Forget that the icon doesn't match. If you look at the first icon it's pretty clear that NTT cared about having a perfect icon and it's perfectly symmetrical, but the newer one seems like it was simply drawn by hand with no care about how it actually looks
yeah. and you could easily place pixels down precisely and deliberately using the D-pad (I made a perfect 16-bit pixel art Eevee for my icon) so its not like it'd be due to shaky hands or something.
Nothing in particular related to mario kart, but it's quite common practice for Japanese Video makers, to use a mute background, usually lined in cloth and wearing gloves when showing of things, from gunpla to cooking or to creating other things, partially to hide their identity and partially to just take the focus away from anything distracting.
Stalkers murdering online personalities is a huge problem in Japan, so many people take extreme measures to hide their identities in order to protect themselves. It can go as far as looking at the reflection in someone's iris to locate them. Loneliness is a systemic issue in that country, which explains why crazy stalkers going after their online crushes is so common.
@@Accrovideogames I think that is quite an exaggerated sensationalized view of the reason people do these things. It's mainly just cultural and how they prefer to do things. Japan in general is very big on the personification and creation of images, or some would say, de personification of person. It is why things like v tubers start there or so many artists have aliases etc. I think your given reason is hyperbole. Japan is a very safe country with low crime
I would love it so much if NTT really did turn out to be a 40 something year old businessman who makes frequent trips to China but also just happens to be a god at MKDS. That would be so hilariously awesome.
We have something like this is FF14. Recently a UA-camr named Pint broke the record for climbing Kugane Tower, taking the six year old record from someone named Em0_oticon. One day after he posted the video, Em0 came out of nowhere and shattered his record. Turns out Em0 was a speedrunner previously named Pydoyks who had some world records in other games but just disappeared. It caused quite the uproar for a time lmao.
There's a suspected similar story in Fzero and SMK where a few players that were specialists on a track would set a record and post it, then set a record in secret and only post it when their time was beaten.
@@Abyssoft Wouldn't have been possible in this case, as Em0 set his record when two of the jobs used in the newest speedrun were not in the game. In his new video, those jobs were used.
@@matty4351Yep, same dude. I recommend watching Pint's video about the speedrun, he goes into Pydoyks's history a bit towards the end. Very good video.
The idea of an ordinary japanese business men who just so happens to be a god at mario kart is such a hilariously wholesome prospect to me. Like he only plays the game in what precious little free time he has, and his brain makes the most of it by gifting him with an expert understanding on the game's mechanics and improving his reflexes specifically for playing this game. It's just his instincts on efficiency kicking in.
Absolute Giga chad galaxy brain Japanese man comes home from 16 hour work day rat race, plays MK DS for an hour before bed. Wakes up the next day rinse and repeat. Does this for a few years and then disappears. I've had some passing conversations with top F-Zero runners and been told the above story does happen for F-Zero. It takes a very special and specific kind of person to be successful in the corporate rat race. Those persons free time is measured in minutes but are very very good at achieving things. Different people find satisfaction and interest in different things and some middle age businessmen take satisfaction and interest in making funny video game cars go fast. Sometimes those people are extraordinary workaholic perfectionists on the "sigma male" grindset. For those people impossible is normal and perfection is mandatory and making the funny car go fast is simple compared to surviving the concrete jungle. Wile there are many sus things in the story, I find it plausible that some businessmen person who's brain is wired different who just thought MK DS was fun. I've know some people who show up to a scene, grind to be at the level of the best, stop playing that game and doing whatever new thing tickles their fancy, be asked later to participate in the previous scene despite not touching it for a wile and slipping below their standard but because they are built different they still do very well, (Although they are painfully aware of every little mistake and shortcoming that are a result of taking a break and hate that feeling). If Tomas says they felt like the same person, I think they were the same person.
I don’t even get how that’s possible. I always thought I was playing it at release but apparently it was already quite old at the point I got my hands on a DS. Pretty much the Mario Kart 8 situation for many many others.
NTT's case has perplexed me and many others for almost two decades now. I never got to race him but I'm so glad it's being covered properly for UA-cam. Thank you so much!
As a Japanese person who was playing MKDS at the time, this video is truly amazing. I was surprised to see Japanese local chats and forums presented as reference material. I respect Abyssoft's excellent research. Now, personally, I had a very close friendship with NTT and Mander, and NTT was actually a player with top-notch skills. And after he left MKDS in 2007, I suspect Mander might have used NTT and Bjork's names for mischief. Mander is such an extraordinary gamer that he holds world records in games other than MK, so I don't think his skills are cheats. However, he is also an engineer with extraordinary cheating skills. I wouldn't be surprised if he created shortcut TAS on RR and used a flash cart to make it look like a legitimate run, just to prank the community.
Depending on the time frame, there'd be no need for a flashcart. It took a while for DSi and 3DS homebrew to develop to the point of being able to flash saves to DS cartridges, but it's been there for a long time now.
Small correction at 16:25, Alaktorn is not Japanese, he does know the language quite fluently, but he is Italian. This was such a cool video, didn't know about this at all.
Hey, I just wanted to talk about your sponsor Factor. They aren't the cheap meal source people talk about them to be. Their intro price is low to get people in, but after you first box, the price per meal jumps up to 10-12 dollars USD. That's fast food price around here. I get that they are convenient and quick, and their customer service is decent enough, but people shouldn't consider it a money-saver for more than their first box.
Yeah, buying and cooking for yourself will ALWAYS be the cheapest means to come to food, these are convenience services, that provide to you what they offer. Usually a recipe book is all you need, get something with a lot of variety and you usually have portion sizes for 4 people, that means if you eat for two (if you're that burly man who demands lots of food) that is still a serving for two days. And much cheaper. And most recipes can be found online for free on a ton of sites.
@@NoraNoitain most countries yeah but restaurants have good sourcing and logistics for food and they are experts or stand ins for experts at cooking food. There are lots lf countries it's just much cheaper to eat out either because I can't cook well enough to make up the difference or i just don't have access to their prices they get supplies for.
@@shawnruby7011 Yeah, but in countries where it's cheaper to eat out than to buy groceries, there's usually other risks associated to eating restaurant food. Gutter oil comes to mind.
