NTSC News, on October 29, 2007, by Dan Hoernemann
 

This week was the most active on the NSTC side since about the end of May. Six people were active, along with a new member, and Simon is also ready to make an update to the site, the first since who knows when.
 
First off, we welcome Jacob Goldfinger to the site. Jacob has been on the Players' Site for quite a while now, but has held off on joining the spectacular non-NBT site until now. The multi-kart star has been relatively quiet on the SMK scene lately, but is hinting at making a serious return to the game. Jacob's times are mostly around Pro-Master standard, and he has a score in the 3.5 area, just below Ryan DeMaster. Some notable times in Jacob's set are MC1 1'02"84, BC1 1'35"83, VL2 1'02"89, and RR 1'33"80. I hope you enjoy progressing through the non-NBT ranks, Jacob, and hopefully you can start to challenge some of our non-NBT regulars!
 
Michael Fried again improved some of his non-NBT times, six prs in all. He continued to master the bumper turn on MC2 as he cut his time under the 1'15 mark at 1'14"76. At DP1 his time fell to 1'15"79. Michael braved the chill of VL1 and slid through the snow to reach a 5-lap of 54"54. My favorite time in his submission, though, was his BC2 f-lap. At 20"00 he came oh so close to getting all f-laps under 20. If he would have taken one corner tighter, he would have had it. Which corner? I don't know. There are so many tough corners on that race that any one could have been slightly tighter.
 
I, Dan Hoernemann, also played BC2. I drove a less impressive time of 20"18 on an opener. I also played my second favorite non-NBT course, MC4, and hit times of 1'40"47 and 19"86.
 
Ryan DeMaster picked up a controller for the second week in a row and made four new records. Most of the times were small cuts, but one that should make him very proud is his KB2 f-lap. Standing at 12"61, it becomes Ryan's first non-NBT Elite time!
 
Toshi Miura mixed in some non-NBT driving with his NBT prs. At BC2 he neglected the zig-zagging and drove times of 1'42"07 and 20"03.
 
Pete Crawford kept up his streak with KB1 prs. He drove a barrier-breaking 5-lap of 56"98, which, coincidently, is also his current score for the non-NBT site (5.698). He threw in a 11"07 f-lap along with his course time.
 
Lastly, Emeric Gosselin also continued his activity streak, but with four prs. He spent a little time adjusting to PAL, then made his way back to NTSC (or the other way around). On the NTSC side, he hit a near-barrier time on DP1 with a 1'17"00. At DP3 he fell below a barrier, thankfully, his time was 1'22"95. Finally, on GV3 he utilized the platform and hopped a little track to reach a final time of 1'17"78.
 
MVK for October is another tough decision. Pete, Emeric, and Fried all deserved to be mentioned for it. It's times like these when I wish for some crazy formula for deciding awards, but it remains a judgment on my part. I believe Emeric Gosselin is most deserving of the MVK honor. He had solid first and last weeks of October, and, most importantly, was active every week. Keep up the karting, Emeric, on both PAL and NTSC. You could be the first ever to be double MVK!
 
That's all for the news. As I write this, the Red Sox are up 3-1 in the 7th inning. Looks like another sweep. Join me next week for the non-NBT news, where we write coffee table books about coffee tables.
 
And go Colts, beat the Patriots!

PAL news, on October 29, 2007, by Karel van Duijvenboden

The Non NBT rankings have finally been updated yesterday, so if you saw people rejoicing on the streets, coming out of their houses to wave with flags and driving around in their cars whilst honking their car horns, that's why. That's right people, Non NBT's world domination is entering people's minds and spreading like the flu and there's nothing that can be done to stop it...(apart from another database crash).

I'll immediately start with doing something that some might consider to be blasphemous, but after yesterdays news I'm in the right state of mind to take a little extra risk here. So, I'll introduce a new player to the Non-NBT Players' Site: It's an Italian karter going by the name of Marco Michele. He hasn't been entered to the rankings yet, but he did join Sami's Players' Site at #159 this week. What position this will translate into for our site remains to be seen, but if you want to see what his times look like already, you can go here, as all his times are Non NBT: http://www.mariokart64.com/smk/profile.php?pid=478. Welcome to the site Marco, I hope you'll enjoy your stay here!

