Sami Cetin

Sami Cetin

Introduction

Sami Cetin was born in London, UK on October 1982 and is the founder and webmaster of the Super Mario Kart (SMK) Time Trial World Records Site for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System SNES. He was the chief times and news updater of the SMK community since November 1998, and continues this job on the 2006 automated reincarnation of the site as a Director. Sami is a senior moderator of the SMK forum and a popular member of the kart community, placing 4th in the 2004 Karter Contest and winning the 2006 Contest over Alex Penev. His dedication and long-service to Super Mario Kart have earned him the title 'Godfather of SMK'. Now ranked 4th on the PAL Time Trial Rankings, he was a former World Champion in Super Mario Kart between September 1998 to April 2004 (at one time holding all 40 WRs). Sami has however retained his title as the Champion of the UK on Time Trial, also including Match Race, Battle Mode and Grand Prix modes of SMK. He was also the first player globally to reach the famous 1'00"99 mark on Mario Circuit 1 with Non-NBT driving.

Sami has studied Computing and Business Administration at the University of Kent at Canterbury between 2002-2005 and has been working full time since. His hobbies also include recreational weight training/bodybuilding in the gym, designing and updating the SMK site, producing and editing independent films with his friend Jason Mathoora; and socialising with friends.

Personal History and Education

Sami Cetin first attended Downsview Primary School in South London in September 1987. He developed an interest in Mathematics, Computers and Designing activities that would forge the skills he would use in the future. He and several others during the later years of Primary School took an interest gaming as consoles became popular. Sami also participated in some Christmas productions that helped develop an interest in acting, one that he would not later study, but take part in recreationally for Jason Mathoora's films. Due to suffering from asthma since 1984, Sami was unable to perform heavily in sports; this prevented him from participating in football and related activities from a young age. However, as a turn of events, Sami did participate in some athletics on some occasions and he even scored 1st in his year and school for 1994 in the Long Jump event. He went on to compete at the Croydon athletics with other competitors from other schools and reached some targets but due to lack of time and training was unable to reach a high position in that event. He was also able to sprint fast on short bursts but fell short of winning on these events again due to the difficulties. Sami also participated in swimming during the early to mid 90s.

Secondary school began at Stanley Technical High School in September 1994 where Sami developed his education in many subjects. On his first day there he met friends that he has stayed in contact with until this day, including Jonathan "Biff" Sifleet, John Barber and Neil Skipper. Sami's subjects at school leaned more towards languages, Business and Computing which he would later go on to study at College and eventually University. He had developed a strong interest in civil aviation and wished to become a civil aviation pilot, however this dream was later not fulfilled due to various constraints, so he instead pursued other subjects of study. Sami also attended a Turkish School on Saturdays to complete a GCSE course from late 1997 up until Summer 1999 in which he achieved a grade A. He also performed very well in all of his other exams at the end of Secondary School and set his sights for his next step.

Sami Cetin attended Coulsdon College to study A-Levels that he performed well in and enjoyed at GCSE; these were Computing, Business Studies and German. Although he had lost contact with his school friends for these few years he met many more people between 2000-2001 and had memorable moments during his A-Level studies. From late 2001 Sami started going out to bars with a few friends and then bumped into his old friends Jonathan "Biff" Sifleet and John Barber from school and since then has stayed in touch with them regularly. He also met Jason Mathoora in College who was one of the few people he kept in touch with from College when leaving in Summer 2002. By this age although his asthma never cleared, it had improved a little since childhood; Sami thought it was time to develop a new hobby and began training in the gym with weights and also to improve his cardiovascular (by inventing his own training methods such as running after buses). At first his weight training started at home but it later moved to a small gym in his College. Sami became involved in some small film projects of Jason's to relive some of the brief acting he took part in at primary school.