You're such a good story-teller. I never played MK ds and I've never been into speed running, but I watch all your videos because you tell the stories in such a compelling way. Can't wait for the next one!
I peaked around 29th in the US and around 300-400 in the world back in that era in mkds. You said the name Thomas Bolton and you really brought me back.. Thank you for making this!!!
Looks like my current ranking for AF in PBR in the US is 139, and 518 in the world! Not bad for not submitting a time since december 2008. Proud of my middle school self 😌
It's so weird to see my employers company logo in a speedrun documentation. NTT is amongst the biggest telecommunications providers in Japan. Shit hits different
Your boy out here doing wild things in Mario Kart bruh. Well, maybe not anymore but. If you can find this man, you will be handsomely rewarded. How, I don't know. But I presume it to be so.
Few points of clarification: -At 8:44, the auto translate falsely translated "foreigner" into "gringo" lol -NTT east japan is one of the biggest telecommunication companies in japan, so it seems plausible this person was making frequent trips and dropped out (but not too plausible they had enough free time to be great at mariokart in the first place bc work culture)
@@Abyssoft thanks for responding! I was wrong about the auto translate, but the translation itself was slightly off so I felt the need to correct it to make the original comment less racist haha
@@Greenleaf_imo it’s more likely that the translator was a Japanese speaker who had been introduced to the word via latino slang in media and took it as another term for “foreigner”
As someone who is knowledgeable with deception, you don't have to apply 100% effort at a race at all times. In fact if you were a known player driving intentionally worse is the best way to hide yourself. But even casually practicing it isn't always worth applying 110% effort when doing non-practice stuff. Basically anything about a person being worse but doing well with tricks doesn't work as evidence for anything because there is so many other factors that it can't even be used as supporting for other evidence. It is icing that might make the cake taste better but it doesn't make the cake truthful.
Yeah that's what I was thinking. the only proof that "Rainbow road guy is probably not NT" is his "driving was ALLEGEDLY worse..." That's quite a stretch, like saying "This guy is NT because he plays the NTSC version of the game and both have NT". I don't think anyone ever wants to take some comments' word on the content of a video where the quality of the racing as serious evidence. Really the bigger hint is him casually dropping the name "Bjork" when asked about NT. but the most concrete evidence of anything fishy would come from the gameplay and the hard numbers. Or maybe the whole thing is a ruse since we don't have footage of the first set of runs. Hehe, it's fun to solve these mysteries, but gotta avoid tunnel vision or grasping at straws for clues. Any one of us could just say "I'm NT!" and lead people down a rabbit hole simply cause everyone's looking for an alter ego.
One thing i find odd in a lot of these videos is how hard that tunnel vision is in those communities. They seem to think that just because they did something their way, that means that every mario kart player in the entire world did it exactly like their niche community did, and that wouldn't be a problem if they didn't then try to act like it's credible evidence that somehow disproves someone's legitimacy. Reminds me of that one wave race 64 guy who had the world record for 14 years but no one knew because he wasn't in the community. People tried to say his time was impossible because their community didn't find X trick until years later, so they tried to call him a fraud based on their own community despite it being a fraction of actual players. He found the tape of his record and it actually showed he was doing those extremely advanced tricks years before anyone else found them, and they were just so short sighted that they didn't believe someone could've discovered it outside of their personal community. Idk if what the guy did was cheating or not but if i was them i'd try to avoid using evidence under the guise of "our community doesn't do X personally therefore anyone else doesn't do it either" because that's just shortsighted at best and is a sign of an overinflated ego at worst.
One counterpoint is that it would be quite hard to believe that a single person just happened to come up with the same strats that they found over a decade
@@Padgriffin Well that DID happen to two notable runners who were accused of cheating but it turned out the cheating allegations were mostly due to community frustration and reputation than actual evidence. There's a goldeneye64 player who infamously found the way to reduce lag in levels by "looking down". People weren't aware of lag render frames at the time and many people were so angry about this working that they simply wanted to "Ban looking down" as a strategy by any means necessary cause they couldn't understand why it cut time down. In the end, as I clearly pointed out with "Reduce lag frames", the run was legit and eventually a respected member realized this by testing it himself and noticing that with less objects on the screen to draw, the game moved notably faster than when he looked at where he was going. This was a case of the community distrusting a guy due to lack of knowledge and since then, many games have players attempt to look away from laggy areas and shift the camera to cut down lag where possible/feasible. The second was this Super Mario bros lost levels player Legushi I think it was... who did cheat before and had a reputation for it that would follow him for years. What was wrong with this case was he submitted a video where he filmed himself physically turning on the game showing his controller the whole time and even filmed the TV to show all the cords were in (though he tripped so it looked like he may have been jump cutting) The moderators still harassed him for it, claiming they don't believe him and he'd have to make a cleaner video, but ONE person stepped up and said "Hold on.... I submitted a time JUST showing my keyboard on emulator and you accepted it without question, but this guy despite his past literally went out of his way to show EVERYTHING and you STILL don't believe him? Why would he go this far to film himself and his TV and everything just to cheat? What would he have to prove?" Upon reinspecting the video, they realized that indeed there was no problem and he did answer everything they asked for without complaint. They wanted to believe he was cheating so badly that they kept inventing reasons to believe he was cheating and forced him to do the run twice with video proof, which he complied, but still wouldn't accept it at first. But when the mods were called out enough, they calmed down and accepted the fact that he wasn't cheating anymore and finally put his record on the leaderboards. and since then, there've been no issues, he got his respect, made a few PBs. he wasn't even a top runner, just like top 10 or 15 or so. Just a couple of cases where yes sometimes the community or bias can be the reason a runner is accused of cheating and they tunnel in on the "Guilty until proven innocent" mentality, but if the Mods themselves are showing unfair bias or the community is annoyed by a trick because it means they have to learn something legitimate that they want to ban the trick political campaign style, it's more a reflection of the community than a single cheater. Course we never know. Maybe the two did cheat and just got away with it, but then...maybe the top runners we respect so much and are the main moderators cheated as so many minecrafters were exposed to. It'll always seem odd if a person is accused of cheating without proof and vehemently insisted that he did only for the best proof to be "speculation" on what possibilities are. It's so easy to fake this stuff and pretend to be someone else online.