Suddenly it seems that Italy discovered SMK, or at least the competitive timetrial sites that are based around the game. After not having an active Italian for years (not once since the existence of the Non NBT Players' Site even I think), we now have three! The Italian Champion is Angelo Di Vano and he is currently ranked #41, just ahead of Canadian Champion Chris Balch. Angelo is improving rapidly, scoring many PR's, though like Simon estimated in his introducing paragraph for Angelo yesterday, a couple of his times are likely to turn out to be achieved using NBT. An educated guess would be KB2 flap at least. Instead of focussing on that, I'd rather discuss some of the times that are definitely Non NBT, such as his impressive sub 1'30 RR time, some very good GV3 PR's of 1'18"84 and 15"45 and a nice 16"39 DP3 flap. If you're ranked between the 30th and 40th position, you'd do well to keep an eye on Angelo's progress as he's climbing like a rocket.

The third Italian to be active is Fabio Sacco. He improved quite a few of his times and seems to be enjoying the GV's especially, judging by the fact he performed nicely on all three. At GV1 he landed a platform-jump for a 12"65 flap. This PR represents his only King time so far and is also his highest ranked one for the coursecharts at #38. Most of his timesset ranges in the Elites, though he still has a few Master times left. It'll be interesting to see if he can move them in the Elites as well soon, perhaps getting some more King efforts in in the meantime.

That's the news as far as Italy is concerned. Of course SMK's #1 nation in terms of activity is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, France. You'd be foolish betting against at least one of them being active as not a single update goes by without their presence. This time we had four improvers, très bien! The #1 Pierre L'Hoëst dropped by with just one PR, but it was a WR. After a string of 1'02"22s (which was also his previous WR here), he finally turned out a 0"02 improvement to 1'02"20* on his beloved GV2. This WR has nearly reached the limits, that is for a 0/5 platform-jump race, which this one was as well of course. Perhaps platform-jumps can be included next time, but Simon's threath to kill anyone who would try to overthrow this WR resorting to such tactics is still sitting too fresh in our minds, despite it being several years old. ;-) And who are we, mere mortals, to question Simon's authority in this field? In short I'm not expecting a platform-jump 'infested' WR here within the next 20 years or so, unless Simon's PC falls apart again, which would unable him to take note of such a devilish improvement.

The second Pierre to be active is Pierre Coste. He's exclusively playing MC1 as of late and improved his 5-lap with the trademark amount of 0"02, something I'm sure all fervent MC1 players can relate to. Furthermore, he improved his flap to 12"18 with the aid of one pipe-jump. Will MC1 turn into one of Pierre's long term projects, like CI1 or RR, or will it just remain at a small string of improvements? Time will tell as always.

The odds are that David Bonne was one of the people rejoicing in the streets jubilantly, after the rankings update of yesterday was announced to the public by Simon. David is a big Non-NBTophile (yay, I invented a new word!) as is expressed by the fact that he's the new PAL activity champion; that is in terms of being active for the most consecutive weeks (check that out here: http://www.mariokart64.com/smknonnbt/streakactivity.htm). Anyone who follows the PAL news should have seen that one coming. David was of course active this week as well, further expanding his record lead. He ended his DP1 work started several weeks ago with solid PR's of 1'17"35 and 15"28, both legend marks and both ranked #18. He then went on to the only course that he hadn't improved on since his return to the TT competition: CI2. After a few experiments he decided that going around the lake wasn't his cup of tea (yet), therefore his new 1'12"65 5-lap is a 0/5 race, albeit a very strong one at rank #15! His flap on the other hand was the result of an attempt to drive around the lake, which was partially succesful, judging by his 14"21 flap. David now only has one PR left that he has not improved upon since his return to TT: this is his MC2 5-lap. I have very little doubt that this one will be improved soon as well, therefore. In the meantime, thanks to the big site update, David's progress of the last months can be checked and summed up now: he has passed Björn Eklund to enter the top 20 on PAL, he has reached Legend G status and his score went in the 7's! 

The fourth and final Frenchie included in this update is non other than the legendary Florent Lecoanet. He achieved some absolutely amazing results at KB1 with the use of NBT's, but fortunately he didn't neglect to play the course thoroughly in Non NBT as well. His knack for slides truly showed as he reached a #2 time for the 5-lap with a 50"00, so close to that barrier! His new 9"63 flap is looking strong as well at #4. The question in everyone's minds however is, when will he attack the Non NBT WR for VL1 5-lap? I'm speculating on such a state of affairs, because of his recent NBT 5-lap WR succes at this course: He reached a sick 49"76, completely rewriting the standards for this course by being over a second faster than the rest of the field! Surely this kind of performance will translate in Non NBT WR potential for this course as well, as with Florent's strat around 90% of the course is driven the same way as in Non NBT. This would also be his first ever Non NBT WR, so there's enough incentive to give it a go, I'd say. Can he do it? I'm sure he can! Allez Floooooo!!!

