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| 01 June 2006: ""But I like the cookie..."" |
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| We have a new Super Mario Kart site for the classic SNES game that started it all. It's a similar template to this site and the MKDS site, so if you play this game, you should consider playing some SMK as well. The older SMK site was moved across from Geocities, because (a) updating was burdensome (b) the site often couldn't be accessed because of very limited bandwidth. Sami Cetin remains at the helm of updates, after all these years. If you've played SMK before and are not sure if you should come back to it, the standards have been completely re-written to accommodate the New Boost Technique that was making so many of the God times "too easy". Movement You may have heard that Hendrik Bunde has once again claimed #1 spot in Average Finish, leading #2 Raphael Segas by 3.59 to 3.84. This makes him the new champ (both players are neck-and-neck in ARR, too). The title swap is reflected in the past champions page, which indicates that Hendrik has already held #1 several times before. He's still got a long way to go until he catches Raphael in "total days spent as champ", though. Meanwhile, Raphael is rumoured to be playing MKDS, and he hasn't reported any MKDD PRs since April. He will probably come back, as he is active on the message board and is aware of what's going on in the world of kart. Last week Marius Mollenhauer tied Paul Maes for 6th place. This week, he scored just 1 new time (see Records), but his AF still worsened by 0.7. Fortunately for Marius, inactive players Jonathan Steel and Paul Maes had their AF worsen by a little bit more. Marius is now tied at #5 with old rival Jonathan, while Paul slips to 7th. Tristan Eyma is continuing his come back, with 17 new PRs amassed since mid-May. One of them was God, and most of them were Myth. He scored a huge 4.5pt cut (with most people around him losing ground to... him and David), and he therefore broke into the top-10 quite comfortably. He has a 1.1pt cushion against Frenchman #9 Olivier Peruch. The three people ahead of him (Marius/Jonathan/Paul) are very close in AF score, but Tristan is almost 3 more AF pts behind them to think about passing them just yet. Now when you score a cut as large as 4pts in a position as high as Tristan, you can probably guess that it's going to have big effects on your ARR as well. In Tristan's case, the 0.97 ARR cut promotes him from Myth D to Myth C, and he's already on the way to becoming Myth B, as well. David Schiering had his times reinstanted. He was removed from the site for proof/trust reasons, but it's not gott to have skilled players disappear for very long. His current timeset puts him at 10th spot to round off the top 10. Tristan and David's movement pushes #11 Rene Bauer and #12 Fernando Moritz dos Santos out of the top 10. Because David is a "new player", he also makes everyone behind him lose a position on the ladder, as well as around 1pt in their AF score. #12 Aron Langerak managed to come through this problem with a positive turn-in for the week, gaining 1 AF pt. He passes #14 Paul Tanney with this. In the final months of the month (actually someone just updated now, while I was writing the news), Aron went the little exta distance and tied Fernando Moritz dos Santos for #12. He scored 13 PRs for this cut, 3 of which were G+. #16 Xavier Valentin has scored 6 new times since his last report three weeks ago, and 5 of them were God or better. This helped a lot for his ARR, cutting off 0.5 in ARR to make him Myth D! He squeezed in between 60hz rivals #17 Nathan Cromwell and #15 Bo Garman, but in the final moments Bo sent in some PRs to regain the #15 spot and skip past Nathan and Xavier with a one point lead. Bo had nice timing for an extra reason, which was that his last-minute PRs make him the newest Myth player, at Myth D. #19 Andreas Rudmarker had slipped a little bit in recent weeks due to inactivity, but now he scored 7 PRs for a 0.2 improvement. It was enough to tie #19 Luke Mulders and remain in the top-20. Andreas's improvements were enough to reach Myth D as well. #66 Michael Duerr made the most out of people's AF's dropping near him, with a small 2.5pt AF drop (from 12 PRs) that resulted in moving past 7 players. That's value-for-money. #84 Andre Overesch and #86 Florian Chollet were proving a bit strong in their rivalry, which has now been disbanded. Florian was about 10 positions ahead when the rivalry was made, but Andre has made up the room and is slightly leading him at present. Their cuts this week were similar, moving up 5 and 7, places respectively. Andre was already Hero C, but Florian reached Hero C this week. #106 John Hornick has been placed in the rivalry with #99 Arnaud Palierne, #101 Piet den Dulk and #113 Christophe Cosentino. John's 4pt AF cut saw him move up 5 places to get some distance on Christophe. It seems like Arnaud is slightly ahead in the rivalry, but John will no doubt want to enter the top 100 very soon. #145 Joey Michorious has quickly covered the ground to make it into the top 150, with a 31 pt AF cut. He improved all 32 scores during the past week, and flew past 20-odd players, including fellow Dutchie and former Champ, #152 Bart Savelkouls. Seems like he's had quite a good month, actually. Two recently-crowned Expert Cs, #204 Robert Szabo and #206 Eric Larson, are inching closer to top-200, while #197 Ewan Stephens's 13.37 cut was good enough to pass 20 players (those players were crammed tightly). Ewan was already Expect C, but #213 Flynn Hoppenbrouwers and #218 Stanislas Arnoud also reached Expert C this week. #284 Robert Chastain seems to be picking up some speed in the PRs, scoring 26 this week (most of them in the past two days) for a 47pt AF cut. Quite a jump for Rob, easily qualifying for a placement in the top 300. (Rob didn't have a full set before, so his previous AF rank is unknown). #320 Rhodri Morgan is on the opposite side of 300, but he complemented last week's 35pt AF cut with a 34pt cut this time. Is he slowing down? Hehe. Rob and Rhodri reached Adv B and Adv C this week. #420 Alex Moon had the largest slice of piece (numerically, not as a percentage) thanks to a 66pt AF cut. He's from Australia and he has a really cool first name, so he rocks. (Assuming it's a he; if not... omg <3). Good news for Alex is that he improved all 32 PRs, which means he's got plenty of potential left - you can't dedicate too much time to perfecting a course if you play all 16. So we can expect more news from him in the new future. Honourable mentions: #131 Andrew Math (Exp A), #136 Jan Haye Klijnstra (Exp A), #161 John Furtney (Exp B), #238 John Chapman (Exp D), #273 Jared Stiefel (Adv A), #346 Chris Kelley (comeback after half a year, Adv D), #439 Kevin Cook (comeback after 1 year, Int B), #440 Jeff Kottcamp (Int B), #515 Steve Legg (Beg A). New Records Two overall records were improved, both in Mushroom Bridge. Xavier Valentin' 25"799 won out, with Vincent van der Fluit trying to get his hands on the lap record some days later, managing a 25'81. Both of these scores are G+2, while Cedric Willo's 25'84 falls into the next standard threshold, at G+1. Vince beat his own course time of '84 with a 1'18"789. It was under 1'18'8 and therefore enough to claim the G+3 standard. Vince and Olivier are still the only two players under 1'19. In 60Hz, Marius Mollenhauer beat Olivier Peruch's course record in Luigi Circuit. The new time of 1'15"686 is just 0.01 faster than Olivier's time from 5 weeks ago. Both players have Myth B scores. Meanwhile, Olivier took one back from Trystan Pugh, on Mushroom Bridge. His 25"907 lap is 0.001 faster than Trystan, which is as close as it gets. Olivier and Trystan's scores are both Myth+, and the next best 60Hz time is 25'99 from Bo Garman. New Players Welcome to... Andy Bell, UK (318th, Adv C) Christian Eitelmann, Germany (504th, Beg A) Maximilien Turettini, ?? (~687, Beg D) |