NEW MEMBERS

    We have three new members joining SMK over the past few weeks!

    We had an email from an Yves Daniel from France sending in all of his times. He managed to be able to play on an NTSC version as with very few other European karters. It turns out that with King B overall standard and #15 position in the World on NTSC, he is way ahead of Stephane Cerveau making him #1 NTSC Player in France and I believe #2 NTSC Player in Europe (behind Michael Liem)!! A player with some great times indeed!

    Matthew McCarthy from the London in the U.K e-mailed his PAL times for which he used D.K.Jr to drive them all. He has entered at #56 on the PAL Players' List and is Master B overall. It turns out that he not only lives in London, but in the same Borough as Sami Çetin, only about 4 miles away! So we could have some katers meeting up soon!

    Lastly a new PAL Karter from Sweden, Magnus Andersson. He is at the stage of using mor Bowser instead of Koopa, which shows that his times will greatly improve soon! He has a good set of times so far and is Pro D overall. His PAL world ranking is #62 and he is #8 in Sweden!

KARTERS VALIDATED!!

    We have received news of karters that had been validated! Michael Jongerius was asked to ubmit a tape which he was unable to do, so Michael Liem arranged to visit him. Together they karted both SMK and MK64 and it turns out that his times are for real!! So Michael times are no longer frozen and his profile is now up to date.

    The long awaited tape of Simon Laflamme has been fully checked through and a set of video files were made for some select courses. This includes the famous sub 1'40" on BC2!! It has been uploaded to the 'files' section of the Super Mario Kart yahoo group page. There is a link in the proof page and above in the links area.

    Jamie White's tape has been received by Stanley Jeram recently we have heard. But so ar there havent been any files made. So we look forward to that soon. But just to say that these three are all validated now.

    Other karters have entered some of their pictures and video files up themselves and their links have been added also to the proof page. These karters are Patrick Burke (NTSC), Archibald Lefevre (PAL) & Thorsten Fellberg (PAL).

THIS WEEK'S UPDATES

    Jamie White had a target to set over the past weeks and that was to recah -7 SR! It was indeed a tough challenge but with quite a few new WRs he made it! Ghost Valley 2 has a lot of potential with the just-about-reachable platform, so Jamie took a step ahead of Laflamme with a new WR of 1'00"52! Donut Plains 3 was up next with 1'18"65 and 0'15"47 WRs!! The lap looks very solid now! Following this a new MC2 WR of 1'14"40 and twin CI2 WRs of 1'07"19 and 0'13"26!! Simon Laflamme also had a shot at the WR there on DP3, he held it for a while at 1'18"75 until it was beaten. Michael Jongerius sent in the fastest GV2 time yet with a new 1'02"36 PAL WR!! This one looks tight as ever and with it came a slight lap improvement.

    Richard O'Neill, our recent entry from the U.K made a very large climb over the past weeks with most courses PR'ed on! He even managed to reach Legend times on GV2!! A great effort so far indeed! He has managed to climb his way up to Elite D overall, #42 in the World on PAL and #5 in the U.K!! Swiss Champion, Raphael Braun also made himself heard this week with a few GOD times followed by some other Legend and King. He scraped through to Legend D overall, passing Gerard Roodhorst in the process to be #7 in the World on PAL!! Thorsten Fellberg hadn't PRed in a while but made some nice progress on 4 boards chopping the SR down a little. Sven Necker also karted from Germany sending some huge cuts off VL2 and some other decent cuts off a few other courses. He climbed to Elite F overall and #49!!

    Julien Holmiere made some good improvements these weeks with 13 new PRs, including a move into the sub 1'02" regions of MC1!! Many new King times were seen here which helped him considerably! He climbed to King E overall, #29 in the World on PAL and #11 in France! Julien Patry also threw his hand into the competition with 6 new PRs! Nothing really big but a move up to Elite C overall and a fixed position at #41 in the World on PAL are looking good!