Björn Eklund was active on the Tourette syndrome inducing BC3 and actually managed to get away with a clean 5-lap race! His 1'31"54 PR race was finished with a strong 18"15 final lap. Furthermore, he made an uncharacteristic trip to the Dark Side on MC4, only to return to Non NBT swiftly after, by getting a new 19"94 flap there. 

This updates main attraction is undoubtedly the big bang return of Sebastian Stellmacher. The former MKSC Champion hoarded his PR's for some time, with spectacular results! He didn't even hoard for that long though and considering that, his progress is nothing less than absolutely dazzling. He reworked his entire timesset for the Mushroom and Flower Cups and also improved on 4 courses in the two final Cups. This rain of PR's resulted into Sebastian becoming the Non NBT Champion of Germany by passing Armin "Huaba Deluxe" Huber. Sebastian's progress is showing huge parallels with that of Kalle, as both these karters have been improving similarly in (I'm estimating here) the same timesspan and within the same score region. The new German Non NBT Champ lands at #8, very close to the aforementioned Kalle. On with the PR's then, and there were many of those to discuss. For instance a 2/5 around the lake on CI2 resulted in a 1'11"20 time, indicating WR potential if he can make three such laps. Other stuff includes a sub minute on CI1, a time in the lower 1'02 half at GV2 and 4th ranked flaps of 12"10 on GV2 and 20"16 on BC2. Perhaps most significant was his huge PR cut on VL2 though. From a 0/5 island-jumps race, he worked his way towards a 5/5 race. Note that this was not the all island-jumps plus NTSC jump route, but the single island-jump plus snowslide route (I think I invented that strat back in the day, but I doubt anyone cares :-p). This feat resulted in a 50"30 GOD time for him, ranked #4 on the courechart. Will Sebastian continue his Non NBT attack and rival Kalle for his #7 position in the near future? I hope so, as that would make things very interesting indeed.

In Belgium the top two karters were at it again. Jean-François Schepers stated he has no time to play recently, but still dropped by with a King C flap of 20"83 at BC2. Belgian Champion Mathieu Jaspard drove a slightly faster 20"78 flap at the same course and drove additional King C PR's at DP3 alongside an 1'06"88 5-lap at KB2. The Belgian duo has been consistently active during the last couple of months so it'll be interesting to quickly take a look at their status changes, you know with the new update and all. Since the provisorial rankings update on the MB, JFS climbed from #32 to #31 and is nearly entering the 6's now. On the other hand, Mathieu remained at the 30th position, but already made his score promotion into the 6's. 

From two Belgians we move to two Dutchies. I (Karel van Duijvenboden) improved on my GV3 5-lap once more, cutting off a small amount to 1'15"06. The final lap of this race was once again the only middle lap that remained above 15 seconds, ruining a potential new WR or at least a WR tie. I'd say my PAL and NTSC PR's are very similar at this course now, both sitting dangerously close to a barrier and both ranked #2. 

The other Dutchie is the inevitable Alvin van Asselt. I bet you couldn't have guessed that one. ;-) He sent as many as seven new messages yahoo's way in the period that I'm supposed to cover this update. When he started his 'SMK career' his highest ranked times were at both of the Beach courses and whilst his entire timesset has improved dramatically since, this is still more or less the case. At KB1 his 10"97 barrier breaking flap is ranked #27 and both his KB2 PR's (1'05"19 and 12"56) are also ranked #27. His highest ranked PR is of course his platform-jump flap at GV2 though, which represents his only Legend time at this moment. That one was not set during these last few weeks though, so I don't know why I'm talking about that. As was to be expected Alvin's progress since the last stats update turned out to be monstrous, climbing from #45 to #33, passing for example the likes of John Kenny, Marius Hukkelås and Chris Clark! Alvin even made it to the Kings overall and he's looking a likely candidate to take over the #4 position in the Netherlands on Sami's Players' Site in the near-ish future.

