Highlights from this update:
- Thomas Grandjean reached Legend! Congrats to him for reaching that amazing milestone!
- Ben Miller got a crazy new world record on Wario Stadium 3lap SC, which is more than one second faster than the previous WR!
- King activity is still great: Zack Kennedy, Stanley Jeram, Chris Rayola, Mark Jones and Marcelo Almeida dos Reis are within one ARR point from eachother.

Other active players were:
Kevin Booth, Brent Wingert, lots of elite players (Jean-Francois Dubreuil, Frank Dinicola, Kevin Horst, Michael Linski & Rob McFarland), David Runnelid and Milad Jafari.

Wednesday, August 21, 2002 - The Conversation You Didn't Know You Had - by Jason at 9:43 pm
"Why the hell is Whalls SVP of this site? He doesn't do crap!" Sadly, the 'Ban Whalls' movement seems to be gaining momentum. In an attempt to get people talking about other things though, I have spent mass hours crafting what will either become known as "The Greatest Kart 64 Joke Ever" or "That Poorly Worded Insult That Got Whalls Banned." I'll take my chances.

Btw, Booth is a lamer for not posting this yesterday. Send him hate mail at KevinBooth1@attbi.com.

Source: Click Here

Sunday, August 18, 2002 - Players List Updated - by Kevin at 10:12 am
Wow, some amazing battles here. When you thought shortcut racing couldn't get any more exciting, Alex Penev knows that Miller is wanting the title, but he steps it up, and proves who is #1 in Shortcut racing for now. Louis is putting on the hussle to try to catch the leaders, and is doing a very good job so far.

Non-sc is gettting mad active from Mid-King to Low-Elite. There are tons of very seasoned and dangerous players flying through the ranks there, and expect tons of rivalries in the next few days.

Keep up the karting guys, we are gonna make it over 300, but we all need to stay active. I'm gonna try to get a PR or 2 today, so I hope you all do the same.

Also, make sure you use the Mario Kart 64 Chat. I am planning one more official tourney this month, but I am not gonna tell you when, so show up everyday. I will tell you it's going to incorporate shortcuts a bit, so make sure you polish those skillz off.

So far, on the WR page, I have had some great feedback. I got a couple typos, and some pics to either fix or change, but I'll check the message boards before I touch up anymore of those.

- Top100s, ARRs & AvgFins Updated - by Michael at 6:31 am
Alex Penev on a rampage
Just when Ben Miller was setting up another attack on the #1 spot at shortcuts, Alex Penev strikes back again. With his HUGE improvements on DK's Jungle and Wario Stadium SC, he completely eliminated all the weaknesses in his stats, and made sure he'll probably stay #1 for a while now... His ARR went from 1.150 to 0.750 and his SC AvgFin went from 3.100 to 2.450. Another amazing statistic: Alex is now the 4th player in Mario Kart 64 history to hit 52/52 Legend times. Well, that's not the amazing statistic yet. The most impressive thing is: Alex now has 52/52 times Legend B or better!!! The other 3 players with 52/52 Legend times (Miller, Whalls & Ihnatenko) all have to do with "only" 52/52 Legend F or better...

Strong King activity
Thomas Grandjean got his ARR score down to 5.625. So, just 5 standard improvements left to reach the legend ranks. Chris Rayola and Brent Wingert are passing some well known names on the Shortcut rankings. Zack Kennedy and Stanley Jeram made some nice improvements, and both players are close to hitting King C in nonSC. Beau Fairbourn made sure to stay safely ahead of them, by passing 3 players at the ARR list to reach a King B rank. Mark Jones got a few PRs, and might try to catch up with Jeram and Kennedy. Our fresh King player Marcelo Almeida dos Reis made fast progress through the King F ranks, and passed Alexandru Balahura at ARR.

Other player news
William Lacey got some nice PRs to get a little closer to Zwartjes at AvgFin. Brandon Eberly and Ruokai Chen were both active. Eberly passed Chen in Average Finish.
In the elite ranks, Simon Laflamme passed Jean-Francois Dubreuil again. Frank DiNicola reached Elite B. Michael Linski and Todd Worcester both moved up from Elite D to Elite C.
David Runnelid submitted his times from the past few weeks. He went from Expert A to Pro A.
Two of the new players from last update sent us their new PRs. Scott Brehm reached Expert C, and Waylon Calhoun reached Intermediate C.

