrunner from Minnesota made waves in the Super Mario 64 community when he broke the world record for the 120 star run after overcoming his own trials and tribulations. We were fortunate enough to have a chat with him about the path he’s taken to this point.
Panda: Tell us a bit about yourself and who you are.
S: I’m Simply and I like to speedrun video games and make people laugh pretty much.
Panda: How did you end up choosing your tag?
S: My name in games was always Rusty for a while but I think that name was taken, so my first Twitch name was something like berserker with a bunch of numbers. Later I kind of thought that name was dumb so I changed it to SimplyN64 since I simply just played N64 games. Everyone ended up just calling me Simply so eventually that ended up becoming the name.
Panda: How did you first get into speedrunning?
S: At first I was actually interested in becoming a pro League of Legends player. One day I just so happened to stumble upon a Super Mario 64 speedrunner by the name of Siglemic while on Twitch back during August of 2012. What he was doing with the game was so cool that he inspired me to boot the game up and try a trick or two for myself. The rest is history as they say.
Panda: Any particular reason why you chose Super Mario 64 as your main game?
S: I didn’t really think I was going to stick to Mario 64 for so long honestly, but it’s so much fun. The game just has insanely good mechanics and is in general just very well made. Mario 64 also happens to be one of the few Nintendo games I remember from my childhood. My memories from those days are a bit hazy now, since I was a very young lad, but I definitely remember playing that game.
Panda: Could you tell us about some of your biggest accomplishments in speedrunning?
S: Of course the 120 star world record is by far my biggest accomplishment, so I don’t think I really have any other milestones that are that big in comparison. The first thing that felt really big was when I had hit third place on the leaderboard for the first time. I don’t remember what year that was honestly, but it was when I had told my parents about me doing speedrunning and streaming and all that fun stuff. Until then they didn’t really know what I was doing for some years. They probably just assumed I was in call playing Call of Duty or something whenever I talked to the chat.
Panda: Speaking more on your 120 Star World record, could you tell us a bit more about how your journey to getting that record was?
S: It was very long with a lot of on and off moments. Mentally it was super difficult. I never really thought I would get that far and there were moments where I thought that if I couldn’t do this then I couldn’t do anything in life. In general I was just in my own head a lot. Thankfully taking breaks from the game, sometimes a year plus even helped me when I was stuck in that mindset. There was also a point when I thought my run was over due to my hands being basically destroyed by carpal tunnel tendonitis. It still blows my mind that I was able to get past that, since it really just controlled my life for a very long time. The pain made it more difficult to do anything, let alone play Mario. Fortunately I was able to figure out a solution.
Panda: How you were able to push past that is very inspiring, [we’re] very happy for you.
S: Yeah thank you. It was mostly a book that a viewer of mind recommended to me that helped me change my mindset quite a bit, which helped me conquer the pain.
Panda: Switching lanes a bit, how did you first get into making music?
S: So my brother had always been my music guy so to speak, always showing me new music and stuff like that. One day he showed me the song Not Afraid by Eminem and it was unlike anything I had heard before, so new and exciting. I ended up getting hooked on rap after that and sat on the idea of making music or a mixtape. I sat on that until three or four years later when I was in my later years of high school and started making beats. Soon after that I started rapping on them and dropped a mixtape, which was very fun to make. From there I just kept dropping new music and here I am now.
Panda: If [we] may ask about the context of one of your songs, what’s the story behind that Dedo on Dedo song you have out? It seems very interesting.
S: *Laughs* sure. So at the time I had recently moved in with fellow streamer Mizkif, and he has a pet bunny named Dedo. One night we were bored at home with some friends and I had busted out a beat for us to freestyle on. Someone said “Dedo on Dedo”, and that had just turned into rhyming Dedo’s name with other things. The song kind of just came together from that, just a fun song about a rabbit that lives this crazy double life if you want to see it that way.
Panda: What made you choose Panda as your new home?
S: It was pretty much a call with Alan that convinced me, he’s the man. He was very friendly and I had just liked what he was saying about the team being sort of a family. Things like making content together with everyone for example sounded exciting. I also think being on the team will be a worthwhile experience that will give me information and knowledge that I wouldn’t get otherwise.
Panda: Glad to have you on the team man. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to have this interview. Is there anything else you would like to say to those reading at home?
S: I’M READY TO BE A PANDAAAAA!
Join us in welcoming Simply by following his content and socials.
Twitch - Simply
YouTube - SimplyN64
Twitter - Simplyn64