@@novathefallenstarwarrior goose's gamer folklore has a good video on the wave race one, it's a really interesting watch, and it's interesting to see how the community tried to disprove it just because it took them years to get to that time, but the guy ended up having a vhs tape that proved the actual time, he even had his time featured in a magazine if i remember right
@@Padgriffin You realize the irony in your counterpoint right? The fact that a single person happened to find the strat a decade after the other single person randomly discovered it? The only difference being one posted about it online informing others, sure it's a community looking for strats/glitches/exploits, but you can't call it a group discovery when they weren't hunting that specific thing because nobody (Except that one guy I suppose) knew it existed, it's not like they knew it could be done but weren't sure how or were hunting a consistent setup The reality is probably a mix of healthy skepticism and a dose of ego. Nobody wants cheaters in the community, especially if it's seemingly so egregious, but in the same breath the ego of the community won't allow them to accept someone found something nobody within the community had, especially when it may have been right under their noses the whole time
The black cloth in the camera recording of the Rainbow Road 3/3 is mainly there to help with the quality. The contrast from a black background helps with the camera's focus and light balancing; it's why, for example, bank apps with a mobile check deposit feature recommend you photograph the check against a dark background. You also see black backdrops and black lightboxes a lot in professional photography.
I know this is a personal Anecdote, but one of the things I hated about playing Mario Kart DS online is that as of 2007 I never played a single game that didn't have a cheater.
What a fascinating mystery this is... Incredible how well documented this is despite being something that happened in the mid-to-late 2000s in a fairly niche community. I'd just like to offer a correction, when you bring up a player named ALAKTORN you say they're Japanese, but they're actually Italian. I used to be active in a records website called Cyberscore in the late 2000s, which was pretty popular around that time, and ALAKTORN was a moderator and one of the most prominent players there. I can confirm it's the same person you mentioned here because they were one of the top MKDS players in the website.
The sheer amount in these records vids of people pretending to be other people, totally ghosting out, subterfuge, mystery-its fascinating to see the lengths people will go to in order get a best time,y hook or crook! Thank you these videos, these are fascinating insights into a world which I had no idea people would do anything to raise the stakes! Awesome stuff!
8:40 - You could reset your W/L ratio whenever you wanted, so its possible he just reset it any got a better streak I did the same also when I played the game. I had thousands of games played, I remember my w/l ratio being only like 50-60% something like 600 wins/500 losses before I learned how to snake competitively. As I became more competitive, I reset my w/l a few times the more i got better. I ended up having something like 1000+wins with only like 100-200 losses.
Great video, really brought me back to the old days :D Hopefully this mystery will be solved someday. Thanks for making a video about this beautiful game!
16:55 you're able to transfer ghost data via wireless connections, or you can just cheat the time using AR codes. unless the described video clip actually shows the whole race or something
Hear me out, what if, what if he had a third screen on his Nintendo DS that allowed him to beat the times without us seeing it? On that third screen it had OBS and a list of Mario Kart items to spawn in like the mushroom? It could be.
13:25 "is GOD" (written like this in English) is a common Japanese meme phrase, related to the Inmu series of gay porn videos that became memes throughout Nico Nico Douga (in particular, "GO is GOD" here). The hacking of the website to say that in English is likely tongue and cheek from someone else. The memes started being big around 2003, and GO is GOD originates from before the hack, so it sounds like a prank to me.
I expect that those who relayed this information didn't have that knowledge, but I had some experience in that niche in NND. It'd be like saying "Get Rickrolled" in text in a hack around the same time in the West.
Thus, I don't think it says anything about Mander himself. Moreso people making a joke out of respect for the player (which sometimes the is GOD is used for that; to say wow this person I barely know is cool) or just because they were a prominent name
I have never watched any videos of your channel but this popped up on my front page. I clicked it and enjoyed all 19.5 minutes of it. This is quality content. 🎉
that wasnt caseyb. casey was terrible at japanese even during the mk7 days and was just a weeb. those posts shown by NTTWestJPN in this video were not machine translated and were far beyond his ability even years later. he definitely impersonated people a lot tho. he held grudges against people easily and even impersonated me for a while at one point. i also don't think he's good enough at mario kart to be NTT based on his mk7 ability. alaktorn is not japanese. it's been a looong time but if i recall he was italian. i seem to recall there was a skype chat for mario kart players that wanted to learn japanese and he was in that. his japanese wasn't great either but i could definitely believe if he got better at it since he seemed more proactive than most. makes me nostalgic hearing these old names again
Former champ than played the game a ton and was one of the first to post his online matches via webcam pointed at the DS to UA-cam before streaming platforms were a thing.
Mario Kart DS was a life changing game... Playing that felt different to playing any other Mario Kart game before or even after. It also came out the year I was born!
From a reddit post about this same story: "NTT and TB1 met in a Japanese chat room that only few foreigners knew about. NTT spoke only Japanese, and requested the match to be "no items". [...] According to Thomas, NTT explicitly stated his reasoning for playing no items -- *he doesn't need them to win."* How friggin _badass_ NTT was, xD!
Honestly, as someone who has spent most their life in the mk community (but not mkds tbf), I suspect it was several people most likely mander and a friend/multiple friends. Mander has the technical knowledge and had the communication, he was likely friends with a fairly higher level player and gave them cheats, and that was enough to make them good enough to beat Thomas. Thats the way these types of things usually go, theres a real crazy toxic weird side of the community thats on 10 different alts each and acts like complete degens. Its almost 4chan-esque.
NTT uses the NTT logo. NTT sponsors the Indycar series. Takuma Sato was a driver in that series that spoke Japanese and English, and often travelled. It must be him! /s
You're saying Mander used the same console as Bjork. So, this means Mander = Bjork for sure? Or does this mean that you're wrong that he'd have to be a double imposter?
If we really wanna find NTT, we should see if anyone in real life japan drives like that. Or since my name is N11, everyone can just give me credit for his accomplishments. It's close enough, right?