Saturday, August 17, 2002 - WR page updated - by Kevin at 3:58 pm
Well it needed a remodel, so the world records page has a new look. Any suggestions are welcome, cause I probably will be touching up on it from time to time, but I think I got what I want.

Oh yes, I forgot ot tell ya all I updated the PL a couple days ago. As you probably saw, tons of movement, on BOTH lists for a change. Shortcuts are finally going through a revolution!

Tuesday, August 13, 2002 - Top100s, ARRs & AvgFins Updated - by Michael at 4:52 pm
Man, I don't know where to start. Karting activity has simply been insane. This page is getting 200+ visitors a day now, yahoogroups submissions are reaching new records this month, and this update has no less than 31 (!!!) active players in the past 5 days (including 7 active Legends, and 4 new members). I've never seen such massive activity before in Mario Kart 64.

So, with all those players, it would be too much work to mention all individual achievements. But make sure you check the updates yourself, and give all the ranking pages a good look.

Here are some highlights:
- Ben Miller got an overall Worldrecord on Toad's Turnpike SC flap, and reached an extremely low SC ARR score of 0.650. Some bad news however: we had a wrong requirement listed for Legend+ at the Player List description page. It should be 0.649 instead of 0.650. Seems like a small mistake, but I feel really sorry for Ben, since he just missed the cut now. However, hopefully he can make that last improvement very soon.
- Louis-Phillipe Sabbagh climbs from #7 to #4 at the SC ARR list.
- Ruokai Chen reached Legend C in nonSC.
- Brent Wingert and Chris Rayola made remarkably strong improvements in both their nonSC and SC stats.
- Alexandru Balahura and Marcelo Almeida dos Reis both reached KING F in nonSC!
- Rob McFarland, David Hehn and Todd Worcester all cut almost exactly 2.5 points from their ARR score.
- The 4 new members are: John Wang (Expert F), Ryan Sathoff (Adv D), Scott Brehm (Intermediate B) and Waylon Calhoun (Beginner F)

Keep up the good karting folks!

Monday, August 12, 2002 - Total Times Updated - by Beau at 2:36 pm
The Total Times are updated to reflect posting #5673

Source: Total Times

Saturday, August 10, 2002 - PL updated - by Kevin at 11:11 pm
Well I think I got all the actives working this time, and there are several of them. Funny enough, I forgot to add myself, but one PR on YV isn't really enough to affect much, so I won't bother. Anyhow, fellow feared 4 member Jason Whalls passed the dual Glen Ridge bunch on the NOn-sc side as he gets back in the top 15 for that type of racing! Good Work!

Besides that, tons of amazing movements by Dave Hehn, Louis-Philippe Sabbagh, Ben Miller, and at least a half dozen other players. This is going to be a record month, I can feel it, and next update will feature 2 MORE NEW PLAYERS.

Lastly, welcome Milad Jafari to Kart 64 Players! So far he has sent in 2 time improvement emails, so I expect that he is going to make quite the impact in the coming months.

Thursday, August 08, 2002 - Top 100s, ARRs & AvgFins Updated - by Michael at 7:21 am
Great Legend activity
Kevin Booth got a new PR on Yoshi Valley 3lap. Michael Jongerius made some high quality PRs and moved closer towards the Legend A ranks. He also reached the 10th place in nonSC Average Finish. Brandon Eberly and Ruokai Chen were both active. Eberly slightly increased his lead against Chen, and he passed Lars Nouwen at Average Finish.
Louis-Phillipe Sabbagh made some HUGE improvements (including an NTSC Worldrecord on Frappe Snowland 3lap SC) on his shortcut statistics. For example, he improved his SC ARR score from 2.800 (Legend C) to 2.050 (Legend B)!!! Jason Whalls was also active and just stayed ahead of Sabbagh. Ben Miller improved his DK SC time again, and got a few points closer to Alex Penev.

Kings
Thomas Grandjean kept improving his times. His ARR score is now 6.094, so the Legend ranks are getting closer.
Beau Fairbourn and Mark Jones also improved their nonSC statistics. Chris Rayola had a small shortcut improvement.

