ST TheKing is no longer TheKing of the gamerscore leaderboards. RANCE6 dethroned him and managed to stay on top for the past couple of weeks. We’ve had a little chat with the new king of the leaderboards who we get to call Alessandro. We unveil all of his dirty secrets and ask him all the stuff you want to know (according to our forums at least). Why does this guy play so many video games? And how does he play all those Japanese games? Find out after the jump!

Nino: So first of; who are you? Where are you from, how old are you, what do you do for a living, what’s you’re name etc… Introduce yourself!
Alessandro: My name is Alessandro, I’m from Italy and I’m the owner of a videogame store.
Nino: Ahh, so that’s were you get all your games from!
Alessandro: No. I get the PAL games from my shop but I only collect Japanese games. I have all of the Xbox 360 games, Japanese and 2 American games. So I have all of the Xbox 360 games that are currently on the market.
Nino: So our forum member Geraldrog wants to know: do you actually speak Japanese?
Alessandro: I read and listen to Japanese and I speak a little. But you don’t have to speak Japanese to play the games.
Nino: Why did you choose to become the #1 in achievements? Did you want to beat ST TheKing or…?
Alessandro: No, the most important thing for me was to become the #1 in Italy. But later on my score grew because I have so much games and it kind of toke of from there.
Nino: How much do you play to get so many achievements?
Alessandro: About 12 – 16 hours per day. But I have to calm down in the following weeks, I’ll slow down to about 5 – 10 hours per day. I’m waiting for Japanese games to come out.
Nino: Wow, 5 – 10 hours per day is still sick, do you play at work?
Alessandro: Yeah in the morning particularly. I can play 4 hours in the morning, 5 in the evening and about 3 – 5 during the night.
Nino: Ah I see, you got a real advantage towards ST TheKing, do you look at his score and try to keep ahead of him or do you just don’t care about him?
Alessandro: Yeah I care, I wanted to know how crazy you’d have to be to get that much achievements and now I know. (laughs)

Chromehounds

Nino: Do you play games because you love to play or do you play certain games just to get achievements?
Alessandro: It’s hard to explain but I’ll try. I play Japanese games for fun, because I like them. I normally don’t like American games, I haven’t played American games for over 8 years. But I took this occasion to gain some American gaming experience. Now I must say that American games aren’t that bad but I’ll always prefer the Japanese ones.
Nino: So why did you choose for Xbox 360 then? Xbox is not really known for its Japanese support…
Alessandro: There are quite a few good Japanese games available for Xbox 360 but when the PS3 comes out I think I’ll stick to that.
Nino: Yeah that would make more sense. Our forum member Shiverzz wants to know if you still have a social life?
Alessandro: Working at a games store is a full blown socially life. When I get off I need my privacy. So this is the perfect way to do it for me.
Nino: I’m jealous. What was your favorite achievement?
Alessandro: One in Zoids. It was 250 wins with a certain type of opponent. It took me about 50 hours!
Nino: Was that also the hardest one?
Alessandro: It was the hardest one in Zoids. The hardest one to get is 5000 matches in Quake 4 but I didn’t get that one. Too much work for an American game. If it was Japanese I think I would’ve done it.
Nino: What game was the easiest to get achievements in?
Alessandro: X-Men III, NHL 2K6, FIFA 2006 all took about one day. NBA 2K6 took me 40 minutes.
Nino: What was your favorite game to get achievements in?
Alessandro: Probably Ridge Racer 6. Japanese games are very difficult and hard to get 1000GP in.
Nino: Do you play on a PAL Xbox or on a Japanese one?
Alessandro: I have one American, 2 European and 2 Japanese Xbox 360’s.
Nino: Nice, do you plan on keeping your #1 position, are you ever gonna quit?
Alessandro: I don’t like to be the #1 because there are other people that play more and better than me (ST for example). They’ll probably surpass me in like a week but I’d like to be in the top 5 for a while and then I’ll quit when the PS3 comes out.

Blazing Angels: Squadrons of WWII

Nino: Do you plan on being the #1 in PS3 Achievements?
Alessandro: It’ll be hard with all the Japanese competition but… I’ll try.
Nino: (laughs) Good luck with that!. Do you ever cheat to get certain achievements? For instance you can get a lot of achievements in Ghost Recon using God Mode…
Alessandro: Yeah I cheated in Ghost Recon and Blazing Angels. Blazing Angels would be impossible without cheats I think. It’s a very bad game, it’s fun with cheat but without them I wouldn’t have played it. Not even if you would’ve payed me.
Nino: Do you get much attention now that you’re the #1? A lot of interviews etc.?
Alessandro: I get a lot of questions on Xbox Live. People keep asking me how I play imported games and I get about 30 – 40 friends requests per day.
Nino: Wow that sucks. Maybe it’s time for a second Xbox Live account?
Alessandro: No I’ll only use my RANCE6 account. I’ll just delete all the friend requests.
Nino: I can imagine that when there are a lot of games out there that it gets a lot harder to get more achievements and stay ahead of other people…
Alessandro: No at the contrary. If there are more games I’ll buy all of them. I can easily beat all of them this way.
Nino: Yeah but if there are like 10 games coming out in a week it must be hard to keep up with the rest right?
Alessandro: Yeah. I’ll probably play about 16 – 18 hours per day when that happens.
Nino: Wow, don’t you ever get sick of playing games?
Alessandro: No! Never! I’ve played for about 22 years. A real gamer doesn’t get sick of games.

Ridge Racer 6

Nino: Nice spirit, keep it up! What games are you really looking forward to?
Alessandro: Spectral Force 3, Chromehounds and MotoGP 06 for June. And I’m looking forward to Zegapain XDR, it seems to be good. And Shotokou Battle X seems to be a good game.
Nino: What’s your favorite Xbox 360 game and what’s your all time favorite?
Alessandro: All time – Tengaimakyou 2 Maru for PC Engine Duo. The best RPG ever made. For Xbox 360 I’ll go with Ridge Racer 6.
Nino: What do you think of the Xbox 360 as a system?
Alessandro: I think it’s a pretty good system, just like the Dreamcast. But it seems to have a lot of bugs and glitches, developers have to spend more time testing their games. Hitman Blood Money froze 3 times when I played it!
Nino: Yeah that sucks. Our forum member Cage likes to know if you like peanut butter sandwiches?
Alessandro: (laughs) Not bad!
Nino: Do you have anything to say to ST TheKing?
Alessandro: Not really but Urgamanix surpassed ST TheKing, he’s in the second spot now. He also plays Japanese games.
Nino: Do you have anything to say to Urgamanix?
Alessandro: Yeah, good luck!
Nino: I guess that wraps it up, thanks a lot for your time!
Alessandro: No problem.

This is the second edition of our Athletes Special, you can find the first one with BillyBlaze, the Geometry Wars champ, here.