Maybe we're ALL NTT! In all seriousness, have you thought about all 3 being the imposter for the reasons you mentioned? Casey had the idea and the cheats, Mander had the technical knowledge and the fluent Japanese, and Bjork had the driving. Together they can make a passable NTT.
Fascinating story (though from the way this video was teased at end of the previous video I expected this to be more focused on Mander as a player, but his part of the story was more on the side).
Some Edgelord very specifically freakishly talented at Mario Kart DS and absolutely nothing else seized an opportunity to be all Lelouch Le Edgy Mysterious back when being that kind of thing was still cool, film at 11
16:40 why does he cover the cartridge with his hands? Does it really take that much time to push it in? Or is he using the gloves to facilitate slight of hand? I've never owned a DS so don't know how easy it is to insert a cartridge. Then 16:48 after seeing the Nintendo loading screen it cuts to showing the game already booted. I also don't know if this was the original clip or if it has been edited.
I'm glad I mostly played before TAS. I heard there was another RR video with 3/3 rail shortcuts that was quickly taken down. Is that the same guy or different?
11:50 I don't know if that was the case back then, but nowadays, ZZMT is a relatively easy trick to pull off in both SMK and MK:SC. You just need to modify your GBA/SNES controller in a way that it lets you press both right and left at the same time. There are tutorials to do this as well and the games accept zzmt records in the same category as non-ZZMT. Ashley, a popular MK:SC player has also told me that it is possible to do it on MK:SC without modifing your GBA, but way too unreliable and painful so it's not worth it, meaining every record with ZZMT in it is on a modified SNES/GBA, but still accepted With that being said, the ZZMTs shown in the video are, even for today's standars, too good to be true
I don't have the skills in any game to do it, but just the idea that someone can get this level of confusion going by flexing hard and bouncing brings a smile to my face and I hope someone has that as a hobby.
Did they have it to where you could take record ghosts on the DS or was that just on the Wii because if it stores inputs, you figured you’d just be able to download the ghost and double check
Funny enough playing runescape in 2003 as an 11 year old i learned how to code and make bots to help when i was at school lol then i was paid for my bots and thats when i started making more and for other games but its been atleast 10 years since ive made any
Huge thanks to Abel, Acid, and TB1 for help on this video, what a rabbit hole to go down.
"you see has extensive knowledge of track" and you show some chinese text probably 95% viewers can't understand🤣🤣🤣
You smell different when your awake.
@@monkstandinglast That was probably Japanese, and you're going to have to take his word for it.
@@videotape2959 Yeah I realised japanese later lol
Yo what's the song in the end of this video? Been watching your videos for a while and I'm hooked lol
Forget that the icon doesn't match. If you look at the first icon it's pretty clear that NTT cared about having a perfect icon and it's perfectly symmetrical, but the newer one seems like it was simply drawn by hand with no care about how it actually looks
yeah. and you could easily place pixels down precisely and deliberately using the D-pad (I made a perfect 16-bit pixel art Eevee for my icon) so its not like it'd be due to shaky hands or something.
Nothing in particular related to mario kart, but it's quite common practice for Japanese Video makers, to use a mute background, usually lined in cloth and wearing gloves when showing of things, from gunpla to cooking or to creating other things, partially to hide their identity and partially to just take the focus away from anything distracting.
This is an interesting piece of info, thanks for it.
I like the practice
Stalkers murdering online personalities is a huge problem in Japan, so many people take extreme measures to hide their identities in order to protect themselves. It can go as far as looking at the reflection in someone's iris to locate them. Loneliness is a systemic issue in that country, which explains why crazy stalkers going after their online crushes is so common.
@@Accrovideogames I think that is quite an exaggerated sensationalized view of the reason people do these things. It's mainly just cultural and how they prefer to do things. Japan in general is very big on the personification and creation of images, or some would say, de personification of person. It is why things like v tubers start there or so many artists have aliases etc.
I think your given reason is hyperbole. Japan is a very safe country with low crime
Oh hey, I love the avatar. Nikki Yakata is a really cute character.
I would love it so much if NTT really did turn out to be a 40 something year old businessman who makes frequent trips to China but also just happens to be a god at MKDS. That would be so hilariously awesome.
We have something like this is FF14. Recently a UA-camr named Pint broke the record for climbing Kugane Tower, taking the six year old record from someone named Em0_oticon. One day after he posted the video, Em0 came out of nowhere and shattered his record.
Turns out Em0 was a speedrunner previously named Pydoyks who had some world records in other games but just disappeared. It caused quite the uproar for a time lmao.
There's a suspected similar story in Fzero and SMK where a few players that were specialists on a track would set a record and post it, then set a record in secret and only post it when their time was beaten.
@@Abyssoft Wouldn't have been possible in this case, as Em0 set his record when two of the jobs used in the newest speedrun were not in the game. In his new video, those jobs were used.
Wait *the* Pydoyks? Like Shaeden/nedeahS from OOT 10 years ago? I haven't heard that name in an insanely long time.
@@matty4351dude seems to just drop insane speedruns every now and then, most of the time being radio silent.
@@matty4351Yep, same dude. I recommend watching Pint's video about the speedrun, he goes into Pydoyks's history a bit towards the end. Very good video.
The idea of an ordinary japanese business men who just so happens to be a god at mario kart is such a hilariously wholesome prospect to me.
Like he only plays the game in what precious little free time he has, and his brain makes the most of it by gifting him with an expert understanding on the game's mechanics and improving his reflexes specifically for playing this game. It's just his instincts on efficiency kicking in.
Absolute Giga chad galaxy brain Japanese man comes home from 16 hour work day rat race, plays MK DS for an hour before bed. Wakes up the next day rinse and repeat. Does this for a few years and then disappears.
I've had some passing conversations with top F-Zero runners and been told the above story does happen for F-Zero. It takes a very special and specific kind of person to be successful in the corporate rat race. Those persons free time is measured in minutes but are very very good at achieving things. Different people find satisfaction and interest in different things and some middle age businessmen take satisfaction and interest in making funny video game cars go fast. Sometimes those people are extraordinary workaholic perfectionists on the "sigma male" grindset. For those people impossible is normal and perfection is mandatory and making the funny car go fast is simple compared to surviving the concrete jungle.