After passing his A-Levels Sami was able to attend the University of Kent at Canterbury to study his degree course in Computing and Business Administration where he moved away from home for 3 years (returning to visit friends and family during holiday periods or a few weekends). The course began in September 2002 and lasted until June 2005 with his last exams finishing a month early. Sami continued his gym training by taking it more seriously involving a strict diet that lasted the 3 years of his University time. He made several friends during these years and involved some of them into his gym training programmes that he wrote himself. By the 2nd year he had a training group of 5 people. Sami spent time socialising on several and working on his Uni projects in the various Computer rooms and the library. He enjoyed evenings out in the main Uni bar and in town on a weekly basis. These were some of the happiest days of his life that will always be remembered. Sami then graduated in 2005 after sucessfully completing a 102 page dissertation and the final exams. He shortly after found full time employment in the City of London. Following his graduation he went to see Star Wars Episode III in the cinema which he had been looking forward to see during all of his University years; this was a present for himself for reaching the end of his many years of study. Sami did visit Canterbury a few times the following year to see friends but has not returned there since.

Sami's SMK History

Sami Cetin first played Super Mario Kart following Christmas 1992 and his skills developed very quickly into 1993. During this time he realised very early the correct driving techniques with D.K.Jr to enable him to approach corners with perfect lining up in order to achieve fast times. He started off playing on Grand Prix mode during the first years mainly as the faster speed allowed him to test his skills on reaction time. Although the Internet age would not be popular until some years later, Sami felt he would have been a fast player, however he had little competition at the time.

On the 29th March 1994, it was his father's birthday and several friends and family visited Sami's home. During this time Sami felt it would be a good occasion to organise Super Mario Kart Tournament between the family friends that were attending. 8 players were gathered for a Match Race tournament and were organised into the brackets for single match races. As most of the players were on a beginner to intermediate level at the time it was kept only to Mushroom Cup courses. The participants included Sami's brother Hakan, sister Ayla, cousin Esra, friend Jonathan Cem Pulleine (later ranked on the Time Trial site) and 3 more friends of the family. The Semi-Finals saw a face off between Sami and one of the players with Sami reaching the final. Hakan did really well in his Semi-Final but was overtaken by Cem. The final took place on Mario Circuit 2 with Sami having a bad start after being hit by Cem's red shell. Sami made a comeback in the last lap with a Mushroom to win the Tournament that day. He did not participate in a similar Tournament again until 2006.

During 1994 Sami continued to improves his speed and skills on Grand Prix mode including noting some of his records there on paper to track his progress. During this time he had a vision that one day he would like to know all the best players around the World in SMK and to be able to compete, however without any good methods of finding players available at this time, the dream looked like it could not be fulfilled. However Sami was unaware that during this year in the Netherlands there were Nintendo Tournaments where several games were played with many competitors. Super Mario Kart was a popular one with the Super Mario Kart PAL World Champion at the time Steven Zwartjes who competed there on Super Mario Kart and Street Fighter 2; retiring from those two games following winning the tournament. In 1995 French gaming magazines contained a competition on several SNES games including holding some fast Super Mario Kart Records, some of which had reached the level of Steven Zwartjes in 1994, therefore possibly taking the fastest PAL Records at that time, but then retiring a few years afterwards. However, Sami was still unable to find similar activity within the UK.

In 1996 Sami decided to involve a few more family members including Karim Hasso and they started on Time Trial mode. Karim however only really focused on Mario Circuit 1 but Sami focused on the other tracks a fair amount also. By the end of 1996 Sami was at a very strong level on Time Trial but was still unable to find competition. He spoke to a few friends from his local school who played a bit and were later contacted to join in the competition on the site when it started. Sami continued to improve his times semi-regularly through 1997 and although it was not registered on a site as he had not been online yet, he had reached the level of UK Champion on Time Trial after landing ahead of former UK Champion Matt Leech who was active up until this time. Mario Kart 64 arrived and Sami turned to play this for a while but was back to SMK very soon after to continue improving his records.

Development of the Super Mario Kart Time Trial World Records Site and Activities

Before the Summer of 1998, Sami Cetin and Hakan Cetin connected to the Internet for the first time and Sami immediately searched for Time Trial Records on Super Mario Kart. He was very surprised to find sites run by Dirk Wegener of Netherlands and Rene Elsässer of Austria that contained records, however he was disappointed to see that players were inactive on SMK since 1997. He also found an active site for Mario Kart 64 and communicated to a few of those karters. Sami was excited to see that his Time Trial Records were in direct competition with the current PAL Time Trial World Champion from Netherlands, Edwin Peeters. Sami continued to work on his records and then contacted Rene Elsässer regarding his page of SMK WRs. Rene responded and Sami's records were added in on the 18th September 1998 earning him the position as PAL Time Trial World Champion of Super Mario Kart. However this was still only the beginning of the fun...