That's it for the Non NBT news, made possibly weekly by three Biology students.*

*I thought it was quite an interesting coincidence that the Non NBT team (Simon, Dan and me) is made up entirely out of Biology students lol.

Please throw a controller at yourself to make sure that you are not dreaming, on October 28, 2007, by Simon Laflamme

The PAL and NTSC players' lists have been updated to reflect players' improvements since August 5 (!). (Yahoo groups post #10986 to #11488) 34 players were active in the last 12 weeks, amounting to a combined total score gain of +8,725 (to illustrate, it's as if your grandmother picked up the controller on New Year's day and became world champion before Easter).

ALL the pages of the site are now updated, including the Holy rankings... Alright, I'll temper with the religious and imperialist references...

To be honest, I'm very happy the site is back into service again, especially for those who have been active all the while. Everyone's times and stats should be accurate, but if you see something somewhere that you think must be erroneous (this does not include Sebastian Stellmacher having moved 33% closer to world championship in a one-week timespan), please let me know. All the score cuts shown on the players' lists are for this week only (and not the previous 12). Although it would have been nice to display everyone's real score cuts since the last update, this proves much too complicated given my resources (yes, there are certain things that an Excel database of 7,5 Megabytes cannot do).

As I mentioned on the Message Board, we welcome six new Non-NBT members with this comeback update! Some have been introduced by Dan already in previous updates, but apparently Karel thinks that it is blaphemous to introduce new players by himself.

In chronological order, Chris Balch is first with his full set of PAL-made times, most of them achieved in August. To my knowledge, Chris is the first player to get a full set of PAL times on North American soil. He has focused mostly (not to say exclusively) on KB1 and DP3 so far, two tracks where he is WR holder in NTSC, reaching top 10 or even top 5 times with disconcerting comfort on the PAL side. On the whole, Chris joins the PAL ranking in 42nd position, with a score in the low 5's.

Next we move on to Jacob Goldfinger, who repeatedly claims that SMK is the best thing envisioned by the human race since sliced bread. In any case, it really shows that Jacob enjoys the game, as he has made significative progress since he joined the players' site, a few months ago. He now joins the NTSC part of the Non-NBT ranking in 55th position, with a score in the higher half of the 3's.

Angelo Di Vano, from Italy, has been competing on the players' site for a good 2 or 3 months now, but that would be hard to guess judging only from his pace, which to this day remains explosive. Following in Alvin's footsteps, it will be interesting to see this player's potential unfold. For this update, I could not get a confirmation from Angelo regarding which of his latest times are NBT, so exceptionally he might be joining with one or two NBT PR's (I can already imagine Dan in his news poking fun at me for that, saying something like I distorted the very essence of Non-NBT), but that will be sorted out for next update.

Last player is another comrade from Italy, and a very accomplished MKDS player at that, Fabio Sacco. To my great disbelief, Fabio has been on the players' site for over an entire year now, but he's just begun getting noticed with his very consistent efforts that we've witnessed for some weeks now. He joins the Non-NBT rankings with a high 4 score and an altogether balanced set of times that grants him the 50th position in PAL.

A warm welcome to all new members and great pleasure karting!

NTSC News, on October 21, 2007, by Dan Hoernemann
 
 

Welcome to another propaganda-filled news update at the non-NBT site. All hail our supreme leader, Simon Laflamme! We minions must support Simon during his time of weakness when his hard drive gets fixed. In the mean-time keep karting and stay loyal to non-NBT.
 
Our first four karters were minimally active, to say the least. To put in perspective how active they were, I, Dan Hoernemann, was the most active with three prs! I only got small improvements on BC1 and RR.
 
Ryan DeMaster returns to non-NBT with a rather large cut to his BC1 5-lap. A drop of over a second and a half brings it to 1'37"89 in a surprisingly consistent race.
 
Emeric Gosselin improved his VL2 f-lap to 10"69. Sorry, Emeric, but I can't come up with great news if it's a slow news day! Maybe try for two next time.
 
Pete Crawford was saddened by Kentucky's loss to Florida this weekend. I feel for you, I hate the Gators too. But he did manage to improve his RR and KB1 5-laps to 1'28"01 and 57"27.
 