Wile there are many sus things in the story, I find it plausible that some businessmen person who's brain is wired different who just thought MK DS was fun. I've know some people who show up to a scene, grind to be at the level of the best, stop playing that game and doing whatever new thing tickles their fancy, be asked later to participate in the previous scene despite not touching it for a wile and slipping below their standard but because they are built different they still do very well, (Although they are painfully aware of every little mistake and shortcoming that are a result of taking a break and hate that feeling).
If Tomas says they felt like the same person, I think they were the same person.
So wholesome chungus dude, 15 other people totally didn't make the same comment, gaywad.
What do you MEAN mario kart ds is 18 years old!?
Yep that is right dame I feel old
@@ar14237 Same
I don’t even get how that’s possible. I always thought I was playing it at release but apparently it was already quite old at the point I got my hands on a DS. Pretty much the Mario Kart 8 situation for many many others.
@@mt2r-music Well put! It was a gift to me well after it was created yet I still feel like I owned it from the moment it came from the factory.
finally it's legal.
NTT's case has perplexed me and many others for almost two decades now. I never got to race him but I'm so glad it's being covered properly for UA-cam. Thank you so much!
Feels like I know you😊
I never knew competitive Mario Kart DS had so much lore
to be fair, there's hidden lore to many games. even ones you'd think nobody played
Tons. I was on the japanese forums by invite and racing them back in the day. Good times
I've never even played this game but I listened to the entire thing while driving 80 on the interstate.
Now I know
As a Japanese person who was playing MKDS at the time, this video is truly amazing.
I was surprised to see Japanese local chats and forums presented as reference material. I respect Abyssoft's excellent research.
Now, personally, I had a very close friendship with NTT and Mander, and NTT was actually a player with top-notch skills.
And after he left MKDS in 2007, I suspect Mander might have used NTT and Bjork's names for mischief.
Mander is such an extraordinary gamer that he holds world records in games other than MK, so I don't think his skills are cheats.
However, he is also an engineer with extraordinary cheating skills.
I wouldn't be surprised if he created shortcut TAS on RR and used a flash cart to make it look like a legitimate run, just to prank the community.
Do you still have a way to connect ntt? That could be a super cool resolve for this mystery
Hello Mander, nice of you to chime in.
Depending on the time frame, there'd be no need for a flashcart. It took a while for DSi and 3DS homebrew to develop to the point of being able to flash saves to DS cartridges, but it's been there for a long time now.
Small correction at 16:25, Alaktorn is not Japanese, he does know the language quite fluently, but he is Italian. This was such a cool video, didn't know about this at all.
Thanks for correcting the video I was about to post this myself. xD
Hey, I just wanted to talk about your sponsor Factor.
They aren't the cheap meal source people talk about them to be. Their intro price is low to get people in, but after you first box, the price per meal jumps up to 10-12 dollars USD. That's fast food price around here.
I get that they are convenient and quick, and their customer service is decent enough, but people shouldn't consider it a money-saver for more than their first box.
Yeah, buying and cooking for yourself will ALWAYS be the cheapest means to come to food, these are convenience services, that provide to you what they offer.
Usually a recipe book is all you need, get something with a lot of variety and you usually have portion sizes for 4 people, that means if you eat for two (if you're that burly man who demands lots of food) that is still a serving for two days. And much cheaper. And most recipes can be found online for free on a ton of sites.
99% of youtube sponsorships are scams. All of them. Always have been.
To be frank, dont buy sponsors, pretty much ever.
@@NoraNoitain most countries yeah but restaurants have good sourcing and logistics for food and they are experts or stand ins for experts at cooking food. There are lots lf countries it's just much cheaper to eat out either because I can't cook well enough to make up the difference or i just don't have access to their prices they get supplies for.
@@shawnruby7011 Yeah, but in countries where it's cheaper to eat out than to buy groceries, there's usually other risks associated to eating restaurant food. Gutter oil comes to mind.
You're such a good story-teller. I never played MK ds and I've never been into speed running, but I watch all your videos because you tell the stories in such a compelling way. Can't wait for the next one!
The next one is going to be insane
indeed! I've never played this game too!
mario maker 0% history?@@Abyssoft
@@antodouv there's a non 0% chance
I peaked around 29th in the US and around 300-400 in the world back in that era in mkds. You said the name Thomas Bolton and you really brought me back.. Thank you for making this!!!
Looks like my current ranking for AF in PBR in the US is 139, and 518 in the world! Not bad for not submitting a time since december 2008. Proud of my middle school self 😌
come back to the game bro
It's so weird to see my employers company logo in a speedrun documentation.
NTT is amongst the biggest telecommunications providers in Japan.
Shit hits different
Lmao same here, first time I ever seen NTT out in the wild like that
Your boy out here doing wild things in Mario Kart bruh. Well, maybe not anymore but. If you can find this man, you will be handsomely rewarded. How, I don't know. But I presume it to be so.
@@Actionhank404 NTT is also the primary sponsor of indycar, so to motorsport fans they're well known
"Shit hits different"?
...Shame that stupid gaijin slang already made its way to Japan.
@@BloodwyrmWildheart NTT has employees outside of Japan dummy
Few points of clarification:
-At 8:44, the auto translate falsely translated "foreigner" into "gringo" lol
-NTT east japan is one of the biggest telecommunication companies in japan, so it seems plausible this person was making frequent trips and dropped out (but not too plausible they had enough free time to be great at mariokart in the first place bc work culture)
No auto translate was used actually, everything that was translated in the video was done by a member of the MKDS community that speaks Japanese.
@@Abyssoft thanks for responding! I was wrong about the auto translate, but the translation itself was slightly off so I felt the need to correct it to make the original comment less racist haha
There's a group of people who really want gringo to become a loan word in english for some reason, I'm guessing that's why.
@@Greenleaf_imo it’s more likely that the translator was a Japanese speaker who had been introduced to the word via latino slang in media and took it as another term for “foreigner”
I’m assuming “foreigner” was a slightly too formal translation for “gaijin” for them
As someone who is knowledgeable with deception, you don't have to apply 100% effort at a race at all times. In fact if you were a known player driving intentionally worse is the best way to hide yourself.