Elites
Marcelo Almeida dos Reis kept playing strongly, and is very close to King F. Simon Laflamme cut 0.3 from his ARR score and could've passed Jean-Francois Dubreuil on both ARR anv AvgFin. However, Jean-Francois cut 0.4 from his ARR score and avoided getting passed. Frank DiNicola passed a few players and reached Elite C. Michael Linski also had a significant ARR cut, and might reach Elite C soon. And we can welcome 2 people to the elite ranks: Rob McFarland and David Hehn. Especially David had an impressive elite entry. He completely skipped the master ranks, and went straight from Pro B to Elite F!

Pro
Mike Eklund and Simon Lessard are climbed towards the top 100 at about a same pace. Eklund is #103 on AvgFin, and Lessard is #112 there. Michael Poelzl got some PRs and went from #115 to #113.

New member: Milad Jafari
Welcome to our latest new member: Milad Jafari from California (USA). He enters at #171 in Non-shortcut Average Finish, and his kartrank is Advanced B.

Wednesday, August 07, 2002 - IMPROMPTU ONLINE PRESSURE TOURNEY! - by Kevin at 2:46 am
Yes, this is what you get for not showing up to the MarioKart64Chat
on aim on a regular basis! See, every once in awhile, we all get a
great idea going, and decide to have some fun and do a tourney. Whalls and
I both agree they are way more fun when they are unscheduled, cause than you
don't get to practice up for them, even though all 6 players (that were in
the tourney) are all currently active in Mario Kart 64 time trials.

Anyhow, the rules were PRESSURE TOURNAMENT RULES! This means first try only. Lowest seed
picks his home course first, and highest seed picks his home course last. So there was 6
players in this tourney, so we did 6 rounds.

We did 2 forms of scoring this time. We did the traditional method where your finish in all
of the 6 events are added up, and that is your score (lowest wins). However, at the advice of Jones, to make
this fair, he wanted to do something new. Besides calling for the tourney, he also advised us to go for a
PR difference factor. Basically you take the rank your personal record is (lets say GOD, and that has a value of
zero), and you count down to what you did first try (lets say Elite A, which has a value of 11) That means your penalty
would be 11. We do this also for all 6 courses.

Ok, the bottom will be listed under the 6 rounds of course, and the list will go place, person, first try, first try
rank, PR rank, and the difference.

PREGAME

Jones Calls Tourney, Booth asks for Rules, Whalls says PRESSURE and he plays, Booth than says he'll play if Whalls does, and calls out the original
rules. Mark Jones than adds that Rank idea that you will see below. Everyone is ready, and we frankically play the 6 rounds and save the world
before bed time... oh wait, wrong show, but it is damn late!

Round 1 Mike Eklund - MR Lap

1. Louis-Philippe Sabbagh 24"20 (Elite B) PR= Legend D [+8]
2. Kevin Booth 24"21 (Elite B) PR= Legend C [+9]
3. Mike Eklund 24"57 (Elite F) PR= Elite B [+3!]
4. Simon Laflamme 24"81 (Master B) PR= King C [+9]
5. Mark Jones 24"94 (Master F) PR= King D [+11]
6. Jason Whalls 26"33 (Advanced B) PR= Legend D [+35???]

PR Factor 1. Eklund!!!, 2. Sabbagh 3.Booth/Laflamme/ 5.Jones 6. Whalls

Mike has been pretty hot here as of late, and has been threatening to get his first King Time here, and on Koopa Troopa Beach (27"03). So he
decided to pick this course. What he doesn't know, is that Booth and Whalls have been playing this course tons, along with Yoshi Valley, as of
late.

Anyhow, Booth went wide tons of times, but still took risk but Louis did pretty darn well by edging Booth by .01 in the first round! However
Mike Successfully defended his turf by only going 3 ranks below his PR markings, so kudos to him! Jason Whalls went around the shroom and
just forgot which way the course went apparently.