In stark contrast to our first four guys, Gustavo Krieger dominated his game and improved all 40 of his times! It would be silly of me to go through all of them, but I will point out some notables. Big cuts came at MC1 and GV2 with solid times of 1'03"17 and 1'05"08. His BC2 moves under the two-minute mark, as do all his times now, which is a great accomplishment for only two weeks of work. Gustavo's first sub-minute time comes at the classic VL1, where he lands at 59"61. Finally at VL2 and RR he turned in times of 1'02"81 and 1'32"03. I remember Emeric and Pete started off in a similar way. Maybe Gustavo can contend with them by the end of the year. Keep it up!
 
That's all for the non-NBT news, which is the means that Simon's disciples (Karel and I) spread the word about world conquest through SMK.

NTSC News, on October 15, 2007, by Dan Hoernemann
 
 

I'm slightly disappointed to announce that the amazing update I had planned for you has been postponed, but it will take place eventually, you can count on that. This week I'd like to start off by saying "Happy birthday" to fellow writer and SMK machine, Karel van Duijvenboden. We had six people active this week, plus a new member.
 
We welcome Gustavo Krieger from Brazil. Gustavo enters the Players' Site at 199, so he'll be 56th on this site, with a score right around the 3's. Some of Gustavo's best times are MC1 1'08"09, VL1 1'07"39, and GV1 1'09"28. We welcome you to the site, Gustavo. Hope you enjoy progressing through the ranks.
 
Guillaume Leviach made the crossover from PAL to NTSC this week, as he tried to reach a French record on RR. He almost succeeded by cutting his time nearly two seconds, but his time of 1'25"05 falls barely short of the top French spot. It does, however, land at the #6 spot on the chart, and his f-lap of 16"92 moves to 7th. Guillaume also put a little effort into one of his weaker tracks, KB1, and drove times of 55"76 and 10"69.
 
Michael Fried has really dedicated himself to non-NBT as of late, this week he adds 15 new records to his set of times. Along with some insane trick laps, he hit some excellent traditional f-laps, including a sub-10 time on VL1 of 9"86. Of course, he does know how to finish a complete race too. Times of 1'27"93 and 1'31"91 at BC1 and BC3 are nice barrier breakers for him. Another nice barrier fell at CI1, where he finished in a time of 58"93. Steady improvements came at MC1 and RR as well, where he drove 5-lap times of 1'00"22 and 1'26"18. Finally, a GV2 time of 1'00"95 with the help of two platform jumps moves up the chart into a tie for 11th.
 
Now we come to Dan Hoernemann. I drove barrier-breaking times on my favorite course, CI1 (58"97), and the not-so-liked KB1 (52"80). I had some insignificant f-laps on both courses too.
 
Next, Pete Crawford dabbled in a little NBT this week on DP1; but as a star non-NBT performer, he remained loyal to the good side. Pete's prs include a strong VL2 5-lap of 55"54, and a nice KB2 time of 1'02"83. He also hit times of 1'09"42 at CI2 and 1'02"53 at GV2. After his karting week was over, Pete watched his Kentucky Wildcats take down the #1 team in the country in triple overtime.
 
Toshi Miura returns this week with six new times, none of them being on his great GV3. But the times he sent in were great improvements on weaker tracks. At DP2 he drove times of 1'26"05 and 17"00, which are also good enough for the Players' Site. On DP3, he hit a 5-lap of 1'19"56, which is less than a half second worse than his NBT time. Lastly, he made great progress on RR, where his times of 1'25"77 and 17"02 were again for both sites.
 
Finally, Emeric Gosselin drove two new times. He beats his rival Pete at KB2, 1'02"10 being his final time. He also made a GV3 flappy of 15"09.
 
That's all for the NTSC news, tune in next week where we will (maybe) try something different!
 

PAL news, on October 15, 2007, by Karel van Duijvenboden

Welcome back to the PAL news guys. This update will cover 2 weeks of activity; last week's update was dropped as I attended Sami's birthday/gaming extravaganza in London during that weekend, which was a guaranteed hit of course!

Back to the PAL Non NBT activity it is then, as there's still a solid amount of that going on lately. After the epic battle for the Belgian #1 position, things died down there for a bit. The only Belgian active right now is Geoffrey Ewbank. He's trailing the pack, but can still see his opponents luring on the horizon. Geoffrey targeted the shores of KB1 and broke below the 1 minute barrier like a true pirate. To further prove his KB1 prowess he also tackled the Country Record for flap with a nice and tidy 11"62.