But even casually practicing it isn't always worth applying 110% effort when doing non-practice stuff.
Basically anything about a person being worse but doing well with tricks doesn't work as evidence for anything because there is so many other factors that it can't even be used as supporting for other evidence. It is icing that might make the cake taste better but it doesn't make the cake truthful.
Yeah that's what I was thinking. the only proof that "Rainbow road guy is probably not NT" is his "driving was ALLEGEDLY worse..." That's quite a stretch, like saying "This guy is NT because he plays the NTSC version of the game and both have NT". I don't think anyone ever wants to take some comments' word on the content of a video where the quality of the racing as serious evidence. Really the bigger hint is him casually dropping the name "Bjork" when asked about NT. but the most concrete evidence of anything fishy would come from the gameplay and the hard numbers. Or maybe the whole thing is a ruse since we don't have footage of the first set of runs. Hehe, it's fun to solve these mysteries, but gotta avoid tunnel vision or grasping at straws for clues. Any one of us could just say "I'm NT!" and lead people down a rabbit hole simply cause everyone's looking for an alter ego.
Would agree. Risky, cause being bad on purpose yet still winning where it counts, draws more attention to yourself.
@@MarioMastar Unless multiple people are the NTT imposter, one for the cheats, one for the driving, and one for the Japanese?
That video of Bjork inserting the MKDS cartridge looks like it came from a creepypasta
One thing i find odd in a lot of these videos is how hard that tunnel vision is in those communities. They seem to think that just because they did something their way, that means that every mario kart player in the entire world did it exactly like their niche community did, and that wouldn't be a problem if they didn't then try to act like it's credible evidence that somehow disproves someone's legitimacy.
Reminds me of that one wave race 64 guy who had the world record for 14 years but no one knew because he wasn't in the community. People tried to say his time was impossible because their community didn't find X trick until years later, so they tried to call him a fraud based on their own community despite it being a fraction of actual players. He found the tape of his record and it actually showed he was doing those extremely advanced tricks years before anyone else found them, and they were just so short sighted that they didn't believe someone could've discovered it outside of their personal community.
Idk if what the guy did was cheating or not but if i was them i'd try to avoid using evidence under the guise of "our community doesn't do X personally therefore anyone else doesn't do it either" because that's just shortsighted at best and is a sign of an overinflated ego at worst.
One counterpoint is that it would be quite hard to believe that a single person just happened to come up with the same strats that they found over a decade
@@Padgriffin Well that DID happen to two notable runners who were accused of cheating but it turned out the cheating allegations were mostly due to community frustration and reputation than actual evidence.
There's a goldeneye64 player who infamously found the way to reduce lag in levels by "looking down". People weren't aware of lag render frames at the time and many people were so angry about this working that they simply wanted to "Ban looking down" as a strategy by any means necessary cause they couldn't understand why it cut time down. In the end, as I clearly pointed out with "Reduce lag frames", the run was legit and eventually a respected member realized this by testing it himself and noticing that with less objects on the screen to draw, the game moved notably faster than when he looked at where he was going. This was a case of the community distrusting a guy due to lack of knowledge and since then, many games have players attempt to look away from laggy areas and shift the camera to cut down lag where possible/feasible.
The second was this Super Mario bros lost levels player Legushi I think it was... who did cheat before and had a reputation for it that would follow him for years. What was wrong with this case was he submitted a video where he filmed himself physically turning on the game showing his controller the whole time and even filmed the TV to show all the cords were in (though he tripped so it looked like he may have been jump cutting) The moderators still harassed him for it, claiming they don't believe him and he'd have to make a cleaner video, but ONE person stepped up and said "Hold on.... I submitted a time JUST showing my keyboard on emulator and you accepted it without question, but this guy despite his past literally went out of his way to show EVERYTHING and you STILL don't believe him? Why would he go this far to film himself and his TV and everything just to cheat? What would he have to prove?" Upon reinspecting the video, they realized that indeed there was no problem and he did answer everything they asked for without complaint. They wanted to believe he was cheating so badly that they kept inventing reasons to believe he was cheating and forced him to do the run twice with video proof, which he complied, but still wouldn't accept it at first. But when the mods were called out enough, they calmed down and accepted the fact that he wasn't cheating anymore and finally put his record on the leaderboards. and since then, there've been no issues, he got his respect, made a few PBs. he wasn't even a top runner, just like top 10 or 15 or so.
Just a couple of cases where yes sometimes the community or bias can be the reason a runner is accused of cheating and they tunnel in on the "Guilty until proven innocent" mentality, but if the Mods themselves are showing unfair bias or the community is annoyed by a trick because it means they have to learn something legitimate that they want to ban the trick political campaign style, it's more a reflection of the community than a single cheater. Course we never know. Maybe the two did cheat and just got away with it, but then...maybe the top runners we respect so much and are the main moderators cheated as so many minecrafters were exposed to. It'll always seem odd if a person is accused of cheating without proof and vehemently insisted that he did only for the best proof to be "speculation" on what possibilities are. It's so easy to fake this stuff and pretend to be someone else online.
By any chance is there videos covering all of these stories? I want to go deeper down the rabbit hole
@@novathefallenstarwarrior goose's gamer folklore has a good video on the wave race one, it's a really interesting watch, and it's interesting to see how the community tried to disprove it just because it took them years to get to that time, but the guy ended up having a vhs tape that proved the actual time, he even had his time featured in a magazine if i remember right
@@Padgriffin You realize the irony in your counterpoint right? The fact that a single person happened to find the strat a decade after the other single person randomly discovered it? The only difference being one posted about it online informing others, sure it's a community looking for strats/glitches/exploits, but you can't call it a group discovery when they weren't hunting that specific thing because nobody (Except that one guy I suppose) knew it existed, it's not like they knew it could be done but weren't sure how or were hunting a consistent setup
The reality is probably a mix of healthy skepticism and a dose of ego. Nobody wants cheaters in the community, especially if it's seemingly so egregious, but in the same breath the ego of the community won't allow them to accept someone found something nobody within the community had, especially when it may have been right under their noses the whole time
The black cloth in the camera recording of the Rainbow Road 3/3 is mainly there to help with the quality. The contrast from a black background helps with the camera's focus and light balancing; it's why, for example, bank apps with a mobile check deposit feature recommend you photograph the check against a dark background. You also see black backdrops and black lightboxes a lot in professional photography.
