Sami Cetin

Sami Cetin

Introduction

Sami Cetin was born in London, UK on Friday 8th 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 community webpage on Geocities for over since November 1998, and continues this job on the 2006 reincarnation of the site. Sami is a 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 3rd 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 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 now works full time since his graduation. His hobbies also include training regularly with weights in the gym, designing things, producing and editing independant films with his friend Jason Mathoora, and going out and meeting friends. Sami currently lives on his own in South London(UK).

Personal History and Education

Sami Cetin first attended Downsview Primary School in South London in September 1987 and made many friends there. He developed an interest in Mathematics, Computers and Designing activities that would forge the skills he would use when older. He and several others during the later years of Primary School began gaming as consoles became popular. Sami also participated in some Christmas plays 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 long suffering of asthma since 1985, Sami was unable to perform any sports involving endurance; this meant that whenever football or related sports where involved Sami was unable to be involved. However, Sami did participate in some athletics which were on short bursts and in large event he 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 the standings. He was also able to sprint fast on short bursts but fell short of winning on these events again due to lack of training as this also affected his asthma. Swimming was another sport he learned in his Primary School years and this was used on numerous holidays in Turkey each summer.

Secondary school began at Stanley Technical High School for boys in September 1994 where Sami developed his knowledge and education fast in many subjects. On his first day there he met friends that he has stayed in contact with till 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 although he was unaware of this at the time. 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 Education, possible Health and Financial constraints. Sami also attended a Turkish School on Saturdays which he had previously gone to, but this time 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 Coulsdon College.

Sami Cetin attended Coulsdon College to study A-Levels and pursued his interests still in becoming an airline pilot. However the mathematics and physics subjects had lost interest for Sami this year due to how demanding and difficult they were and he was unable to continue with these subjects. He then restarted Coulsdon the year after in September 2000 with fresh subjects 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 both happy and sad 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, so Sami thought it was time to develop a new hobby and began training in the gym with weights as he was underweight and also improved 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 acting he done as a child in primary school but this time with several different themes. In their free time on weekends and particularly evenings the group enjoyed many fun evenings out with many good, not to mention hilarious memories.

After passing his A-Levels Sami was able to attend the University of Kent at Canterbury to studying 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 his time at University 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 or 6 people. He felt this was a good way to wind down after the day's study and also a chance to be a part of something active that he could not do as a child. Sami spent more time socialising on several nights out and working on his Uni projects in the various Computer rooms and the library. He enjoyed nights out in the main Uni bar weekly and also every Monday on a regular basis in a popular student bar in town. These were the happiest days of his life and he will continue to miss them very much as the days go by. Sami then graduated in 2005 after sucessfully completing a 102 page dissertation and final exams and he then went on to work full time 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 and saw it as a present for himself for recahing the end of his studying career. Sami did visit Canterbury a few times the following year to see a few friends remaining there but has not visited since 2006 due to the changes there since he had been studying and living as a student there.

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

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 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. Today he also recruits and trains new members to SMK while pursuing other interests and goals in life.

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