Round 2 Simon Laflamme - YV lap

1. Kevin Booth 27"51 (King B) PR= Legend B [+5!!]
2. Jason Whalls 28"92 (Elite D) PR= GOD [+14]
3. Mark Jones 29"59 (Pro A) PR= King F [+11]
4. Mike Eklund 30"11 (SPro A) PR= Elite C [+13]
5. Louis-Philippe Sabbagh 31"02 (Expert A) PR= Legend C [+28???]
6. Simmon Laflamme 37"85 (Expert F) PR= Elite C [+22]

PR Factor 1. Booth, 2. Jones, 3. Eklund, 4. Whalls, 5. Sabbagh, 6. Laflamme

Well Simon does know his YV very well, so he picked this course. Whalls and Booth have been playing this course all day, so we expect great
scores out of them.

As expected, Booth and Whalls dominated in score, but Jones did edge Whalls in the PR factor. Booth did go wide a few times, but his run of
27"51 was one of the most amazing performances all tournament. Sabbagh got stuck in the mountain and Laflamme took a tour of the grand canyon.

Round 3 Mark Jones- Kd lap

1. Kevin Booth 33"44 (King A) PR= GOD [+6]
2. Jason Whalls 33"93 (Elite A) PR= Legend A [+10]
3. Mark Jones 34"22 (Elite C) PR= Legend C [+10]
4. Louis Philippe Sabbagh 34"28 (Elite C) PR= Legend C [+10]
5. Simon Laflamme 34"56 (Elite D) PR= Elite A [+3!!!]
6. Mike Eklund 34"86 (Master C) PR= Master A [+2!!!]

1. EKlund!!!, 2. Laflamme!!!, 3. Booth, 4. Whalls/Jones/Sabbagh

Jones thought he was all big and bad when he picked this course, than realized that his PR factor is going to suffer if he picks this, so he wanted
to change picks, but he was pressured by the rest to stick to his guns, and besides, he was distracted by Booth making moves on his sister, so
one can understand why he wasn't in the most concentrative moods.

I am very proud of everybody this round. Booth did drive a great race, with just a few minor flaws in race quality, but Check out Laflamme and
Eklund! They raced amazing! Whalls/Jones/Sabbagh did well also, but they're race quality wasn't near as good.

Round 4 Louis-Philippe Sabbagh- Sl 3lap

1. Kevin Booth 1'42"19 (Elite B) PR= GOD [+12]
2. Louis Philippe Sabbagh 1'43"46 (Elite F) PR= Legend B [+13]
3. Mark Jones 1'44"21 (Master D) PR= Elite A [+8!]
4. Mike Eklund 1'47"36 (Expert A) PR= Master C [+13]
5. Simon Laflamee 1'51"50 (Advanced C) PR= Elite D [+19]
6. Jason Whalls 3'43"54 (Kart Fan) PR= Legend B [+54???]

PR factor 1. Jones 2. Booth, 3. Sabbagh,Eklund!!!, 5. Laflamme, 6. Whalls

Any doubts of Louis being unique (trying to be kind), well, there is no doubt now. He decided to torture everyone on sherbet land, cause it's
one of this best courses, and he was tired of fastlap ones, so he decided to see if we could endure 3 laps of penqin plugging and crack smoking.

This actually was fairly close. Booth was going to get at least a high King time, until the 3rd to last pengin put a spell over toad, and away
he goes on that beast. Booth shrooms out, and saves the day, however, Jones played it safe, and won the PR factor. Sabbagh didn't do all
that bad, and got 3rd in the PR factor, and 2nd in time, so home course wasn't too bad for him.

Lastly, Whalls said he turned off his TV for the last lap, but later on, we hooked him up to a polygraph, and he broke down and admitted that
wasn't totally true. The cheater would turn on the TV to get straight again, he later says.

Round 5 Jason Whalls- MMF 3lap

1. Kevin Booth 1'16"78 (Elite A) PR = GOD [+11]
2. Mark Jones 1'18"90 (Spro F) PR= King B [+23]
3. Louis Philippe Sabbagh 1'19"45 (Expert C) PR= King B [+26]
4. Jason Whalls 1'22"63 (Intermediate B) PR= Legend C [+39???]
5. Simon Laflamee 1'22"79 (Intermediate C) PR= Elite A [+32???]
6. Mike Eklund 1'29"98 (Beginner D) PR= Master F [+24!]

