Modern Pros vs. Classic Games: GoldenEye 007

As June slowly winds toward its end, so too must SYFY WIRE's Gaming Month. But before that happens, we're debuting a new series, Modern Pros vs. Classic Games! For the first episode, we invited pro gamer Sam Salcedo, aka WishYouLuckk, to join SYFY WIRE's Jackie Jennings for a few rounds of the Nintendo 64 classic shooter GoldenEye 007.

While GoldenEye doesn't often top the lists of the best James Bond films, its influence on the video game industry has been immense. Still, it's been almost two decades since Sam picked up GoldenEye 007. That long gap made things just interesting enough for Jackie to be competitive, especially when he showed no mercy in their head-to-head match-ups.

Along the way, Sam filled us in on how he got into video games and became a semi-pro gamer at only 13 years old.

"I started playing video games when I was about 5 years old and kind of started with GoldenEye," recalled Sam. "Anything shooter I noticed that I was really good at. Growing up, one thing I also took notice of is that typically when you play video games with your friends, a lot of them have difficulty understanding how to play a certain game. But for me, it was just so natural. So I thought to myself, 'Maybe I should take video games seriously.'"

"Video games came into my life at a good time," continued Sam. "Because from 13 to 17, you're kind of looking for things to do. ... So it's definitely something that I kind of owe a lot to. It sounds cliched, but video games saved my life and gave me direction when I didn't know where I was going with it."

For more details from Sam and his complete matches with Jackie, check out the full video!