Michael Fried

File:MichaelFried.jpg

Michael Fried

Michael Fried is one of the most well known members of the Kart community. He plays all 5 Mario Karts, and has consistently been an active poster on the Mario Kart forum since 2003. He has worked on various kart-related projects, most notably creating the MKDS standards, and creating and updating wrvids.com, the largest online collection of videos for all 5 Mario Kart games, as well as F-Zero, Diddy Kong Racing, and several other games. Michael is also an MKDS proof moderator.

Michael is naturally very competitive, but is never selfish about sharing strategies, because he is a strong advocate of improving the overall strength of times in the game, and enjoys seeing people improve their times. For this reason, he often explains strategies to people through AIM, MSN, and on the forum, and he sometimes analyzes videos to identify mistakes, to help people improve. Michael is also one of the most trustworthy karters, and has a very good history of providing plenty of video proof in all 5 Mario Karts.

Michael is among the best in the world in MK64 and is also considerably skilled in MKDS, SMK, MKDD, and MKSC, and has thereby earned the title of best all-round karter. He lost his title once for a short time when MKSC was added to the rankings; he was passed by Sami Cetin, but then started playing MKSC (August 2006) and quickly reclaimed his title. He is currently ranked 5th, and has several world records. He plans on returning to MKSC eventually to try out ZZMTing with a modified GBA SP.

Before MKSC, Michael played MKDS. Michael is a former world champion in MKDS, and held the title continuously for the first 99 days after the game's release, a feat never before accomplished in any Kart. At one time he even held all 64 world records at once. He finally lost his title to Miguel Rodriguez for awhile, and then eventually reclaimed the title for 2 weeks in June 2006 before losing it for good to Thomas Bolton. Since then he has fallen out of the top 20. Michael also spent a considerable amount of time competing in Non-MT, in which he currently holds more than 50 world records, and in mission mode, in which he used to hold many world records on Cyberscore.

In August 2006, Michael created and updated an MKDS Wifi ranking site, where people could play rated Wifi games and receive a rating, based on a rating system similar to the ELO system. It was fun for a short time, but didn't hold peoples' interest for long, so the idea was given up a few weeks later. Surprisingly, Michael didn't do very well in these rankings, mostly due to his poor item skills; he was never known as much of a Wifi player, and did not spent much time practicing Wifi.

Despite never having been world champion, Michael's best Mario Kart is Mario Kart 64; he considers himself more skilled in this game than in MKDS. He currently holds one world record, Yoshi Valley fastlap (video). He is also the first person to land the Rainbow Road spiral shortcut on all 3 laps, and he discovered a new strategy that saves .1 in Frappe Snowland. He is currently ranked 7th in non-shortcut (4th NTSC), 11th in shortcut, and 3rd in universal.

Michael played Super Mario Kart for 2-3 months in late 2005. He didn't get near the top before retiring, but he did manage to reach God (by the old standards). He then returned to MKSC in 2007, and is currently ranked 27th. He holds 6 trick flap world records (videos).

Michael played Mario Kart: Double Dash!! in the game's early history and peaked at 5th place, at one time holding the Mushroom City world records. Since then he has fallen out of the top 100. Michael is not happy about this, so he will most likely return to MKDD eventually.

Michael is very well known on the Mario Kart forum. Since joining in 2003, he has consistently been one of the most active posters, and is now 2nd only to Jeffrey Gutierrez in post count. He rarely goes a day without visiting the forum, and he reads and posts in every section.

Michael has contributed to the Mario Kart community in various ways. He is a proof moderator for the Mario Kart DS site. He created the standards for MKDS. He finds all the fastest videos for each Kart and uploads them to his wrvids.com, his online organized collection of Mario Kart videos. He created and used to update the list of MKDS WRs based on all known sites and the MKDS Non-MT rankings. He created the Halford standards for MK64. He is also an administrator of this wiki, speedrunwiki.com.

In addition to Mario Kart games, Michael also plays several other games. His favorite video game series is The Legend of Zelda series. He has competed for fast times and high scores in various games, including but not limited to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Diddy Kong Racing, the Donkey Kong Country series, and various online flash games.

Michael considers having fun to be a very important part of life. He takes Kart more seriously than most people and often tries to encourage people to kart more. He strongly disagrees with people who say that video games are a waste of time. One of his personal quotes is "There's no such thing as too much Mario Kart."

External Links

• wrvids.com
• Michael's SMK profile
• Michael's MK64 profile
• Michael's MKDD profile
• Michael's MKSC profile
• Michael's MKDS profile
• Michael's times and scores in various games (hasn't been updated recently)
• Michael's Cyberscore profile
• Video of Michael juggling