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| [[Image:Robinhat.JPG|thumb|20-year-old Robin]] | | [[Image:Robinhat.JPG|thumb|20-year-old Robin]] |
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− | '''Robin Usher''' is a Mario Kart player and staff member. He is originally from California, but spent most of his life in Japan before returning to California two years ago for university. | + | '''Robin Usher''' is a Mario Kart player and staff member. He is originally from California, but spent most of his life in Japan before returning to California two years ago to study computer science and fornication in university. |
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− | Robin has been a member of the kart community since 2003, when he joined the [[Mario Kart 64]] Player's Page. He has played every year, steadily rising to his current level of King B. He has also joined the competition in [[Super Mario Kart]], [[Mario Kart Super Circuit]], [[Mario Kart: Double Dash!!]], [[Mario Kart DS]], and [[Mario Kart Wii]]. He is one of the few players to be ranked on all six sites, although the bulk of his karting time still goes into MK64. He has had some modest success in MKWii at the beginning of its competition, holding several Top 10 regional times during the first couple of months. He also briefly held double SRs on Mushroom Gorge for a few minutes after the shortcut was discovered. Robin is an active poster on the message board with over 2000 posts, and is also active on the IRC channel, where he goes by the nickname Honekko and talks about Lode Runner all day.
| + | == Kart Career == |
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− | Robin is mostly known for the various contributions he's made to the [[mariokart64.com|kart community]], including: | + | Robin has been a member of the kart community since 2003, when he joined the [[Mario Kart 64]] Player's Page. It was the first video game he ever played competitively, and so at first he moved slowly from the bottom of the charts. However, after a couple years of playing he eventually made a breakthrough and went quickly from Semi-Pro to Elite B in 2005, and then Elite B to King B in 2007. Robin's favorite course is Rainbow Road, where he also has his best ranked time: a Legend C flap. He has played every year of his 5 year career so far, usually during the Summer and Fall months, and has no plans to ever retire from MK64 as it is his favorite game in the whole wide world. |
− | *organizing and running the Karter Contest 2k8
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− | *creating and updating the MK64 Rivalries
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− | *updating various other parts of the MK64 site including the timesheets and POWs
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− | *updating MKWii times
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− | *translating the MKDD, MKDS, and MKWii Join pages into Japanese
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− | *contacting and recruiting Japanese players for all sites
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− | *running the All-MK Team Tournament and MK64 Challenges 2006-2008 on the message board
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− | *creating a Mario Kart Trivia bot for the IRC channel
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− | *creating the brilliant name of "MK64 Stars" for the community's main MKWii Wifi clan
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| + | Robin's second Mario Kart was [[Super Mario Kart]]. He enjoys SMK a lot and lists it in his list of 10 favorite games, but he has never gotten deeply into time trials there. He last played in January, when he received an MVK award on the Non-NBT site but then stopped playing just barely before entering the top 100 because he wanted to return to MK64. Robin's favorite course in SMK is also Rainbow Road, although he falls off at least 10 times every time he plays it in GP mode. |
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| + | Recently, Robin has joined the new [[Mario Kart Wii]] site. He had some good success in the first couple weeks, holding many North American regional records (especially on the N64 courses), but eventually he slowed down his playing and has now been kicked off all the regional charts except DKJP. His only real time trials activity in the past two months has been to claim double SRs for a few minutes when the Mushroom Gorge shortcut was first discovered. Mostly Robin only plays Wifi matches now, where under the nickname Honekko he leads the MK64 Stars clan made up of mostly time trial players from the player's pages. |
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| + | Robin is also a member of the [[Mario Kart Super Circuit]], [[Mario Kart: Double Dash!!]], and [[Mario Kart DS]] pages, making him one of a very small number of players to be ranked on all 6 sites. However, the vast majority of Robin's karting time has been spent on MK64, and so he is not very high ranked on these other games. Perhaps when he "maxes out" he will consider putting serious effort into climbing the ranks of another Mario Kart. |
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| + | == Staff Member == |
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| + | Much more than his karting abilities, Robin is known for the various contributions he has made to the community as a staff member. In 2004, Robin joined the staff of the MK64 site by implementing an idea to have rivalries to compare more than two people at once. Rivalries were eventually added to all the kart sites and are a widely used feature. Robin continued updating the MK64 rivalries manually for many years until recently when [[William Lacey]] created an automated version. |
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| + | Although the rivalries were Robin's original claim to fame, he has always been eager to help out the MK64 site wherever he is needed, which has led him to take on a wide variety of jobs over the years. Currently, he updates POW awards and the excel timesheet that the charts are calculated from. Robin also decided to help out with the MKWii site and has updated times submissions there since the site began. |
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| + | Robin has used his knowledge of Japanese to help the community in other ways as well. He translated the Join pages for MKDD, MKDS, and MKWii into Japanese and has helped contact and recruit Japanese players for all the sites. |
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| + | == Community == |
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| + | Robin is an active poster on the message board with well over 2000 posts. He has organized several alternative challenge tournaments on the MK64 board in the past couple years, and also ran the All-MK Team Tournament that put members from all the sites together. Currently, Robin is running the Karter Contest 2k8. Robin is also an active and well-known member of the IRC channel, where he goes by the nickname Honekko. He created a trivia bot there with questions about the kart community. |
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| == External Links == | | == External Links == |