PR factor 1. Booth, 2. Jones, 3. Eklund, 4. Sabbagh, 5. Laflamme, 6. Whalls

Ok, I complained about Louis being Unique, but I think Whalls is just an @$$ for picking this hell board. Na, it isn't as bad as say YV 3lap, cause
you can still get a great time, if you avoid the beastial tendancies here. Play it safe, and you win. Whalls wanted to see what everyone
would do, so here it is.

Booth was the only person smart enough to play it safe, so he led both in PR factor and time placement. Everybody else was pretty clueless really
but, Jones and Eklund did do ok in the PR factor. Ek did say this was his worst coruse, and that did save him from biffing it as bad as Whalls
and Laflamme did.

One last comment, I really think the rankings really hosed everyone here unfairly, but that is what you get when people figure out the logistics
of MMF early in kart history. Damn 1997 people, and their fast progress!

Round 6 Kevin Booth- TT 3lap

1. Kevin Booth 2'34"17 (50"28,50"39,53"50) (Elite B) PR= GOD [+12]
2. Mark Jones 2'36"44 (Pro C) PR = King F [+13]
3. Louis Philippe Sabbagh 2'37"53 (Spro C) PR = Legend D [+24?]
4. Mike Eklund 2'38"19 (Expert A) PR = Elite F [+16]
5. Simon Laflamme 2'38"75 (Expert B) PR = Elite F [+17]
6. Jason Whalls 2'50"30 (Apprentice C) PR= Legend F [+43???]

PR factor 1. Booth, 2. Jones, 3. Eklund, 4. Laflamme, 5. Sabbagh, 6. Whalls

Well this should be a no brainer. Everybody knew Booth was going to pick Turnpike, and since someone wanted Louis to pick the 3lap, Booth decided
to do so cause of that.

No surprise, Booth takes it, but not by overly that much. He hit a car on the 3rd lap, on the backstretch, but luckily he still had a shroom
with him to save the win once again. Jones played it very safe and finished strong. Whalls decided to use an old 1997 strat in his fine
performance (shroom on straights). You can see why Whalls calls this track, "Turndyke".

TRADITIONAL FINISH PENALTY (1 for first, 2 for 2nd...)

Kevin Booth 7
Mark Jones 13
Louis-Philiippe Sabbagh 18
Jason Whalls 26
Mike Eklund 27
Simon Laflamme 30

Well, first place was definitely expected, and except for a .01 flaw on MR, he dominated like nobodys business. The big suprise was Jones finishing
2nd, after he said that it would be unfair to go against the legends straight up. Perhaps Jones should retort, cause if he looks below this, he actually
did better straight up, than with his handicap. I wonder if he believes in UCLA parking too?

Sabbagh did ok, but had some bad courses, and even with Whalls in total goof off mode, he fights off bottom dwellers Laflamme and Eklund, which
I still felt did just fine this tourney.

PR Based Penalty (0 for PR, +1 for Rank Worse than PR, -1 For Rank Better than PR)

1. Kevin Booth 56
2. Mike Eklund 71
3. Mark Jones 76
4. Simon Laflamme 102
5. Louis-Philippe Sabbagh 109
6. Jason Whalls 195

WOW! Booth does it again. He answers Jones' proposition and takes his challenge. However, the show was stolen by new Member Mike Eklund.
See Whalls, that, "Anything Can Happen Line" is not just a Public Relations Battle Cry! It really is true. Jones still did do ok with the rules
with a 76, and Laflamme finished strong with 102.

However, I think Sabbagh and Whalls really need to get the frog out of their throats, cause they were really choking on something apparently, preventing
them from performing to Legend Standards!

CLOSING COMMENTS

It's great to see after 5+ years that we still can do fun stuff like this, and most importantly, I WON (sorry, just couldn't resist). However,
when Jones went to hand the trophy to me for winning Traditional and PR Based, I was nowhere to be found. After all, I have been writing this
news update from his sisters computer all along ;)

Tuesday, August 06, 2002 - Player List + World Records + POW updated - by Kevin at 4:48 pm
Ok, I got a fresh players list up, but yes, tons of the actives that should be listed are not listed. I think unless I directly copy and paste a name, that there is a chance that I might either misspell it, or do something strange to the active field, so that is why I think most of them are not showing up. Hopefully I'll remember to do direct copy and pastes for next update.
Both of Ben Millers fresh WRs can now be seen at the WR page. Jason Whalls lost his longstanding record in DK Jungle, but is unworried about it. He still holds the NTSC WR over inactives Inhatenko and Bukrim, and that record seems relatively safe for now.