Frenchie David Bonne was the most active karter out of the bunch during the past two weeks, as he concentrated nearly all his firepower on the DP courses. Well, he did also play KB2 for a small flap improvement to 12"31. The DP's it is then...he finished off his DP2 work of the previous update by finising a new 5-lap PR of 1'28"71 and immediately started to play DP3 after. Large cuts followed as he worked his way down a few barriers, going from a 1'23 time to a 1'21"64. Obviously his flap was improved in that process as well; from 16"35 to 16"10 to be precise. He's gonna end his streak at DP1, where he already obtained new PR's, but is aiming to bring those down some more, which is why I'll leave it at this until next week... 

David's close rival Guillaume Leviach has been playing some NTSC lately, however still found the time to make one new PAL PR. And a significant one at that, as by landing the platform at GV1 he obtained a 0"22 flap PR cut to 12"49, passing many karters on that particular chart. Christophe Paquin also dropped by with a single PR for us, which was done while he was driving trick WR's left, right and centre. His sole PR was a nice one though: a 17"43 flap on the mighty RR. That being said, the cut was the smallest one possible, being a mere 0"01 improvement. It seems it was "the one PR if you're French week", as Pierre Coste only submitted a single new time as well. Well David Bonne is also French and did more than one PR, so it doesn't hold up completely I guess. Anyway I digress, Pierre played some MC1, NBT as well as Non NBT and was succesful with both methods. His Non NBT 5-lap went down to 1'01"76; his race contained 1 pipejump. He claims he can improve that without making any pipejumps though and who am I to question that statement in any way?

Alvin van Asselt was active too and you've guessed it, he only submitted one PR as well! He worked on MC2 with the double-jump strategy and cut his 5-lap down to a near King time of 1'19"50. It's getting a bit freaky now as the next guy also drove just one new record...the next guy being myself (Karel van Duijvenboden). I played on the groovy GV3 and spoiled my first real opportunity to drive a sub 1'15 on this course. The race contained two 14"8x laps in a row and with a sub 15 final lap I could have gotten close to Gerard's WR (and thus get a 1'14"xx). I drove a sucky 15"09 instead, which still lead to a second ranked 1'15"10 time.

Time to conclude the update, but not before I bring you the new PR's of Non NBT's new star, Kalle Videkull. He targeted some of the trickiest courses that SMK offers, but maintained a strong composure through all of it. If I mention the words Bowser Castle 3, I'm sure I don't even need to explain you what troubles he might have endured to get to his new 1'31"18 PR. By picking DP3 as his second course to be active on he didn't exactly make things easier for himself either. His sub 1'20 result is superb though and very consistent seeing his new flap is "only" 15"86. The list of courses he still needs to improve in the year 2007 is becoming progressively smaller. It goes like this now: KB1, CI2, VL1, MC4, KB2 and VL2. Well there's some real bastards in that list for sure and let's not forget he also needs to improve his BC3 flap still! Good luck with all that...

That's it for the Non NBT PAL news, where most people settle with submitting only one PR a week, showing they don't really want to play SMK, but just like to get their names mentioned in my world famous update.*  

*Sarcasm? Perhaps :-p

NTSC News, on October 7, 2007, by Dan Hoernemann
 
 

Hey hey, kids! Krusty the Klown saying it's time for the non-NBT news! Four of our cast members were active this week. Let's start the show.
 
We'll start with me, Krusty, err, Dan Hoernemann. I drove MC2 times of 1'15"18 and 14"83, using the bumper every lap. I just need to clear something up about the wha-cha-ma-carcass sandwich. I used non-diseased meat from diseased animals. Everyone does it!
 
On to my sidekick, Sideshow Bob, aka Michael Fried. Michael's running for mayor of Springfield, and rigging the election with eight prs. A couple of nice GV2 times of 1'01"83 and 12"17 fit in well with CI1 and VL2 5-laps of 59"84 and 52"33, respectively. I don't agree with his Bart killing policy, but I do agree with his Selma killing policy, so he gets my vote. The final tally: Bob (Fried) 100%, Quimby (KVD) 1%, with a 1% margin of error.
 
Our last two guys are Itchy and Scratchy, but you may know them better as Emeric Gosselin and Pete Crawford. Itchy (Pete) tied Scratchy's tongue to a rocket, which wrapped it around the moon. The moon then fell to earth and crushed Scratchy, symbolizing Pete's win over Emeric on DP3. Their times were 1'23"64 and 1'23"83. Scratchy almost got back at Itchy with his CI2 1'09"55, but the TV got unplugged before the rockets went off. Another close call between the two is now at CI1, where Itchy closed the gap with a sub-minute time of 59"85. Itchy gets the last laugh, however, as he dismembers Scratchy with a chainsaw, actually a GV3 5-lap of 1'15"96! Don't expect to see any episodes where these two share lemonade anytime soon.
 
