Alpharad

Jacob Rabon IV (born December 19, 1995), better known by his online name Alpharad, is an American YouTuber, Twitch streamer, Esports personality, and musician.

He is known for his gaming videos, especially on the Super Smash Bros. series along with his participation in the fighting game community as an announcer/commentator.

He is also known for his "Nuzlocke" content, a variation on the game Pokémon to make it more difficult.

Currently, he focuses on creating variety content, commonly with his friends.

Rabon was born on December 19, 1995, in Norman, Oklahoma.

He gained an interest in filmmaking around the fifth grade, uploading comedic videos for his friends, one of his first videos being Major O's.

Later, he would take video editing and cinematography classes in high school.

His original goal was to be an editor of some kind, but pursued being a creator once his channel had begun to take off, dropping out of his community college to do so.

Rabon has also admitted that him not becoming an editor was not because of lack of creative freedom, which is a reason he often uses.

Rabon created his main YouTube channel on January 13, 2014.

Since its creation, he has made various gaming videos on his channel, Alpharad, including the Super Smash Bros. series, Pokémon, Splatoon, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Among Us, as well as other Nintendo titles.

He has also dabbled in speedrunning, specifically in a video of him playing through a Super Mario 64 first-person shooter fan game, as well as being a Super Mario Odyssey speedrunner.

Other videos of his include video game related challenges and streams.

In 2021, Rabon collaborated with YouTuber Jaiden Animations on a charity stream for Red Nose Day which involved removing Pokémon from their team after reaching various donation incentives.

In 2022, he played Pokémon Go in the Warner Grand theater located in Los Angeles during a Halloween event.

Following a series of Nuzlocke challenges as provoked by his friend, fellow YouTuber, and self-proclaimed rival Pokémon Challenges, on April 10, 2023, YouTube Gaming officially dubbed him the "Nuzlocke King".

While a majority of his channel has gaming content, Rabon's channel also includes recounts or videos of fun challenges or experiences he has had, such as him talking about his experiences at Universal Studios, Japan, or an edited video of an Awards Show he hosted for his friends.

On the 19th of November, 2014, Rabon created his current Twitch channel, which was originally named "AlpharadTV", but has since been renamed to just, "Alpharad".

Many of Rabon's current YouTube videos have been first streamed on Twitch, and been edited and scripted into an actual video.

Rabon has been involved in esports as a tournament organizer and affiliate with other prominent esports personalities.

On February 6, 2016, Rabon created a tertiary YouTube channel called "Alpharad Replay," which posts archives of his past YouTube and current Twitch streams.

On June 24, 2016, Rabon co-founded the collaborative YouTube channel Friends Without Benefits.

On December 23, 2018, Rabon announced he was leaving the group to focus on his solo projects.

In 2018, Rabon purchased a monthly stake for the esports organization, Panda Global, becoming their content director and a minority shareholder.

He had previously expressed his desire to hold more weight in the organization.

In 2021, Rabon hosted another tournament in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, dubbed a "Portal Smash" tournament, that involved competitive players fighting on recreated stages with added obstacles and hazards.

Later in October, Rabon hosted a Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl charity tournament with Panda Global member Coney for the Breast Cancer Research Foundation.

The tournament featured content creators such as Cr1TiKaL, Ludwig Ahgren, Jaiden Animations and Trihex, and ultimately raised over $100,000.

Rabon is also a musician, and he formed a band named Ace of Hearts.

In 2020, Rabon signed with the Creative Artists Agency.

Rabon's main YouTube channel has reached over 3 million subscribers as of April 2023.

In 2015, Rabon created his secondary YouTube channel, Alpharad Plus, in which he created generally unedited gaming videos with JoSniffy, which on September 23, 2020, was rebranded to Alpharad Deluxe.

At the beginning of 2023, this was once again rebranded to Alpharad Gold, which had the goal of having a video posted everyday of 2023, and has been since then accomplished.

On September 21, 2020, Rabon created a fourth YouTube channel, Not Alpharad, which posted extremely short videos as well as clips of him or his experiences.

Due to clips being replaced by YouTube Shorts which would just be posted onto his main channel, he rebranded it to Alpharad Live, which currently posts highlights of his Twitch streams.

In 2023, Rabon, alongside Jaiden Animations, created a fourth channel, WILD/CARD, with the purpose of introducing their large collective audience to several of the smaller content creators the two of them considered friends.

This collaboration included Sunflowersmith, Weegee Plays, gsmVoiD, Giwi, Fyrus, and Captain Kidd.

In January 2020, he participated in a Pokémon VGC tournament hosted by Wolfe Glick with fellow competitive Super Smash Bros. players Ludwig Ahgren, ESAM, and Mew2King amongst other content creators.

Two months later, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Rabon co-hosted five online tournaments for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate called the "Quarantine Series" with fellow YouTuber Cr1TiKaL, which consisted of two events, Minors and Majors, offering $5,000 and $10,000 in prizes, respectively.

The major invitationals featured top Super Smash Bros. players such as MkLeo, Samsora, Nairo and Marss, and was streamed on both Cr1TiKaL's Twitch channel and Rabon's YouTube channel.