More than ever, there are more and more deserving people of the POW award, and it's getting very hard. There are so many players that are performing amazingly and becoming very active. August might just prove to be karts most active month in hisotry!

Even a few veteran shortcut players have returned to finally give Shortcuts some coverstories. Sabbagh landed the loop, Whalls is threatening the fastlap world record by Bukrim and Miller and Penev are in a battle for 1 and 2
for the shortcut championship!

Anyhow, So much can be said, but that is all for now. Keep up the great karting everyone!

Sunday, August 04, 2002 - Top 100s, ARRs & AvgFins Updated - by Michael at 1:05 pm
The #1 and #2 ranked shortcut players were battling it out this update! Ben Miller started by getting a PAL worldrecord at DKJP SC flap, and then a great overall World Record of 25"58 (21"27) on DKJP SC 3lap. He was steadily getting closer to the #1 ranked player Alex Penev in AvgFin. However, Alex stroke back with PRs on the same track. He regained the PAL World Record on the fastlap, and made a good improvement on his 3lap time. Penev's SC AvgFin score is now lower than 3.000.

Players with great ranking improvements were:
Thomas Grandjean who strongly entered the King A ranks. Marcelo Almeida dos Reis with a 0.7 ARR cut. Pier-Yves Lemire, who reached Elite C and climbed 6 spots at Avgfin. The Mike Eklund - Dan Edeen - Simon Lessard trio who are collectively moving their way up through the semi-pro and pro ranks.

Other actives:
Michael Jongerius, Brandon Eberly (he reached Legend C now), Beau Fairbourn, Zack Kennedy, Mark Jones, Kevin Horst, Frank DiNicola and Michael Linski.

And we can welcome a new player: Brandon Smith from Canada joins us as a Beginner B at a 204th place in nonSC and a 93rd place in Shortcut.

Thursday, August 01, 2002 - Total Times Updated - by Beau at 8:57 pm
The Total Times have been updated to reflect postings to 5589:

Source: Total Times

- PAL & NTSC Rankings updated - by Michael at 3:46 pm
It's been a while, but the PAL and NTSC Top25s, Top15s and worldrankings have finally been updated. Check it all out.

I got rid of the "alternative course" tables on the Top 25 pages, since they took me too much time to update (those tables don't update automatically with the database). I've put a copy of the tables here. If anyone wants to update those tables in the future (and maybe add other interesting alternative challenges?), feel free to copy that page to a server of yourself, update it, and let us know the URL so we can put a link up to your page.


- Top 100s, ARRs & AvgFins Updated - by Michael at 6:48 am
Ben Miller did some severe damage at the shortcut rankings. He got a step closer to Alex Penev at Average Finish, and he's the new leader on the SC ARR list! His non-shortcut performance wasn't bad either this update. He captured #10 spots on both ARR and AvgFin, passing Michael Jongerius on the ARR list.

Jean-Francois Dubreuil looks unstoppable. He passed the active players Kevin Horst and Simon Laflamme for a 57th place at nonSC ARR. Marcelo Almeida dos Reis seems to be his next target...

Frank DiNicola and Pier-Yves Lemire made big cuts. Both of them passed a bunch of active players, to reach an Elite D rank.

David Hehn had an impressive 5 points ARR improvement to reach the top100 in both nonSC AvgFin and ARR.

Mike Eklund had an almost as impressive 4.3 points ARR improvement to climb 17 spots, and reach a Pro F ranking in nonSC. He pulled away from his rival Simon Lessard, who climbed "only" 9 spots...

Many other players were active:
Ruokai Chen, Beau Fairbourn, Zack Kennedy, Anton Forsander (got quite close to Z.Kennedy), Kevin Horst, Mike Linski, Ben Broadwater, Anthony Dunkel (yep, he's back), Todd Worcester (reached Elite F!), Rob McFarland and Dan Edeen.