That's all for the "Krusty the Klown" version of the non-NBT news. It kind of got a little intense at the end! Join me next week for the NTSC news, where you never know what kind of script you'll get next.

PAL news, on October 3, 2007, by Karel van Duijvenboden

Welcome back to the PAL news train, which has been riding for several consecutive weeks in a row again now. 

I'll start with the Belgian triforce, as for the first time in a while all three of them were active. Geoffrey Ewbank, who is the least active of the three in recent times, made a quick comeback. Only one PR though and this new 1'00"27 on KB1 won't be enough to put him back into attacking range for the Belgium #1 position just yet. Perhaps more will follow though. Jean-François Schepers made a more serious attempt, but still fell a little short with his efforts as well. He did get another sub 1'02 at MC1 at 1'01"94 (tying Mathieu's Country Record), as well as a 12"28 flap at the same course, a lap in the lower 15 half at MC2 and a sub minute time at KB1 that was also a CR. We find Mathieu Jaspard remaining in control of the Belgian Beads firmly though. In addition to already having the upper hand before this update, he scored three new CR's this week. He was solely active on the MC's, getting a new flap at MC2, slightly slower than JFS' new one, and the three mentioned CR's at MC3 flap and MC4 5-lap and flap. The 20"20 flap at MC4 is looking solid especially. 

Moving onto the ever present David Bonne. He karted on the grassy lands of DP2 for several days in a row in order to beat his times here after not touching them for several years. Well, not taking into account his already improved flap of last week, that is. David broke the 1'29 barrier in the end and though not completely satisfied he rested his mission with times of 1'28"73 and 17"47. French Legend karter Christophe Paquin also drops by with one PR this update, a platform-jump flappy at GV2 of 12"16. 

Alvin van Asselt was, of course, active as well. His main achievement was getting below the 1'02 barrier at MC1, with a big splash 1'01"88 to boot! His GV1 sub 1'08 without platform-jumping is looking sharp as well. Knowing Alvin's activity record lately, you won't be surprised if I tell you there were too many new PR's to mention in one paragraph again. There were 22 all in all, but not all of them were really big improvements. Furthermore, Alvin switched to play some MKSC next, finally leaving room for his close competitors to catch some breath. That said, I wouldn't be surprised to see his name here again next week...

Swedish Champion Kalle Videkull grabbed the spotlights of the Non NBT stage again this week, determined to improve his entire timesset before the end of 2007. He's coming closer and closer to realize that goal, however some of the tracks that are left for him can prove to be very tricky or just downright annoying. Amongst his list of improvements this week were three courses. Starting off with GV1 where he enjoyed a double PR race. He made the jump two times, one of the jump laps being a very fast 12"32 flap PR (ranked 5th). Apart from one slow 13"61 non-jump middle lap, this race was clean and enough to obtain a good result of 1'05"51, which makes him the fastest guy of the 2/5 jump people. Kalle also played DP2 and drove a consistent 1'27"71 (again ranked 5th), as well as a 17"30 flap with the startboost (I assume anyway). Finally he endured the lenghty straights of BC2 long enough to gather a double PR of 1'42"64 and 20"28. The 5-lap is extraordinarily consistent for a BC2 race, with all middle laps within one tenth of eachother. That's quite impressive, you know with the thwomps and all that.

This month's MVK should have been a shared one if ever there was one. Firstly there's Alvin van Asselt, who reworked his entire timesset once again (and perhaps several times) this month, reaching some serious new levels, as is displayed for example with his new MC1 time of 1'01"88. Then there is the mega talented Kalle Videkull delivering some truly kick-ass times all month long as well. It was a tough call, but I'm gonna have to give this one to Kalle. At the level he is at already, it's extremely hard to improve as many PR's as he has done. Furthermore,  some of the new times that he got were just plain sick, like RR and CI1. I hope October's MVK battle will be as exciting as September's one!

That's it for this week's PAL Non NBT news, where people don't get the idea they are reading a Larry David script instead of a kart news update.* ;-)

* Kidding of course Dan, that update was truly awesome, keep it coming!

Go to November 2007 written news