Hey, Ethan from MKSC here. Anyways, the title says it all.

Just curious about what you guys think about the possibility of maybe contacting and/or recruiting some of the Japanese community. Because I'm sure there are/were more than 5 or so players from Japan who were highly skilled.

I know that MKSC had a HUGE Japanese following back when it was fairly new, between 2001-2006 or so. Many of these Japanese were fairly old at the time, and exhibited such talent at MKSC that I'm sure at least some of them had to be pretty good at SMK. Namely among these people that interest me are the likes of Su (Kiyotaka Umeki / cstrakm, the guy who did the SMK GP TASes and was the MKSC SC world champion from 2004-2012). He seems to have a huge amount of knowledge about the game through viewing the TASes, and he was obviously extremely skilled at MKSC. Another player, though he's a bit of a hermit/MKDS fanatic now, is Yatakoba (some of the guys who played MKSC or visited GFAQs in 2002-2003 might remember him as Sato or Gikowarda).

Anyways, I contacted one of the most knowledgeable people throughout all MK communities, and arguably the man with the most connections. He may be a cheater, but at least he's willing to help: Shota Hirano, better known as Mander (was viewed as THE MKSC God until he was caught TASing MKW in 2012 and banned from MKSC after). Here's our Twitter conversation:


Hahaae ‏@hahaae  Feb 23
@mandermka do you know any Japanese who play the SFC MarioKart? We would like to know of potentially skilled players. Thank you!
Cheers,
H.

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マンダー ‏@mandermka  13 hours ago
@hahaae Yes. SFC Player is in mixi. But I'm not contacting SFC Player for a while.


With that said, I might be able to convince him to help me find some of the Japanese community and maybe interest then in competing again, or at least being interested in joining the site. He may be a cheater and can be difficult to work with, but he and I are (or at least, were) great friends; he was my mentor on MKSC in 2011 and taught me almost everything I know about SC racing.

However, the Japanese community also raises a few issues with the site here. Many of them don't compete in flaps, nor do they remotely care about flaps (this was definitely the case in MKSC, where most of the Japanese flaps are just their splits). So I don't know if they would be able to join the site a la Sami's particular joining rules. Many of them (if there are many/any) are also likely to frown upon NBT. I know the introduction to ZZMT in MKSC (same thing as NBT) drove many of the Japanese away, many of which never came back (such as Su). Just thought I'd ask you older SMK fellows about the matter before I really pursue it or anything. I do think that the Japanese players, if they play time trials, likely have a lot of talent and could compete at high levels, at least in nonNBT, etc.

p.s. Sami's rule for joining the site is worse than testicular cancer

Spot on, Dan! I don't know about other people, but when I joined the site I never imagined that I would have done the things that I've done and met the people that I've met and made those lifelong friends that you mentioned.

Sure, it's just all just a game in the end, but for many of us, it became so much more. And that being said, I do wish that more people would see the game the way that Dan and I see it. I feel privileged that I'm able to say that I have good friends in countries other than my own.  

At this point in my life the game is a mere detail.
I'm not flying 12+ hours just to play a game I can play at home.

I know Ha Nyan, for example, is a guy that has traveled the world and cares about meeting other people (he met Alencar here in Brasilia). So we can't just say that they are all antisocial. I would love to see more japs joining the Player's Page though, considering how many stories I've heard throughout the years.

How does someone get to the front page on twitch? Is it something you pay to get featured? Would be great to have it there for at least one day.