#226 - Built his First PC and Went Viral (Ft. HapaThunder) - NZXT Podcast 226

Mike Kim (0:01)

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Episode 226 of the Nzxt Podcast, the official podcast of the Nzxt community. This podcast is recorded live on Fridays at 10 a.m. Pacific time. On the official Nzxt Twitch, it's available to stream on demand on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and SoundCloud. My name is Mike Kim, and before I introduce our very special guest, I just want to give a quick shout out to Intel for helping us sponsor the Nzxt Intel Club and wearing the little shirt. If you guys want to go to nzxt.co.uk, slash club, or Esquimish Point Club in the chat, you guys can join the Nzxt Intel Club. You guys can do quests, which is like following our social media, you know, commenting on one of our posts, joining us in our Discord events, or right now, some people are able to get some Poochie points by watching the after stream. And like I said, you can get Poochie points out of doing the quests, and those will be entered, or those would be returned for entries into our monthly giveaway.

I know, like, I don't know if he's here. GT Beaker, he just won the PC, which is super dope. So you guys can win an Nzxt Intel PC every month we give away. We have some Chippy and Poochie plushies right here that you guys can also win. And you guys also win some Nzxt club shirts that I'm wearing right now. So go to nzxt.co. slash club, or escalation.club and chat and join on in.

All righty, I think that's it for the announcements for me. So I'm going to go ahead and introduce our very special guest, introducing a creator who decided to build his first PC and film it and gained 100,000 followers before he was even done with it. He's the swaggiest sneakerhead I've ever seen, husband to a lovely wife and a father of even lovelier four children, though he considers himself the fourth child or the fifth child, not to mention a full-time assistant clinic manager at a hospital. Guys, that's insane. All the way from the Bay Area, everyone, please welcome Jason, aka HapaThunder. Can you introduce yourself to our audience and tell us what you're all about?

Jason (2:06)

Yeah. So thanks everybody for tuning in. My name is Jason.

Yeah. Lovely intro. Thanks so much, Mike, for that. Yeah. So just excited for this opportunity and to get to share my experiences with everybody.

Mike Kim (2:21)

Yeah. So we're going to, like we do with every single person that we had on the podcast, we're going to start from the beginning, where it all started. So first of all, how did you get into gaming and tech in the beginning?

Jason (2:36)

Yeah, I mean, I was introduced to video games like super early on, you know, as a kid, you know, with a mom working full time, I was in after school programs. I remember vividly the after school program had an Atari that was just there for everybody to play. So, you know, that little one joystick and playing the game. So very early on, I was introduced. We got a Nintendo for the house, you know, playing classic games like Kung Fu, Mario, Duck Hunt, things like that.

Super fun, you know, playing with my sister at the time. And, yeah, really, really, really early on got introduced, just and then kind of progressed through, you know, the different consoles as I got older.

Mike Kim (3:24)

What was like the number one game that was like, this is on repeat pretty much the entire time?

Jason (3:32)

I mean, I really liked Ninja Gaiden. Ninja Gaiden, yeah. I mean, like the super, like the very first OG game, like that was like my thing.

Yeah, I love that. Just pretty much any Mario game, really. Super Nintendo, Super Mario World, classic. Yeah.

Mike Kim (3:56)

What, how was it like gaming? Because I know back then, you know, like now gaming is kind of like usual, it's okay. How did your like family feel about, you know, there's their kid just like glued to the TV for, you know, hours on end. Were they okay with it? Were they like, I hate gaming.

Jason (4:17)

I mean, classic Asian mom, very kind of like, hey, you should be in the books right now and not glued to the TV. But I mean, I wasn't outside getting into trouble. So I don't think it was a bit of a problem, that much of a problem.

So yeah, I really had no issues with not being able to play. So yeah.

Mike Kim (4:41)

Yeah, as long as you're doing your schoolwork, they're like, as long as he's doing okay in school, that's fine.