Interview with New Top 100 Melee Player Sloth | Darktooth

Rosario "Darktooth" Fuschetto, a Fox main, is the newly ranked #88 on SSBMRank 2017. He hails from Long Island, is #1 on the Long Island Power Rankings, #10 on the New York City Power Rankings, and plays for Sloth E-Sports Club. I spoke with Darktooth about his history with competitive Melee and his thoughts on the current meta.

What was your introduction to competitive Melee?

Darktooth: I started getting interested in competitive Melee all the way back in 2013 when I first watched APEX 2013. That was my first actual real experience watching a tournament, and that is what turned my eyes on to actually watching Melee for the first time basically, because I would play Smash Bros. Brawl back then, and me and my friends were really serious about playing Brawl, and we had tournaments at my house and in school and things like that, but Melee was kind of like that side extra game that we really didn’t play that much.

But once I watched APEX 2013 and watched the crazy amount of sets. I watched Mang0 play for the first time, Hungrybox, I watched PP play for the first time, and that was kind of what made me feel like, “Wow! This game is like, really cool, and it’s not just like an old game for the GameCube, like it’s got hard stuff to do, everyone gets excited over it, and I wanted to follow the storylines.”

So long story short, once I started going back to school I noticed that people were playing Project M in the small reserve part of the library. Eventually I started bringing Melee, and I started playing with them more, and over time once I started playing with them more I just started liking it more and more, and then I started playing by myself.

What do you think drew you to Fox? Did you pick him right away or did you start with someone else?

Darktooth: No actually, I didn’t start with Fox. When I first started the game way way back I played Captain Falcon. Captain Falcon was my original inspiration because when I started watching APEX 2013, it made me dig even further back for even more Melee sets, and I started watching a Falcon called SilentSpectre, or people call him Jeff, and he was my main inspiration for wanting to get really at Falcon and good at Melee in general.

A lot of people don’t know that, I actually started as a Falcon main a long time ago. After I think three or four months of playing Falcon, I decided that Falcon wasn’t the character I wanted to play and I started getting really inspired by PPMD, or Dr. PeePee, and I started playing Falco right after that. Falco had a long spree, I played him for the rest of 2013, and it wasn’t until I think early 2014 when I started playing Fox because I felt like Fox made sense more with how I understood Melee and how I played Melee, and I really liked being fast and being able to get in people’s face and pressing a lot of buttons and all that. That was a lot of fun for me so I eventually started playing Fox and my inspiration switched over to Mang0.

What’s the origin of your tag?

Darktooth: Darktooth comes from a game that I had on the PSP, it’s called Twisted Metal, the one that I had was Twisted Metal: Head-On. People always think that my tag means like a dentist’s mistake, or like I’m not cleanly or something like that, but nah Darktooth is actually the name of one of the bosses from Twisted Metal: Head-On. When I used to play that game I used to have so much fun and I used to bring my PSP everywhere when I was little, and when I signed up for an email account when I first made my YouTube channel back when I was like in middle school, I needed a name so I was like Darktooth77. I dunno, I just couldn’t think of anything, and then eventually I just held onto Darktooth for all the online games I played, and when I started entering tournaments I was like, “I guess I’ll just be Darktooth.”

2017 was obviously a breakout year for you, do you personally think your play dramatically improved or did we just sort of get to see you travel more and get to see more of you?

Darktooth: That’s an interesting question because I would argue that my level of play was steadily improving ever since like 2015, but it was kind of stifled from me being away from competitive Melee because I went away to school so I couldn’t be competing during the school year while I was at college. But every time I would come home I would try my best to enter as many local tournaments as I could. I didn’t have a car, I didn’t have a license, so I had to get rides from people.

In 2017, this was my first year actually having a car, so it was my decision of when I would go to a tournament and whenever I could go to a tournament, whether it be a local, whether it be a national. Obviously, me being picked up by my team, Sloth E-Sports Club, earlier last year, they helped me be able to fly out to more events and be able to show myself. So honestly, I feel like it’s a little bit of both, where I was able to get more exposure as a player, I was able to go to way more events than I’ve gone to before (I think I went to 20 plus tournaments in 2017, which is like way more than my lifetime career) while also steadily improving on the sidelines.

When looking at your results, it’s clear that unlike some of the other top 100 Foxes that we see have breakouts with a lot of peaks and valleys in their play, you have a lot of consistency and drop far fewer sets to unknown players. What do you think enables you to stay so consistent?

