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Jump to navigationJump to search→Sami's SMK Career & Development of the Super Mario Kart Time Trial World Records Site
By November 1998 Sami realised that there was no competition in the existing dormant sites available, unlike Mario Kart 64 which was picking up competition very well. He liaised with Rene and decided that he would like to create an expanded site for Super Mario Kart Time Trials that would serve a large number of players. This would be created manually and initially hold World Records and Top times, starting with Top 10 or Top 20 only. He also decided to expand by including NTSC times driven by players in America and Canada as separate pages with their WRs and Top Times. Rene really liked this idea so the project was passed on to Sami which he updated manually for the next 7.5 years. To start off with there were few NTSC players, however Michael Liem of the Netherlands assisted Sami with finding archives of the past Champions from the 1996 - 1997 era including PAL and NTSC players such as David Wonn, Laurens Liem and Michael Liem himself; and also PAL players other than Edwin Peeters such as Australian Champions Ademir Cortes, Martin Bowman, former UK Champion Matt Leech and a couple of others. Sami then decided to put together the times of some of his family members that used to kart and also a few friends at his Secondary School whom he spoke to about the site. The site had about 20 members on PAL at this stage and a few on NTSC including the NTSC retired champion from USA, Travis Nelson. Sami hoped that by early 1999 that many members would join, but only few came to the Super Mario Kart Time Trials. It seemed that players didn't play Super Mario Kart anymore. While it was true that many didn't, Sami was wrong...
In Summer of 1999 Sami travelled to Turkey with an ambition to expand the site. He took several documents and papers with him to help him work on the expansion. He was discussing ideas with the Kart Historian of the Player's site of Mario Kart 64, Kevin Booth and decided that he would like to create a similar format for Super Mario Kart. A full Player's site with more features such as Player Profiles and overall Rankings including Total Times and later on Standard Times. Kevin really liked the idea and advised Sami to pursue this. Sami drew up some blueprints while staying in a small village in the middle of mountains in south Turkey. This allowed him to come up with what he wanted the front page of the site to look like and also the Players list, rankings and later the POW Awards. He implemented the bluprint designs towards the end of August 1999 on his return to London and full Player's site was completed. The site's designed remained in that format for nearly 7 years. By the start of 2000 competition started to pick up, particularly more on the NTSC side with some rivalries near the top from new members, this competition continued consistently through the year into the new Millenium.
In 2001 a large community of Super Mario Kart players from France became involved with the Super Mario Kart Time Trials and Players site. Their champion at the time Nicolas Clementy was the first to join, and many followed afterwards. This year saw a boom in the activity on the site which Sami managed with pleasure and enjoyed the competition. In 2002 Sami had his first great threat to his rank by Michael Jongerius of Netherlands (who in recent years became #1 at Mario Kart 64). Sami had joined University at this time but continued to kart into early 2003 where they had an amazing battle of World Record Swapping on PAL. Sami took 11 World Records in one week after solid driving and then retired from competitive Super Mario Kart to pursue other interests and University life. He did however continue recruiting players and maintaining and updating the Super Mario Kart Time Trial World Records site. Michael Jongerius also retired and focused more on Mario Kart 64. Sami didn't realise that there would be more threats to his title.
Site activity continued to climb during Sami's time at University as he updated from the University library, and bit by bit new French Champion Pierre L'Hoëst was inching away towards Sami's rank. Despite players asking Sami to return to defend his title, he refused stating that he was retired from the competition and busy with University, following the introduction of NBT (New Boosting Techniques) that were being used as an advanced form of driving to lower times further. The inevitable happened and in April 2004 Sami lost his title of Super Mario Kart Time Trial World Champion on PAL. However Pierre's title didn't last as long as expected as the Netherlands provided a new secret weapon: Karel van Duijvenboden. Karel started off in the middle of the ranks but picked up on his skills very quickly and before long he rose to the top. Sami was still not considering a return to PAL when Karel reached #2 on PAL pushing Sami down to #3. Pierre tried to defend his rank but Karel proved too strong with NBT and overtook Pierre to become the PAL Time Trial World Champion by the end of 2004.
2005 was another busy year for Sami as he had a lot of projects at University and final exams. After graduating he started full time employment which meant less SMK time but he still worked on updating the site although it was becoming a strain due to the volume of active members each week. Sami's rank on Super Mario Kart declined as he was no longer involved with Time Trial himself but only occasionally met up with #2 and #3 in UK, Matthew McCarthy and Chris Clark respectively for some races which he was still able to perform very well in. Sami was then ranked at #7 in the World on PAL by the end of 2005 and was set to drop further.
At the beginning of 2006, one of the firt World Meets was planned for July of that year. As a result, Sami was forced out of retirement to learn NBT near enough from scratch to be able to take on the French and Dutch players. His return began around April 2006 where he struggled to make any prs as his NBT skills were very weak. He persevered however and grdaully made progress and the players saw him climb back up to #3 in the World on PAL by the time of the meet. Sami was finally able to meet more International karters from the site when they visited London in the July 2006 and raced against the Dutch karters Karel van Duijvenboden, Gerard Roodhorst and Michael Jongerius with success in Match Race. Sami's toughest battle was vs One of the top French racers, Florent Lecoanet which had a crowd watching and went neck to neck until Sami took the win at 12-8. Sami won a few more Match Races and GPs vs the French players and then lost to Pierre on Match Race when he visited for a day during this time. It was a very enjoyable meet and the players took part in other activities including a game of football in the park. Further meets were also planned.
In early 2007 the French Players organised their annual Fun Cup in Paris where they hold a big meeting. Dutch, British and Swiss karters and other gamers were also invited where Sami took part in further match races. He lost once again to Pierre, however successfully won vs all the other players of France and Switzerland. One of the tough new matches was vs Paris Champion Harold Christensen for a London vs Paris showdown. Sami struggled on a few tracks as Harold took the lead on wins. Then when they reached Bowser Castle 1 disaster struck as the R button on Sami's snes pad broke internally and collapsed on the inside causing him to lose his lead and the race on that course. Sami was 3-1 down at this point, but the karters provided him with a tempoarary pad until his one got repaired. On the other cups Sami made a comeback to win 13-7 on this match race. He watched several other matches between the players there and they were also able to visit the city in Paris and play another game of football as part of extra activities.
Sami continues to play Super Mario Kart Time Trials semi reguarly in 2007 and has defended his rank at #3 in the World on PAL and as the British Super Mario Kart Time Trial Champion.
== Super Mario Kart meets ==
== Super Mario Kart meets ==
