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How GrandPooBear quit the slopes to become king of Mario Maker
Speedrunner and streamer GrandPooBear hoped to spend his life on the mountains, but a life-threatening experience resulted in him joining Twitch and he hasn’t looked back since.
Heavenly Mountain Resort near Lake Tahoe is one of the most picturesque places on earth. The snow covered mountains dominate the skyline, with the gigantic freshwater lake spreading out in front of you. Make it to the top of the resort and the views are incredible, with the bright white snow lighting up the lake below it. For those who prefer colder settings over burning beaches, it really is a paradise.
David Hunt doesn’t quite experience the views the same way us average folk might. While we could sit in one place and look at them for hours he prefers fleeting glances of the scenery around him as he hurtles down the mountain at breathtaking speeds. He started skiing at the age of two, but turned to snowboarding when his older sister dated a snowboarder who he thought “was the coolest dude in the world.”
This decision, in its own twisting and exhilarating way, led to a remarkable adventure; as GrandPooBear, one of the world’s first professional video game speedrunners, players who compete to complete seemingly impossible video game feats in the fastest time possible (and in Hunt’s case, as entertaining as possible too).
Career going off piste
Hunt was good at snowboarding, so much so that he would compete in some of the biggest local events on offer and not embarrass himself. He spent thousands of hours riding, and at his peak would spend over 100 days of the year on the slopes. It was his life, and he fully expected to be working on the mountains for the rest of his days in one way or another.
One day at the Heavenly resort he was making his way across the mountain to hit up the High Roller park. This purposely built area featured unnatural snow structures such as ramps and jumps, crafted to allow riders to push themselves when it came to acrobatics and riding skill. But before he could get there things went horribly wrong.
“All of a sudden I just remember getting smashed into and hurled down the mountain,” recalls Hunt. “Next thing a guy starts yelling at me in a thick accent, I try to stand up, my legs give out and I puke up blood, and the next thing I know I am in the hospital. Broken kneecap, torn MCL, broken L1, tons of internal bleeding and swelling of my spleen and entire digestive system. I spent one week in ICU, another week in the regular hospital, then I was discharged.”
The accident on the mountain alone would have been bad enough, but just five days after being released from the hospital he was right back and closer to death than ever before. He developed a very high temperature while recovering from home, which prompted his then fiancée (now wife) to take him back to the hospital, where it was discovered he had a serious internal infection and was rushed into surgery.
“I was literally dying,” says Hunt. “I remember waking up after that first surgery feeling like ‘my god, I feel 10 times better’. After that it was a couple months of just random surgeries and draining of the infection. I had these tubes sucking all the infection away from me for an extra month, even after I was discharged the second time. I looked like Cyrax from Mortal Kombat! I lost 50 pounds going from 160 to 110. After that it was just a long road of rehab and weight gaining to get back to whatever my new normal would be.”
Just like that Hunt’s life was forever changed. One freak accident on the mountain forced him to totally reassess his future, with a life on the mountain now looking unlikely, and certainly not possible for at least a few years. “I thought my whole life was ruined,” he says.
Reload
His recovery was slow, as you might expect for such a major health scare, but he had one of his other major loves in life to help him through; video games. Having first started playing games around the same time he started skiing at age two, it had become a lifelong passion, alongside snowboarding and basketball, and was a natural way to spend time while recovering from the accident. But it was actually a friend wanting some attention during this time that really kicked off his new life.
GrandPooBear has played a lot of Mario games
© Marv Watson/Red Bull Content Pool
“My friend asked if I wanted to watch him play Halo online and I said ‘why would I want to watch that?’” says Hunt. “But I did it anyway because I was bored out of my mind. Nine hours later I was in a huge Twitch binge, my wife came home from work and I said ‘this is what I am going to do with all my time while I can't snowboard’."