    Patrick Burke was the one karter who managed to get some PRs in for this recent POW week, therefore earning himself a POW! He has some pics up of his times as has been mentioned. A lot of his times are moving up into the Kings now which is looking promising! He nearly hit Elite D this week but has a #44 in the World on NTSC position! Lastly, we have a suprise PR from Michael Liem (NTSC) who karted during his meeting with Dutch Champion, Michael Jongerius. It was only small but cut a point off, hopefully we will see more PRs soon!

LEAVING TO UNIVERSITY..... SITE TO CONTINUE??

    Ok, this is my fault for leaving things till the last minute. Anyway, some of you are aware now that I will be leaving London on Sunday 15th September to go to the University of Kent at Canterbury to study Business Adminstration and Computing. This raises the question of what will happen to the website. Right now I am doing erevything I can to keep it going myself. I know where everything is and how it works and I was told by an MK64 Karter, Tom Gaffikin that I will have plenty of free time to do so. It seems I am unable to take this PC with me to Kent, it is new aswell and would be a nuisance to carry back and forth. However, I used to work on an older PC at my brother's flat, some of you may remember me mentioning it. This was over a year ago. I may be able to take this Computer. Although it is aging it should be enough to continue the website work, plus I can study in the room I will stay in. The other problem is the internet access. I should be able to link my computer there to the network, although I am unsure if I will need a modem still, I know my computer does not have one. If the worst comes to the worst, I can do the updates on that computer in my room, then do the uploading on another computer elsewhere. I will hopefully be taking a printer with me (my brother will provide me with one), hopefully it works with it! But if i do not have internet access I will have to print my mails elsewhere, or make transfers with disks and stuff. If this all works out it will be a lot of fun to do.

    I will be taking up other activities in my University life, such as more sport. Some of you have heard of my recent sporting interests. This will obviously take up time, plus I will be meeting friends and other people. As this is the most important part of my life I will need to study like mad aswell to make sure I can get what I came for. I don't drink alcohol so I should be awake and in one piece for early morning lectures. Anyway, getting to the point, I am doing everything I can here to make sure I can keep on updating the site. As long as I can get to the Uni and get all these things working, I should be happy, and the site will continue for a much longer time. I don't know the arrangements yet for the 2nd and 3rd years but it should be ok. I will just have to carry files back to this computer again during Christmas, Easter and Summer holidays. I ask you all to pray for me and for the site that everything goes ok!

STANDARDS PROBLEM STRIKES BACK!

    It seems that last time when we swept it under the carpet, we made a mistake. Over the past year we have had many new members, including Jamie White who has worked alongside Simon Laflamme to drive some of the fastest times on NTSC and open up possibilities for faster times. At this stage with new video files and testing done on an NTSC ROM of SMK we can see much more clearly what the game's limits are. The standards were written back in 1999, although some are fine, many are too easy as we have figured out the correct way to drive the times.

Simon Laflamme (NTSC Karter and Champion of Canada) has written an e-mail to yahoogroups on the subject, here is a copy of it:

Hi everyone!

Since the last few days, ive been thinking about the standards we currently have on the site. It is clear now than many of the GOD times have simply become too easy by the time with new strats and better knowledge of the course limits. I have talked about this with Sami earlier and having a SR score of GOD-7 as much as getting 5 sec better than a GOD standard is something that does not really have sense. The biggest standards changes would have to be done into the NTSC version since its where there are the easiest GOD standards.

So, losing about 1, 2 or 3 rank standard(mainly if youre into the legend or king ranks) is something some people might not like. Its why i have opened a poll into yahoogroups to ask players if they would agree about changing standards to harder ones especially in courses like VL1, KB2...

Actually, the only standard that would need to get easier is GV1 5-lap in PAL where 3/5 is way too hard. Some of the GOD times are already just corect(RR, MC4, MC3...) but most of the others would get harder obviously. If we see than most of the people agree into changing the standards, then it is obvious than they should be changed up to king G or legend G for the courses where changes are needed.(elite players should really not lose a lot) I encourage you then to go vote on the poll and to post a message if you have anything to ask or want to say your opinion!