Darktooth: I think it’s in part due to my playstyle, I think my playstyle gives to much a more solid and not risky type of play, where I notice that for a lot of up-and-coming Foxes, they have that matchup where they’re not sure how to approach it. I personally love Melee, like Melee just a game is so much fun to me. I play almost every character in the cast and I just love playing Melee. I think me loving Melee for what it is and being able to play all the characters at some kind of low-to-mid level makes me understand all the characters and all the weird matchups that Fox has.

So while I do lose to Puff sometimes, I just recently lost to a Puff at Genesis, like these weird matchups like Yoshi, the ones that you don’t see very often like Samus, these matchups I feel like I’m more familiar with what makes them tick. It lets me go into the set with a little more expectations than probably other people. I also just have a very generally, very safe but also systematic way to approach the neutral and the combo game where it’s always getting the most out of every opening you can, and sustaining a lead, where you don’t wanna lose your lead ever. So I think that’s probably what contributes to me not dropping sets to very low-level players, or not drowning in pools at any events. I think it’s always been that way ever since I started playing.

How do you tend to practice? Do you make a lot of use of tools like Netplay and the 20XX Training Pack?

Darktooth: When I first started playing by myself, I started playing a lot of just, you know, Dolphin, just opening up Dolphin and doing save states. I had three different save states where it was Fox vs. Peach on FD, Fox vs. Fox on FD, and Fox vs. Falco on Yoshi’s. I had those three save states and every time I would 4-stock the CPU, I would hit the save state button and go to a different one. So it was just repeated techskill practice over and over and over again until I felt like I was comfortable being able to SHFFL, wavedash, waveland and all that, and over time I was slowly adding more tech to my repertoire.

As I went away to college, Netplay was really important to me because that was my only way to play people. When I’m up at school, the only other person that was good was my roommate, and at the time he was severely under my skill level. Nowadays he’s much better because we practiced so much, but it was like we were in two different worlds. So I had to Netplay a lot of people back home, Netplay some other good people across the east coast, and eventually now that I’m at this point, I find myself practicing by myself again on a CRT.

20XX is really cool, I just recently started doing techskill practice on certain situations, like trying to edgeguard Peach or getting upthrow upair on Puff. And I think 20XX is really important and really powerful, and not many people use it to its full potential. They’re not using it to practice the right things, like it’s not to practice triple shine on a Fox’s shield in the middle of FD, it’s to practice stuff that you need to practice, like how to edgeguard a Marth, like how to get into position to be able to approach a Puff that’s fairing from the edge. You know there’s so many different things that you can practice with the 20XX replay feature, which I think I’m gonna start abusing much more just to start getting better at the weird situational things that don’t happen very often.

Tristate has shown itself to be a very deep region recently with the rise of players like you, Kaeon, iBDW, Zealous5000, and others. Have you seen Tristate improve dramatically over the past year or so, or do you think it’s, again, just that we’re getting to see more Tristate players?

Darktooth: I think Tristate always has been a fantastic region. I’ve known Kaeon, I’ve known iBDW, I’ve known all these players for so long, and we’ve always had very strong players. Animal, who’s another player from my region, he’s a fantastic Fox player, and he’s been well known for doing so many crazy things, and he’s been doing that for years. I think a lot of it is coming down to exposure of Tristate.

I think we had the 3rd highest amount of people in the top 100 nominees and in the top 100 hidden bosses, and in the top 100 in general. I think we’re a very strong region that’s kind of slept on because a lot of the Tristate talent is in the bottom 50, where as you go higher Tristate is less and less represented because I feel like we’re a region with really good top players, amazing mid-top players, and then pretty good mid-level players. So I personally have always thought that Tristate has been getting better, but always still was pretty good, and there are so many different generations and legacies from Tristate that have made the region as good as it is.

What’s your favorite matchup to play?

Darktooth: In the game? It’s always been changing as I’ve been playing Melee. It used to be Fox dittos, it used to be Fox Puff, it used to be Fox Peach. Nowadays it’s kind of weird, I feel like one of my favorite matchups in the game right now is maybe either Fox Sheik or maybe, honestly like Falco dittos, because I also have a secondary Falco that I play sometimes, but there’s like a certain joy that I get from playing another Falco and trying something out with them. There are so many differences in both playstyles that you can kind of see when you play Falco dittos.