He set up his Twitch account and embarked on his first few Twitch streams. While David Hunt the snowboarder was out of action, David ‘GrandPooBear’ Hunt was born, and the next chapter in his life started, even if he didn’t know it yet.
Progress was slow, with him getting almost no viewers during his early years on Twitch, but he was keeping himself entertained, and having fun while doing so. Hunt decided that he was going to try speedrunning on stream and thought that if he was going to have to play a game over and over again it may as well be his favourite game of all time, Super Mario Bros 3. Having received it as a gift for his sixth birthday he fell in love with the game, and while other games came along over the years nothing could quite live up to his love of Mario. So with his game of choice decided on he set off on his speedrunning stream journey, with some very conservative challenges for himself.
“My initial goal was to not be last on the leaderboards,” jokes Hunt. “Once I reached that goal it was just ‘well let’s see how far we can take it’.”
He took it pretty far, becoming one of the fastest Super Mario Bros 3 speedrunners in the world, with a best time of 52m 46s in the Any% Warpless category, but his stream still was very small. For the first two years of streaming he never went above 20 viewers, which wasn’t an issue as he was having fun, but at no point did it seem like he could ever make a career out of streaming. Then he struck gold – by beating the infamous P Break level in Mario Maker, the Nintendo game that let players create excruciatingly hard ‘kaizo’ Mario levels for others to try (It’s better you watch rather than ever attempt this yourself, trust us).
“It was the hardest level that had ever been created in a Mario game at that point,” explains Hunt. “It was insane. Once I beat that, I started to get noticed by some of the bigger Mario streamers and would get some raids [another streamer bringing their viewers to his stream] here and there, and I was just lucky enough to be able to start to make a name for myself.”
As his stream grew Hunt became known as one of the greatest Mario players in the world. He would speed run multiple Mario titles and homebrew rom hacks and play the hardest levels in Mario Maker. Occasionally he would speed run other titles, such as Zelda games or Jaws (which he tells us is “a horrible game,”) but the main focus was on the hardest challenges in the world of Mario that he could find, and people loved it.
In 2016 he became a full time streamer and these days is one of the biggest names in the world of speedrunning. His streams bring in hundreds if not thousands of viewers and everyone wants to see his next amazing feat in the world of Mario. While speedrunning today encompasses all genres of games, the Mario series’ timeless appeal means the franchise remains the field’s pinnacle, its 100 metre sprint.
“The number one thing that excites me has to be the constant [thought of] I can push myself just a little bit lower,” says Hunt about Mario’s simple appeal. “You will never have a perfect speedrun, meaning there is always a bit of time to gain. There is always just a bit more you can improve.”
Levelling up
While his skills in the Mushroom Kingdom have given him a new life as a streamer, he has also used them to give back to the world. Hunt has been a part of multiple Games Done Quick charity events, and countless other charity streams and competitions. He has even hosted many himself, aiming to give something back to the world. He knows how lucky he has been with everything that has happened in his life, and that has made him appreciate things a lot more.
“I couldn't do any of this, especially my recovery, without my wife Gina,” says Hunt. “She runs our entire house and it allows me to really focus on being entertaining on stream both mentally and gameplay wise. I am forever grateful for her and she deserves all the credit for me making it this far. I literally wouldn't even be alive without her. I am the luckiest gamer in the world and I would not trade spots with anyone right now, so I just want to continue working on my craft and having as much fun online as I possibly can for as long as I can.”
The accident that Hunt suffered on the slopes in Lake Tahoe was truly horrifying and many would never have rebounded with such success. But Hunt is no ordinary person, and from the clutches of death rose to become one of the biggest Twitch streamers in the world.
He may not have been able to achieve all his goals in the world of snowboarding, but when it comes to gaming there isn’t much more he can do, and it has given him a life that he always dreamed of. Crucially he is absolutely loving life, and after coming through such a tough time all those years ago, that is all you really need.
“What can I say?” jokes Hunt. “I just really love running right and jumping.”
