LetsPlayALoveGame

Lookin' g00d, PokeCommunity. My name is Nathan, but you can call me LoveGame. I've been playing Pokémon since Gen 1 was new, and often credit the series for jumpstarting my love for gaming. I've played almost every mainline game and a good number of spinoffs. Since Platinum's release in early 2009, I was heavily into the competitive scene for many years. These days, I'm pretty washed-up and mostly retired from competitive, having shifted my focus to BlazBlue and other fighting games.

I'm a 28 year old dude from Texas and I'm aspiring to be a director. My inspirations are George Lucas, Clint Eastwood, and Kevin Smith. I enjoy a wide variety of music; mainly rap/hip-hop and metal, and if my username didn't tip you off, I have a massive crush on Lady Gaga.

Even in my earliest days of competitive play, I was firmly what you'd call a 'low tier hero', as pretty much all of my competitive teams were made up of my favorites, rather than sticking to OU staples and other meta ezmode stuff. Most notably, my main team always contained both Mantine and Sandslash, which were both considered NU or UU on a good day. Even though I got completely steamrolled in the first month or so, something clicked after that, and I became notoriously good at reads. I'd go on to battle randoms I met through YouTube and other sites during the heyday of DPPt. I'd regularly seek out fan-organized online tournaments and won a fair number of them over the year. Sadly we weren't able to finish them all because players would sometimes quit, but I had a pretty strong showing whenever I'd enter. I continued to play regularly well into the end of Gen 4's lifespan, eventually migrating most of my mons to HeartGold, though eventually my Platinum save file was corrupted, losing a few mons in the process. All things considered, I adored Gen 4 to death and I think I could've made decent placings at real tournaments at the time, but I was only 16 and definitely didn't have any sort of funding for travel. I occasionally used Shoddy Battle, but strongly preferred playing on an actual console, since all the good players were on there.

I tried to like Gen 5, but I just couldn't. I didn't like the games to begin with and hated how the metagame shifted. Not to mention, the online sucked and there was no option to set your team to lvl 100. I remain an outspoken critic of these games to this day despite them being basically the sacred cows of the franchise.

I got back into competitive during XY, did a lot of Showdown and battling friends and randoms like the old days, and made my first "true" comeback since '09. I was a regular on Pokemon Showdown and established a Skype group to organize battles and the like. I didn't get to do online tournaments as often as before, but I laddered decently with a gimmicky sun-based team on Showdown. Around late 2014 I burned out for a while and shifted my focus to competitive Smash Bros instead, though that dream didn't last long. However, I was also in some pretty bad financial straits at the time, and GameFreak had the BRILLIANT idea to make XY and ORAS incompatible with each other, so I was left in the dust pretty quickly. Ironically this was the first time I ever got to attend a tournament in-person at AKon 26. A lot of the players that year had no idea what they were doing and to be blunt, I would've steamrolled the whole thing if I had ORAS at the time. I did my best to coach my friends and help them practice before the big day, but they ended up choking and losing after a couple rounds. It wasn't all their fault since the tournament itself had a dumb gimmick and was poorly organized.

I did eventually get AS, but the competitive spark wasn't really there anymore. I kept toying with the notion of making a true comeback and even tried to formulate new teams and strategies when Sun/Moon released. By the time SwSh came out, I was just burnt out on Pokemon in general and didn't buy them despite having the money on hand. As of right now, that's where I sit. I'm not currently chomping at the bit to return to competitive Pokemon, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility of returning one day. We'll see.

I'm overall a pretty chill and agreeable guy, so I never got too serious about winning or losing, though incidentally this also meant I was remarkably thin-skinned and really had a hard time taking the trash talk myself. At one point I aspired to make my YouTube channel a central hub for my WiFi/PS! battles, but little came of it since all I had to work with was a phone camera and a dying PC.

During my tenure in the scene, I was somewhat known for being really outspoken and critical of the scene itself, and was absolutely full of hot takes. Admittedly this made me come off as obnoxious and arrogant, since I always thought I was right about everything and thought I knew better than the pros. I was never necessarily anti-tier, but I did think most standard teams, especially stall teams, took zero skill or thinking to use effec

I'm a typical weeb into a multitude of games, with a heavy lean toward anime fighters like BlazBlue and Guilty Gear. I mainly stick to PC these days, though I also own a Switch, a PS4, a 3DS, my phone, and a rarely-used Wii.

Since 2020 I've been more serious about fitness and cooking, and I'm also an amateur cosplayer.

I enjoy learning about wars and military tactics. I am also studying writing/directing-related things, as that is the career I am pursuing.

I enjoy anything music-related, especially rap/hip-hop culture or anything related to Lady Gaga.

I love animals, and have owned many cats over the years.

The man destined to be king!



The ultimate low-tier hero!