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 first 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 gradaully made progress and the players saw him climb back up to #3 in the World on PAL by the time of the meet. Another major development in Sami's SMK World occured in May 2006, Alex Penev helped develop an advanced database and new look for the site with more automation as it moved to a new location at http://www.mariokart64.com/smk/ with more automation and several filters and stats. This assisted in the updating time greatly and provided many exciting targets for the players including new members.

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.

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 attended the Next Level Gaming (NLG) meeting in Orkanger, Norway in July 2007 where he entered several competitions/activities including SMK and other games; an international football tournament with the other visitors, bowling, go-karting and a mountain hike in the middle of a night during poor weather conditions. The SMK tournament was set on Match Race which chose the Top 16 based on 3-try Time Trial attempts of MC1. The Top 16 included players from France, UK, USA, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Australia. Sami made it to the final but lost to then current Match Race World Champion, Florent Lecoanet of France who later that year went on to win the CDF/CDE in France; it was a disappointment as Sami had won a friendly vs Florent 13-7 a few days earlier, however it was great to travel and meet many people and reach 2nd place. The football Tournament was a success as Sami created designs for Team UK with the slogan "Team UK - Feel no Way" in honour of Biff's success with the Street Fighter Alpha 3 and other activities at the Paris meet earlier that year. The Teams wore the t-shirts for the first time in the football tournament on a hot summer's day in Norway and later for most of the games. Three teams were constructed to divide the numbers evenly; Norway/Sweden (Scandinavian Team), the France/Holland team and the UK/USA/Australia team. The Scandinavia Team made a surprising attack on France and Holland with a 9-2 win. Team UK joined with Aus and UK struggled a little more but secured a smaller victory against France and Holland. The odds were against Team UK with injured and tired players for the final against the Scandinavian hosts. However with great teamwork they were able to prevail and managed to win the match 4-1 vs the younger crowd; they went on to enjoy the rest of the gamingand acitivites during the week.

October saw another opportunity for Sami to organise a games meet; his 25th Birthday involved a room hire in Fairfield Halls, Croydon, South London with several tvs and games available. The event had several UK visitors including friends and famil members, the Dutch, French and one from Norway. One of the highlights that Sami organised was a Tournament on SMK for 150cc Grand Prix mode on Mushroom Cup for the Beginner/Intermediate Level karters, featuring some of the Dutch and French Karters. The final was between Vincent van der Fluit and Sami's niece, making her first International Tournament debut, Leyla Hasso who was 8 years old at the time. Leyla wore her Team UK T-Shirt in the same design template as those created for the Norway meet and was able to win the tournament after some skilled driving. Leyla shortly after went into retirement from SMK to pursue Nintendo DS and other interests. The weekend was a success and the players looked forward to future meets.

Super Mario Kart European Championship 2008

Following the yearly successes of the Championship of France in Super Mario Kart; the French Federation of SMK (FFSMK) decided to reform their yearly tournaments for SMK into the first European Championship (CDE). This tournament involved 8 countries (7 from Europe and one USA representative), accounting for a total of 43 visitors, where 39 took part. Although Sami had some unlucky match results on Semi-Finals and 3rd Place matches, he reached 4th place overall and performed exceptionally well on Battle Mode as it was previously not a strong mode for him. His Time Trial result at the CDE brought him up to a strong position, but he lost the 3rd place match to Matthias Boucher on Vanilla Lake 2 (a track which he earlier won in the group stage). Match Race again went very strong with a flawless 18-0-0 win for Sami in the group league stage, however a Semi-Final landing with Florent as Florent didn't reach top in his group caused an unfortunate early exit with a 9-5 loss. Battle mode was his first time to compete on a professional level there and he did exceptionally well reaching the Top 5, very close to the Top 4 after losing 7-6 to Harold Christensen. By GP mode the tiredness started kicking in, with a 4-2 loss to Florent on Semi-Final, however he picked up the pace in the 3rd Place match vs Karel where he gained his medal. Had he reached those few wins he could have certainly been 3rd and probably 2nd at the CDE.