I know this is a personal Anecdote, but one of the things I hated about playing Mario Kart DS online is that as of 2007 I never played a single game that didn't have a cheater.
Would the real NT please stand up? We're gunna have a problem here
What a fascinating mystery this is... Incredible how well documented this is despite being something that happened in the mid-to-late 2000s in a fairly niche community. I'd just like to offer a correction, when you bring up a player named ALAKTORN you say they're Japanese, but they're actually Italian. I used to be active in a records website called Cyberscore in the late 2000s, which was pretty popular around that time, and ALAKTORN was a moderator and one of the most prominent players there. I can confirm it's the same person you mentioned here because they were one of the top MKDS players in the website.
You know you're losing your mind when you're watching a video about Mario Kart but still instinctively read MK as "Mortal Kombat."
Yep same! And I was actually not even a MK player but a Street Fighter player🤣.
It gets worse if you're watching a CIA video lol.
@@JosiahBradleyThat comment was ultra clever
The sheer amount in these records vids of people pretending to be other people, totally ghosting out, subterfuge, mystery-its fascinating to see the lengths people will go to in order get a best time,y hook or crook! Thank you these videos, these are fascinating insights into a world which I had no idea people would do anything to raise the stakes! Awesome stuff!
Because it's online video gaming communities, the easiest thing to peace-out of ever. Just don't post anymore. Lol
8:40 - You could reset your W/L ratio whenever you wanted, so its possible he just reset it any got a better streak
I did the same also when I played the game. I had thousands of games played, I remember my w/l ratio being only like 50-60% something like 600 wins/500 losses before I learned how to snake competitively. As I became more competitive, I reset my w/l a few times the more i got better. I ended up having something like 1000+wins with only like 100-200 losses.
out of curiosity what year did you play/name did you go by?
This video makes me feel old, I still remember when the FIRST Mario Cart was released on SNES and renting it from the video store.
me completely glued to my screen to hear the story of a vaporplayer in a game i never played from 20 years ago
This feels like a "Pepe Sylvia" moment 😅 I love me some good red-string stories, especially when they're nonfiction!
1:59
Sun Wolsi's wifi record might be the most impressive in the history of the game.
9:50 cutting right before the goomba was so jarring
The "emblem" is literally NTT logo; Nippon Telegraph and Telephone.
Great video, really brought me back to the old days :D Hopefully this mystery will be solved someday. Thanks for making a video about this beautiful game!
Hey its you
Amazing video :o Really cool to see this coverage of old MKDS lore as an MKDS player :)
1:24 nice Asuka PP
16:55 you're able to transfer ghost data via wireless connections, or you can just cheat the time using AR codes. unless the described video clip actually shows the whole race or something
This video is MUCH more interesting than it has the right to be. It completely kept my attention even though I'm very tired.
Hear me out, what if, what if he had a third screen on his Nintendo DS that allowed him to beat the times without us seeing it? On that third screen it had OBS and a list of Mario Kart items to spawn in like the mushroom? It could be.
Nintendo TS
@@Bestsoft100hey whoa whoa let's not give Nintendo any blasphemous ideas
This guy is the Max Headroom of MKDS
You can't make this vid without giving me a conclusion, THAT IS BRUTAL
13:25 "is GOD" (written like this in English) is a common Japanese meme phrase, related to the Inmu series of gay porn videos that became memes throughout Nico Nico Douga (in particular, "GO is GOD" here). The hacking of the website to say that in English is likely tongue and cheek from someone else. The memes started being big around 2003, and GO is GOD originates from before the hack, so it sounds like a prank to me.
I expect that those who relayed this information didn't have that knowledge, but I had some experience in that niche in NND. It'd be like saying "Get Rickrolled" in text in a hack around the same time in the West.
Thus, I don't think it says anything about Mander himself. Moreso people making a joke out of respect for the player (which sometimes the is GOD is used for that; to say wow this person I barely know is cool) or just because they were a prominent name
Youre the man Abyssoft! I just love all these videos from you and everyone else in this same general genre, its all so interesting lol.
15:23 ngl those hand motions definitely look like he's removing the cartridge he put in and adding a different one
yeah he def swapped it
I have never watched any videos of your channel but this popped up on my front page. I clicked it and enjoyed all 19.5 minutes of it. This is quality content. 🎉
that wasnt caseyb. casey was terrible at japanese even during the mk7 days and was just a weeb. those posts shown by NTTWestJPN in this video were not machine translated and were far beyond his ability even years later. he definitely impersonated people a lot tho. he held grudges against people easily and even impersonated me for a while at one point. i also don't think he's good enough at mario kart to be NTT based on his mk7 ability.
alaktorn is not japanese. it's been a looong time but if i recall he was italian. i seem to recall there was a skype chat for mario kart players that wanted to learn japanese and he was in that. his japanese wasn't great either but i could definitely believe if he got better at it since he seemed more proactive than most.
makes me nostalgic hearing these old names again
Maybe the real NTTWestJ was the friends we made along the way.
These (amazing) videos be like: “how StinkyShit51’s new method broke Mario Kart 64 speed runs decades later”
*a thousand people standing in an open landscape:* "I'M NT!" XD
Great video but honestly I am more curious who is Thomas and why/how is he so good?
Former champ than played the game a ton and was one of the first to post his online matches via webcam pointed at the DS to UA-cam before streaming platforms were a thing.
If you are a tank engine, might as well do races, right?
@@SushiElemental😂 man that show used to be my shit back in the day
Mario Kart DS was a life changing game...
Playing that felt different to playing any other Mario Kart game before or even after.
It also came out the year I was born!