Cheers,

Simon

    So a Poll has been put up and this will most likely act as a final decision as to what will be done. I checked the results today and most people are in favour of changing the standards. We will leave the Poll open for a while and see what happens. So far there have been some conversations over AIM in a lot of detail on the subject.I would advise more people to join in and put their views across, and maybe we can come to some sort of agreement at least as to what to do with the standards.

SUPER MARIO KART 10TH YEAR ANNIVERSARY - 27TH AUGUST 2002!!

    Im sure a lot of you have heard by now of the 10th Anniversary of SMK. I was discussing with Stanley Jeram on what to do after Mike Groels first brought the subject up. An online one-try tournament will be created for the day.

Here is the e-mail from Stanley Jeram, so you can read the details:

Hello SMK Fans!

As most of you avid karters know, this August the 27th is Super Mario Karts 10th Anniversary and to celebrate such an event, we are holding an ALL-DAY Online One-Try Tournament!!!  Everyone is welcome to participant, and I hope a lot of you will show up that day and take part in some SMK fun.  The SMK Tournament will take place over AIM and the SMK Message Board.  Here are the rules:

1) All times shall be posted on the SMK Message Board, and the message board will be the only record of them.  AIM should only be used to chat with other people while you are racing, do not post times to officials on AIM

2) PAL and NTSC will have there own tournament, and two winners will be crowned, one for PAL and the other, of course, for NTSC.

3) Only 5laps will count to the final score, so do not post and flap times.  Splits can be posted at one's own desire; splits are not required.

4) ALL 5laps are ONE-TRY!!!  Let's continue to use the honor system here guys, it's been working greatly so far.

5) Scoring:  1 point for first place, 2 points for second place, etc.  The player with the lowest score after all 20 5laps, is the winner, as simple as that.

6) Everyone should participate!!!  there is no excuse not too, because it will be held all day, and you can post your times whenever you want on that day.  I will be taking part, and i will probably put shame to my name, and my times, but it'll be fun, so i want to see at least 10 players on PAL and 10 players on NTSC, the more the merrier.  This 10th Anniversary only happens once, so let's take advantage of it!!!

I think I have covered all the rules, if anyone can think of anymore, feel free to add them to the message board topic, which I will be opening right now.  post anything and everything there.

Cheers,

Stan

    This is an interesting way to celebrate the 10th year of SMK, so lets get as many participants as possible. It may be a bit difficult for the French to participate, which will be explained in the next sub heading. So please try to take part if you can.

SMK CHAMPIONSHIP OF FRANCE

    The SMK Championship of France is also kind of like a 10th Year celebration in a way because it takes place between 26th and 28th August! A link has already been placed on the links area above so you can see the details. Hopefully we will have an interesting story about this event next week! This is the reason why some French karters may not be able to make it for this tournament on the message board on the 27th. But if any can make some sort of arrangements, that would be cool.

    Franck Mazières has been organising a lot of this competition, and has asked me to make a list of the players that will participate. Even the Swiss Champion will join in! Not all of them are on the Players' List, so we may even get some new members soon! Here are the karters, some of them with their current Time Trial Rankings, just so you know:

Franck Mazières    (#5 in France)

Sébastien Pereda    (#6 in France)

Laurent Meissel    (#14 in France)

Nicolas Clementy    (#2 in France)

Cédric Leutwyler    (#15 in France)

Mickael Le Gallic

Jérôme Le Gallic

Jérôme Giraut

Raphael Braun    (Champion of Switzerland)

Archibald Lefevre    (#4 in France)

Bertrand Voireuchon    (#8 in France)

Etienne Roquain

Jérôme Gava    (Champion of France)

Clément Millotte

Gwendal Haudebourg

Julien Chabanis    (#7 in France)

Jérémie Cherami

Maxence Durand

   Good luck to all the karters and have fun!!!

