Took over four days to complete it, hopefully it'll take only two days to read it!
Feel free to add your own experience and stories
Last year has been quite important for the TurboSliders community: after more than two years since the last game version, Ande finally got some time and motivation to release a new version, which implements unlimited demo version and some smaller features.
Together with the new version, [GPOR] team organized one of the most succesful seasons ever seen in TurboSliders, with over 600 players taking part in one month.
There have been some changes about teams, also. Turbo Drivers International (game tag [TDi]) has been launched by Storm, who soon recruited Matti, Rattlehead, Hejman, AL COMET (and lately Ibon). They are mainly PunaBall fans, so their activity has been quite limited to that mod. They also organized a PunaBall League, but it got interrupted after a while: yet another confirmation that long cups can't be organized succesfully in TurboSliders, expecially if they are based on teams.
At late 2008 Ippon, one of the most active and discussed teams of the TurboSliders history, ended after over three years activity. Two of those players, olio and dede, decided to set up a new team (Plus Team, with game tag [+]) together with Tijny and xzeal, who quit [NoLo] team.
In the same days, iBlaze² took over the leading role of [YeLo] team from Kova (now known as Nerd [Uk]). His very first actions were to change the team name to Invent Racing team (tag [iR]) and to recruit Etmil (now known as Dearl). Invent Racing Team recruited two more players: Scud, who during 2008 had some other experiences with Ippon and [HC], and lux.
Finnish Sliders team (tag [fS]) confirmed to have several active players, also during 2008 year, such as Janne, Keppana, Palomies, Miksa and Chevron, although their leader Jan has been totally unactive in the second half of the year.
There have been some minor team activities and movements, such as [KAWR], [dp], [TL] and [Flow]. Quite bad that there have been only few new names involved in team activities, but probably there haven't been enough new players until the last two months of the year.
But let's see what happened in official competitions and tournaments.
[please visit the official page to display this table]
There have been some other events, but they aren't listed because they weren't completed or not serious enough.
Year 2008 had less players involved in battles for cup victory: Tijny and dede increased their speed quite neatly; Janne, Etana, MaunoKasa and Mike Nike partly couldn't keep up with them; olio and Nerd [Uk] didn't improve as much as they were expected to.
As it's possible to see from the table, Tijny was clearly the dominator of default cars racing, obtaining 8 victories out of 12 tournaments. It went quite worse for him when laptimes mattered, but all in all he can be considered the best default cars player of the year. Things went quite okay for him at PunaBall too: he won the IOPC #1 (together with Borg), but things went a bit worse in the first phase of the [TDi] PunaBall League.
Janne has been very active throughout the 2008 year, driving over 550 races in the GPOR Open Season 1 (1 month competition, so he drove an average of 15 races per day). He also joined almost all organized cups, but he couldn't quite compete for the victory of any racing cup. That was quite a shame, since at late 2007 he simply seemed to lack some constancy to become a top racer. He couldn't compete when laptimes counted either. I expected him to get some victories in that kind of tournaments, that's out of doubt. Things went a bit better for him in X-BumpZ and rough cups, but ending up with two total victories only is a bit disappointing, considering the skills he has. His trackmaking activity almost stopped during this year, if we consider previous year as a term of comparison.
Mike Nike ended up the year joining very few cups, and getting only three victories in the Weekly Wank cup. In the other hand, he showed that with a little more activity he could've battle for the win in racing cups too: he almost didn't miss the podium at any racing cup he joined. It would be nice to see him more active in the future.
MaunoKasa, one of the best racers of 2007, completely lost the touch: after winning the first cup of the year (based on fast laps), he couldn't really compete anymore for the victory. That was kind of strange to see, and I don't know how could that happen. He has focused on Full Contact cups, lowering racing activity, but that can't be the only explanation of his bad results. Hope to see him back to old speed, in 2009. This change affected his trackmaking activity as well, so he started to create tons of crazy rough tracks. Much less were good quality racing tracks, instead.
Etana lowered his activity a bit, so results couldn't quite match with the ones obtained in previous years. The gap between top drivers and him got bigger and bigger: nowadays he hardly can get a podium in racing competitions. Things go worse if it's about laptimes.
Nerd [Uk] started to improve with default cars: the first important result of his career came with the second place in the International Hot Laps Cup #11. With some more dedication, in 2009 he could get closer to top players and, who knows, maybe even get a victory! He started to create racing and fun tracks with quite good results.
The best newcomer of year 2006, olio, has been quite unactive throughout all 2008. His skills remained about the same as 2007, so he couldn't yet obtain important results at any cup he joined. Things went a bit better in PunaBall, but he didn't develop enough skills to be considered the best PunaBall revelation of the year. I guess that olio's new year's main goal would be to obtain some bronze medals at default cars cups. Top players seem to be way too far for his low activity.