From a reddit post about this same story:
"NTT and TB1 met in a Japanese chat room that only few foreigners knew about. NTT spoke only Japanese, and requested the match to be "no items". [...] According to Thomas, NTT explicitly stated his reasoning for playing no items -- *he doesn't need them to win."*
How friggin _badass_ NTT was, xD!
Sounds like ntt was scared.
"Final destination, only fox, no items"
Bro doesnt know how to green shell snipe lol
i always enjoyed MK more without items. it felt more competitive imo. with items , it just felt like a party game lol
Where's the video on that Mander dude who kept MKW records?
That's discussed in this video
man this came at the perfect time, time to get my pizza and enjoy this freshly cooked video
Been really enjoying your content. Great video
Honestly, as someone who has spent most their life in the mk community (but not mkds tbf), I suspect it was several people most likely mander and a friend/multiple friends. Mander has the technical knowledge and had the communication, he was likely friends with a fairly higher level player and gave them cheats, and that was enough to make them good enough to beat Thomas. Thats the way these types of things usually go, theres a real crazy toxic weird side of the community thats on 10 different alts each and acts like complete degens. Its almost 4chan-esque.
And now look how far NTT has come. From a Mario Kart DS player to main sponsor of the Indycar series!
NTT uses the NTT logo. NTT sponsors the Indycar series. Takuma Sato was a driver in that series that spoke Japanese and English, and often travelled. It must be him! /s
Bro mentioned Casey B this is freaking legendary
The editing job on Mario's legs in the thumbnail is EXTREMELY cursed
You're saying Mander used the same console as Bjork. So, this means Mander = Bjork for sure? Or does this mean that you're wrong that he'd have to be a double imposter?
>Appears out of the blue
>Beats the world champion
>Disappears
>Pops up again and loses setting the score 1-1
>Disappears again
Lol Casey B, that's a name I haven't heard of in a long long time
If we really wanna find NTT, we should see if anyone in real life japan drives like that. Or since my name is N11, everyone can just give me credit for his accomplishments. It's close enough, right?
Maybe we're ALL NTT! In all seriousness, have you thought about all 3 being the imposter for the reasons you mentioned? Casey had the idea and the cheats, Mander had the technical knowledge and the fluent Japanese, and Bjork had the driving. Together they can make a passable NTT.
the sponsorship was so sudden it hit me like a truck
This is some serious death note psychology
マリカDSの歴史辿ってたら急にワシの会社出てきてビビったw
Thomas was all of them all along
Fascinating story (though from the way this video was teased at end of the previous video I expected this to be more focused on Mander as a player, but his part of the story was more on the side).
Some Edgelord very specifically freakishly talented at Mario Kart DS and absolutely nothing else seized an opportunity to be all Lelouch Le Edgy Mysterious back when being that kind of thing was still cool, film at 11
MKDS is allowed to drink hard liquor already? I'm old. 😢
14:10 i think bjork is like a singer or something
Is this the plot of Death Note?
Lmfaooo this comment got me good
Making a TAS is not dificult.
Figuring out when the inputs should happen though.. thats a different thing.
It was the real NT the whole time. I knew him back when the game was in its prime.
Damn, really cool rabbit hole
that ad transition made me laugh
>Japanese
>business travel to China
Yeah, he was a cheater.
I see koeK in the url. Parallel universes confirmed.
In my opinion, the biggest mystery in Mario Kart is WTF coins actually do. Played since it came out on SNES. Still don't know what coins are for.
They increase your speed the more you have to a max of 10
And from 7 until 8 deluxe they unlock kart pieces.@@Abyssoft
@@Abyssoft Wow thank you lol
@@504ever4bro you was driving fast and slow all these years and never knew why XD
Wifi win loss ratio doesn’t mean much. You could lower your losses using a glitch
Theris someone who has the WR in all 13 of the categories in mario kart super circuit and he also runs many other games.
16:40 why does he cover the cartridge with his hands? Does it really take that much time to push it in? Or is he using the gloves to facilitate slight of hand? I've never owned a DS so don't know how easy it is to insert a cartridge. Then 16:48 after seeing the Nintendo loading screen it cuts to showing the game already booted. I also don't know if this was the original clip or if it has been edited.
I edited the clip to cut out the in between stuff
How did I know this was gonna be Mario Kart DS as soon as I saw the Thumbnail
Brilliant video! Love MKDS.
Damn we can smash the unsolved mystery!!!
With the interest in NT's account, possibly the newer NT hijacked the old NT account? Possibly Bjork?
I'm glad I mostly played before TAS.
I heard there was another RR video with 3/3 rail shortcuts that was quickly taken down. Is that the same guy or different?
at @1:58 NTT has better win percentage than 2 of the people u listed
2nd screen he "irmpoved" by negative 6% winrate
I still don't know why your kart gets a random speed boost sometimes
That Abyssoft Z hits differently now.
Also cool video.
11:50 I don't know if that was the case back then, but nowadays, ZZMT is a relatively easy trick to pull off in both SMK and MK:SC. You just need to modify your GBA/SNES controller in a way that it lets you press both right and left at the same time. There are tutorials to do this as well and the games accept zzmt records in the same category as non-ZZMT. Ashley, a popular MK:SC player has also told me that it is possible to do it on MK:SC without modifing your GBA, but way too unreliable and painful so it's not worth it, meaining every record with ZZMT in it is on a modified SNES/GBA, but still accepted
With that being said, the ZZMTs shown in the video are, even for today's standars, too good to be true
Very nice and well made video, thank you!
I don't have the skills in any game to do it, but just the idea that someone can get this level of confusion going by flexing hard and bouncing brings a smile to my face and I hope someone has that as a hobby.
At this point, I believe this NT dude is probably someone that worked for Nintendo. Lol
Did they have it to where you could take record ghosts on the DS or was that just on the Wii because if it stores inputs, you figured you’d just be able to download the ghost and double check
Shaving down the DPAD on a gameboy advance is CRAZY
12:52 Is that Windows 98?
Funny enough playing runescape in 2003 as an 11 year old i learned how to code and make bots to help when i was at school lol then i was paid for my bots and thats when i started making more and for other games but its been atleast 10 years since ive made any
I think Abyssoft is the 2024 NTT.