NEW MEMBERS

    The first new member this week sent his times in a few days ago, his name is Michael Pölzl, and he is a PAL Karter from Austria! He has entered the PAL Players' List at #73 and holds an overall standard of Expert E!

    The second new member is also from Austria! Quite exciting as it increases their number of karters on the site! The entry from Roland Pristauz was just on time for the update as he reaches Semi-Pro A overall with a PAL Ranking of #68!

UPDATES THIS WEEK

    Some great improvements going on this week from a lot of karters! A new WR was set by Sami Çetin on Donut Plains 1 with 1'16"63, this was also put on to tape along with the other DP1 times and others. Sami also had a go at one of his weakest courses and made a few small improvements. A strange discovery was made by Archibald Lefevre this week. He discovered a glitch when doing KB2 which ended up in a much faster time. It is sort of similar to those of KB1 and VL2 but because of its nature I decided to call it the KB2 Glitch. Archibald also noted that theoretically, it could be possible on a lot of other tracks, but has had no luck yet in pulling it off, so we are unsure as of yet. If it turns out that this trick is possible on many courses, it may not be worth making a list of WR times on the WR page, as this is considered another trick/Glitch time, therefore not part of the World Ranking. As it is still under experimentation, I only added the times to Archibald's profile, not to the top times or WRs page. We await more news on the subject. Archibald also improved DP3 lap to cut a few points off his SR.

    The two new recruits from the UK have been making an impact on the SMK World big time! Sami Çetin decided to meet up with Matthew McCarthy last Sunday to start his training in SMK. After several demonstrations he set out to destroy his times! He cut a total of 229 SR points off!! He has PRed on nearly every course and lap and climbed to Elite C overall standard! His PAL World Ranking is #43 and after passing Sue Cladingboel he made it to #6 in the U.K!! Richard O'Neill was unable to meet up yet, as he is living far away in the U.K, but hopefully sometime soon we can all kart together. Richard also made several PRs, 30 in total! His GV2 times are looking sharp indeed and he has hit many King times. It was all worth it in the end, as after checking his overall standard he landed dead on 14.000 which makes him King G overall! He remains at #5 in the U.K, but is catching Mat Leech pretty quick and it looks as though he'l lose that position to Richard soon. Richard is ranked at #37 in the World on PAL!

    Over in France, Julien Patry hit quite a long list of records, most of which were small cuts off times here and there, but he managed to pass Daniel Rydh on the Players' List and is very close to Elite B! Franck Mazieres set a new record of France this week after successfully hitting the GV1 platform twice in that one race! His time was not far off the WR of Edwin Peeters either! He also made twin prs on VL1 with Koopa! It will be faster using Bowser/D.K.Jr but the times were Legend G/King A anyway which is still great! His performance earned him a position at Legend G overall standard! His World Ranking stays the same. Lola Zappara made a return with some fast times using Koopa. The times helped the overall standard quite a bit, so Lola made it to Master G overall and #59 on the PAL Players' List!

    Champion of Germany, Florian Stern had also been playing similar courses to Franck and hit the jump in the end which he used to find difficult. A nice lap came out and a slightly faster 5-lap time. His GV2 is getting very fast now and he also made 3 GOD laps. His overall standard climbed up to Legend G overall. He didn't quite reach Franck, but passed Pereda on the way to be #13 in the World on PAL! The 2nd fastest Dutch Karter, Gerard Roodhorst is back! He is hoping to make some more PRs soon; so far he has 5 new PRs which cut 3 points off and put him a point short of Legend D overall.