His final results also made him the official UK Champion for all the multiplayer modes of SMK. Sami was joined by a strong Team UK (altogether 8 members). Other tournaments were set up where a few competitors were involved in other game tournaments during the time, with John Barber winning a Gold Medal on the Pro Evo 2008 Tournament and good prize money. Sami won a Nintendo Wii and a Bronze Medal on the 150cc part of the tournament; also including a 2nd Place trophy for the alternative SMK Master Cup Tournament after dethroning French rival Harold Christensen in some close battles.

Super Mario Kart World Championships 2009

Sami has recently confirmed that he will be attending the World Championship of Super Mario Kart that is also to be held in France, during August 2009. A few of his team members are expected to join him also.

Super Mario Kart World Championships 2010

Sami also confirmed attendance at the SMK World Championship 2010 held in the Village of Thil near Reims, France again as per the 2008 European Championship. Sami once again secured 2nd Place on the World overall on Super Mario Kart Multiplayer.

R3PLAY Retro Gaming Event at Blackpool and live World Record attempt

In November 2010 Sami attended the R3PLAY Retro Gaming event in Norbreck Castle, Blackpool, UK. The event catered for gaming on all consoles old and new that was prepared by a large team who hosted. There were around 2000 visitors during the weekend. Representatives from Nintendo, Sony, Sega, Microsoft were present and various other celebrity figures in the industry. All proceeds towards the event would go towards charity and Sami participated in a Match Race challenge for casual players by giving a large head start on two Super Mario Kart tracks; any challengers would contribute a small fee towards charity and if they finished the race before Sami caught up they would win a small Nintendo related prize. Sami raced a few hundred challengers and 4 players were able to reach the finish line.

The second challenge presented to Sami was to do a World Record attempt for Mario Circuit 1 fastlap on PAL Time Trials. The previous World Record of 11.34 seconds by Pierre would be tough to take down, but after many close shaves he was able to reach a new World Record of 11.32 seconds live at the event. He also tried to attempt the 5-lap World Record but due to time constraints was only able to improve the British Record that weekend. A few weeks later he took the course World Record and also did the same on NTSC for 5-lap and 1-lap.

Rise in Time Trials again

Sami participated more in Time Trials in late 2010 and into the first half of 2011 hitting some goals on weaker tracks. Mario Circuit 1 became his strong point again and he also landed a World Record for Mario Circuit 3 on PAL. He improved his times to near World Record level or thereabouts on tracks such as Koopa Beach 1 and Vanilla Lake 1, more recently taking World Records for Ghost Valley 3 on PAL. He hopes to continue to lower some of his weaker times in future.

SNES Online Tournaments (SNESOT) website

A number of former zbattle players set up a community called SNESOT, in which players can link up to play online Tournaments in various SNES games. Super Mario Kart was a large feature and there has been some fierce competition, in particular due to the slight delay nature of online gaming. Sami however was able to win his first Battle Mode NTSC Tournament after a close bout vs some of the Top US Battle Mode Specialists. He also took the title on NTSC Match Race online to continue his PAL winning streak there since the last 2 World Championships. The Tournaments are ongoing and more are to be scheduled in Autumn 2011 and 2012.

Super Mario Kart World Championship 2011

Sami also confirmed attendance at the SMK World Championship 2011 to be held in the town of Santeny in the suburbs of Paris, France. He is also attending with 4 other members of Team UK.

Involvement in other Mario Kart games

Sami's prowess extends to the other kart games, and he is one of the best all-round Mario Kart players: currently ranking in 2nd in the Combined Mario Kart Rankings after a brief period in 1st place. He was formerly world champion in Mario Kart 64, where he had many impressive WRs and broke milestone barriers such as WS 3lap in which he got 3:39.99. He was also world champion of Mario Kart Super Circuit for the first few months of competition including taking many former World Records during a visit to Germany in early 2002 before retiring from Mario Kart Super Circuit. He has spent a bit of time on Mario Kart Double Dash and a little more on Mario Kart DS. He competed on Mario Kart DS becoming UK Champion during the start of 2007 but retired within a few months to make a return to Super Mario Kart.

External Links

• Sami's SMK profile
• Sami's MKSC profile
• Sami's MKDS profile
• Sami's MKDD profile
• Sami's MKWII profile