Background:

Andy is from Stavanger, Norway. He has been playing Doom and Doom2 since the summer of 1995, and has been recording games for the  high-performance single-player demo competition Compet-N since around April of 1998. He has a large list of impressive Compet-N recordings, 231 in all, as of this writing. In my experience, most Deathmatch-only players do not understand how difficult it is to do such feats in single-player, nor the movement and aim skills that result from the tremendous effort and hours of practice while doing such runs.

He started dooming in Ultimate Doom when his local friend Aagi (I call him Oagie) introduced him to it. Since then, he has taken a few relatively short vacations from it, but otherwise has been dooming and building skill steadily for practically the entire existance of the game. His locals of many years include Henning, Mutator, Oagie, Martin, and probably more people who I am forgetting at the moment.

While I was in Norway, he showed me a keyboard he had retired due to, er, age. The keys he uses in his config were warped and crushed into strange, melted-looking shapes from the countless hours of doom. Looking at such a thing, especially after playing (and being annihilated by) him for a few days, really drives home how much work Andy has in his doom skills.

He is also a wad author. His maps are to my knowledge high quality, challenging single-player maps.
 

Stylistic information:

Andy's speed, precision, and aim are astounding, both in single player and deathmatch. In deathmatch he plays to the aggressive side, and because he is so inhumanly fast and accurate, his attacks usually do not get him killed, even where they seem reckless at first glance. He will come flying into a room, take a near point-blank shot at you, and get back out the door and around the next corner fast enough to make a useful retaliatory shot impossible for many high-skilled players. Watching recorded demos do not do his deathmach gameplay justice; his aggressive style could make his best games look like he's either having a very lucky game, or he's playing someone who does not know how to deal with an aggressive player. For most players, kill attempts like Andy does *are* more risky than should generally be attempted, but Andy's consistant speed and accuracy make them work.

He is also fully capable of playing a conservative game; At the December, 2000 netparty at his apartment in Norway, he had to adjust to Ocelot's more cautious style, as Ocelot is way too fast, smart, and dangerous for even Andy to steamroll over. Their last Map1 game took around 45 minutes, and it is a 50 frag game. Andy has a very keen understanding of Map1 and is probably among the top players in the world there.

Andy is the kind of player who will *successfully* torment you if you linger on Map1 on the ledge. I figured I would just mention that. Evil. Just, evil.

His wallruns on Map1 are something to behold. He does them precisely and perfectly, like they are an easy and natural part of his movement. This includes how well he begins a wallrun, how short and exact a time he maintains it, and how well incorporated these varying-length and varied-orientation wallruns are in his movement. For lack of a better word, his use of wallruns is beautiful (but damn painful if you're the unfortunate soul trapped in Map1 with him).

I have a ton of respect for Andy. His depth of experience and all of the work he has in his doom skill become obvious once you get to know him.
 

Other details:

I was told an interesting story by one of his locals about how one day, after getting killed at the very end of a highly difficult doom run, he was seen to pick up a full sized armchair and throw it across the room. The chair is in a couple of pictures on the lanparty documentation page for the December, 2000 Norway lan, but it's mostly obscured. Ocelot is sitting in it in this picture.

When he is not playing, but is at his computer, he does not sit in his chair. He perches in it. The picture at the top of this page shows Andy's characteristic position at his PC.

At the  LAN where I met him, his attitude while not in-game was always meek and respectful toward everyone. While playing, though, he seems angry the whole time. So angry in fact, that something pretty damn funny happened in one of his games with Ocelot at the December, 2000 Norway LAN:

I was at my PC where I could see part of Andy's screen, when evidently the game began to get rough on Andy's nerves. First there was one Bang sound. That was Andy banging his keyboard with his fist - - not all too uncommon, I have seen other players do that. Then, about 30 seconds later, there was a loud CRASH!!!  Andy's monitor flashed like a camera and then the screen went black. Ocelot turned around from his PC, which is something that does not happen while he is in game.

Andy had slugged the side of his PC with the bottom of his fist, and it had stopped working. Disassembly of the PC revealed that he had hit it so hard that the CPU had dropped out of the motherboard and tumbled down to the bottom of the case. We'll never know what pissed him off that bad in game, as neither computer kept the demo, to my knowledge. He looked a little bit embarrassed after this happened.

While in game, he feels very distracted by any ambient sounds in the room, such as chairs squeaking, people walking around, and other innocent, normal sounds that people or machines make. He evidently can have a temper when distracted from his dooming, and it was interesting to watch all of the Norwegiens go entirely silent whenever he began a game. They would whisper to one another in the most quiet of voices, literally stalk around the room if they had to move, and when he finished the game, the noise level would rise as people began to talk and get up to do things such as use the bathroom and get drinks. If any sound had  become a distraction during the game, he would usually mention it to the offender, or require the offending machine to be silenced before his next game (see the Hairbrush Upgrade done on Henning's noisy CDRom).

Want to see a demo? Anders' 11th game with Ocelot at the December, 2000 netparty in Stavanger, Norway can be downloaded here. Watch 2 of the best players in the world go at it!