But if we’re sticking to strictly Fox I think right now for my favorite matchup to play I either wanna say Fox Fox or Fox Ice Climbers. With Fox Fox I feel like it’s a crazy matchup where anything could happen, and I feel very comfortable because all of my close friends are Fox mains, and with Fox Ice Climbers I’ve always had no issue because I practice so much against CPUs that killing Nana I could do in my sleep since it’s just another CPU. So I feel like when I go into tournament sets those are the ones that I really feel comfortable against.

What would you say is your hardest matchup?

Darktooth: Oh man, again, that’s always something that’s changed. Right now, I feel like the one that I could go into a set and be like, “man, I have no idea what’s going on” is Marth to a point. I feel like a Marth could really get all over me and make me feel uncomfortable, because Marth has a very grab-heavy game and I feel like one of my weaknesses in the neutral is how much I shield, and a lot of Marths can find their opening on me as long as I’m not swarming them. I would say either Marth or Falco right now because both of them have very lockdown playstyles, at least the ones that play against me, and I found myself struggling a lot with characters that keep me from moving around them.

What sort of players, if any, do you think you take inspiration from with your gameplay?

Darktooth: The list goes on, but I think I’ve always been the crazy diehard Mang0 fan, and it’s always been the way that I’ve approached Melee is in his school of thought of Melee. He was my main inspiration probably for the past three years. Lately, I feel like I take a lot of inspiration from Leffen as well in some of his optimal-style Fox gameplay. In a way, I also take pages out of PPMD still. I’m trying to adapt like the movement aspect of playing the neutral, and that was what PP has always done so wonderfully. But I think right now I would always call my inspiration to even be where I am and be playing the game still would probably be Mang0.

Everyone wants to beat everyone they can obviously, but is there anyone in particular, players or matchups, that you want to improve against? Who’s next on your hit list? Who’s that one player you can’t wait to get another shot at in bracket?

Darktooth: I feel like there’s two parts to my answer, where part one is who do I feel really want to be able to get a shot at playing again and who do I really wanna learn how to beat, and I think that would be 2Saint. 2Saint is the top 100 Puff player from New York. He’s a fantastic Puff player. He’s been doing some great things lately, and I think he’s a wonderful player, and every time we’ve played he’s always beaten me. He is probably one of the only people that I have ever played that has a vastly strong win record against me because of how different he plays Jigglypuff to any other Puff I’ve ever played. He’s just very smart, he makes really good adaptations mid-game, and I really really wanna be able to find my way to study him and get an edge over him the next time we play. Hopefully, the next time we play it goes a better way but I would say he’s definitely my rival.

The player that I really wanna play in general, just to be able to just see how I do and to be able to learn from them, is the one that I never ever got a chance to play, PPMD. There’s something special about how PP plays where he can control the game without hitting the A button, and there’s something so beautiful about how he approaches Melee. I want to be able to experience what he thinks because you can get a majority of learning from somebody just by playing them. It’s almost like when you play someone in Melee you can peek into their brain and see what goes on, so I really wanna see if I can get a chance to play him if he ever comes back, and learn a little bit more about the Falco matchup.

Anything else you wanna add?

Darktooth: I wanna give a humongous shoutout to my team, Sloth E-Sports Club, they picked me up back when they were Team Ascension, all the way back in, I think it was like mid-2016, back when I was getting 4th and 3rd at my locals. But they believed in me, they thought that I was an up-and-coming player and they thought that I could be doing a lot of good stuff, so they started paying for my entry fees back when I was still an up-and-coming player. But then once they rebranded to Sloth E-Sports Club and got some new ownership, they started being able to pay for my flights and me being able to go to events. They’re always messaging me on Discord, they’re always asking me how I’m doing, they’re always wishing me good luck, they’re always tweeting me out, they’re always watching even when I’m not telling them to watch, they’re always there for me, and they are seriously such a good organization to me.

I could not ask for a better organization than where I am and I honestly don’t think I deserve them as an organization, but I also wanna give incredible shoutouts to the local players in my scene, Long Island. Long Island is a fantastic region with amazing players and amazing friends. Me and Kaeon are both from Long Island, and I think that we have the ability to spawn many more top players as the years go on, and of course, one final shoutout to my girlfriend Danielle because if it wasn’t for her I don’t think I would have gotten good. She really helped me turn my mindset around when I was in a really bad place in my life, and actually, once I started dating her was when I started having my steady progression to the top. She’ll always be my inspiration, you’ll always see the “DNYL” tag when I’m playing on stream, and that’s always a dedication to her.

You can follow Darktooth on his Twitter, @DarktoothVG and his Twitch, twitch.tv/darktoothvg.