    NTSC Karters continued to make progress! Yves Daniel, our recent NTSC entry from France, threatened the Legend ranks with a lot of PRs and ended up close on King A overall, and remains at the same rank on the NTSC Players' List. Simon Laflamme was really going for a WR on DP2 this week. He knew that the 1-lap was a little off Jamie's insane time, but he tried hard and made it to a sub 17 second lap, although he knows that more can be done. The 5-lap came close to the 1'26"00 barrier, so he may be able to make it to 1'25"s and a new WR soon. Thomas Harrington made 4 PRs this week, getting some more small cuts off his SR.

HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY SMK!!

    Yes it is now 10 years since the Japanese release of SMK! We had a few ideas for celebrations. Unfortunately not all of us could meet up or anything. Still, looking back on the past 10 years it has been really great. Lets keep the game alive!!

RESULTS FROM TOURNEY

    The tourney on the message board for the one try on every course is now finished. Stanley Jeram should be getting up some sort of results soon if it is not there already since i checked last night. So keep checking the message board to see what is going on.

FRENCH CHAMPIONSHIP

    The French Championship is also over. However, we do not yet have the results of the tournament, but newsof that will follow next week, alternatively you can check out some of the links to French SMK sites, there may be some news on there.

NEW MEMBERS

    We have a new PAL member from France this week. Arlaud Ludwig joins us at the high overall standard of Elite A!! He has reached #39 on the PAL Players's List and #16 in France!

    The second new member is also on PAL, a recruit by Raphael Braun from Switzerland. The new player Paolo Galasso was born in Italy and although has has lived there sometime, currently lives in Switzerland, so we have entered him as a Swiss Karter. He has made some really great times on a few courses and has a lot of potential left. He reaches Elite G and #56 on the PAL Players List so far. He is also 3rd in Switzerland!

THIS WEEK'S UPDATES

    It was Sami Çetin's week as far as PAL WRs went! He returned to Choco Island 1 and after practice managed to take back a PAL WR and a half I should say with a new 5-lap of 0'59"68 and the 1-lap tied at 0'11"74*! DP1 was next as he battled with Jongerius taking the PAL WR to 1'16"53 in the end. It was not over as he wanted to get DP1 lap down fast. Jamie White's lap came to mind and so a new PAL WR was shortly after driven at 0'14"91!!

    The NTSC karters made a serious impact once again, but mainly from the return of Nathan Stinson! He had these PRs a while back which were improved over some time, he now sends them in. He was the real Champion at the Vanilla Lakes and is really giving Jamie White a run for his money here! He came in very close to some NTSC WRs, go check out his profile! Nathan Stinson has climbed to Legend C, #7 on NTSC and #3 in U.S.A!! Yves Daniel has also karted a lot this week with some more new GOD times and Legend times. These helped him a lot as although he remains at the same position, he has climbed to Legend G overall! Simon Laflamme worked on one of his weakest courses, VL1 in an attempt to catch Jamie some more. He cut some good SR points off this week! Thomas Harrington did a similar job on CI2 this week also cutting some more points lengthening the lead from Sabbagh and other karters below.

    Our recent Austrian entry, Roland Pristauz said he would try to beat Peter Elsässer to become Austrian Champion! So far he is well on the way to doing so! With a whole new set of PRs he has climbed to Master C overall and landed on #60 on the PAL Players List! Richard O'Neill was the only other U.K member karting this week, and he made some very fast laps and course times. Some more of his King times are pushing into the Legends, he passed Matt Leech to become #4 in the U.K and is #32 on the PAL Players' List with a King F overall standard! Andrew Kent sent us a set of trick time improvements along with normal PRs and passed some important players with those times! He got pretty close to reaching Legend F!

    Gerard Roodhorst looks like he has made a full return now as he sends in 4 new PRs this week. Some nice attempts on MC4 as well as some lap improvements on KB1 and MC3 earned him the Legend D standard overall and he also passed Raphael Braun for #7 on the PAL Players' List! Michael Jongerius attacked DP1 this week with some great attempts at WRs, he cut off a few points off his SR with these PRs! Bertrand Voireuchon made one record which was a King A time for VL1, we will hear more from him soon.

Continue to September 2002