There have been some new names in the TurboSliders scene. Storm is one of those. He can't be really considered a new player, but he started to develop some PunaBall skills during last year and, thanks to his very high activity, some default cars skills too. As expected, in some months he reached the top at PunaBall, so nowadays he can be considered one of the best players around: with a better adaptability and defense he can be the real dominator of year 2009. Still way to go about default cars, since he started to train only in late 2008. His improvements aren't coming as fast as some other player in the past, but dedication and training drives always to the top. I wouldn't be surprised if during this year he starts battling with players like olio, Janne, Etana, Nerd [Uk]. His improvements in X-BumpZ were quite noticeable as well.
Another "new" name and very active player was Scud. He released a huge amount of tracks, establishing himself as one of the best trackmakers. He developed some skills with default cars, and he seems to be willing to continue that way. Together with Storm, he might be one of the default cars revelations of year 2009. Probably he has made quite several mistakes during past year (cup organizing, game life, etc), but I'm sure that [iR] team and the new year will bring him back to the right way.
Getting third place at his first official race, between big names, iBlaze² entered the TurboSliders community as one of the biggest revelations of the year. He couldn't confirm himself at top of any other tournament, so far, but he soon started to experience team life and to deepen his TurboSliders addiction. Reading his race reports is really a pleasure, and his behavior has always been mature and polite. He is one of the players I appreciate the most. Hopefully in 2009 he'll start organizing tournaments and develop his skills better.
The GPOR Open Season 1 introduced some interesting players: lux completed almost 500 races and obtained the 8th position overall. He started playing default cars cups as soon as he joined [iR], and he seems to be improving quite nicely. He's not exactly a newcomer, anyway, since he played for long in Brazilian servers with custom cars, but we can expect good things from him in 2009. Pablinho15 and iceman, newcomers, showed good skills during the F1 season. They both kept driving after the end of the competition, starting to train with default cars. Pablinho15 seemed to fall in love with Slider, quite unusual for a newbie, and with fast laps-based competitions (but also racing competitions). I'm looking forward to comment his improvements at next year's article). Another interesting name for 2009 is Darx, who started to be active in very last days of the year and showed good skills with default cars already.
However, 2008 has been the year of comebacks. Peto! started playing again with some constancy during the GPOR Open Season 1, just like Tuukka and siLciR. The first one drove over 200 races winning 59 of them. He also joined some default cars cups, obtaining the victory of the TurboSliders.com Newcomers (& average players) Cup #1. He's not the Peto! we were used to see back in the old days, but with some dedication he could get closer to top players.
Tuukka prolly took part to the season mentioned before, obtaining 195 out of 369 races completed and ending up at 6th place overall. Quite a nice result for him, considering that he has been unactive for long time.Too bad that he didn't take part to default cars cups so far: he was one of the best players back in 2004.
The most active player in the GPOR Open Season 1 was siLciR, the best demo player of year 2006. He completed over 770 races with about 200 victories and 5th place overall. He also started playing with default cars, but he needs some training to catch top players. As many other fast demo players (e.g. Daft), he is finding some troubles at mastering default cars in non-demo tracks: being fast in three tracks with five cars isn't exactly the same as knowing how to drive those cars. Anyway, if he reached the top at demo, he has the potential to reach the top at full version as well, with some dedication.
We just mentioned some comebacks, but there have been players that partly disappeared from the TurboSliders scene. Benzinfurz, for example, remained as unactive as 2007. He organized the Weekly Wank tournament, but soon he disappeared together with last cup results (I'm sure I won that one!). He played in only one or two cups after that, which is a shame: back in the good Ippon days he was one of the most interesting TurboSliders players. Some other ex-Ippon members disappeared together with him: Kyna_musti totally quit the game, swos joined F1 organized cups every now and then, u9 and Foei played some occasional races/matches only.
Matti lowered his default cars racing activity (only four tournaments joined), concentrating mainly on PunaBall, Full Contact and F1. His results were quite nice, expecially at PunaBall: the first cup didn't go that well (out at semi-finals), but with his new team mate Storm he managed to dominate the TDi PunaBall League. They seemed to be the best team there, but the league freezed after the summer. Thanks to those results, Matti can be considered as one of the best PunaBall players, probably the best of year 2008. Storm resulted his perfect team mate: the one has nice defense and positioning, the other plays fast balls and has nice skill-tricks. Superb teamplay and amazing consistency, that's the key for the success.
Borg (aka half of the TurboSliders nicknames) had nice PunaBall results as well, in the first cup of the year. But he couldn't repeat himself in the other cup: it seems like he can play well only with Tijny.
Rattlehead and xzeal come to my mind when thinking about PunaBall. They joined the TDi League together, doing quite nicely: nobody expected them to beat Tijny and Badeend! Unluckily the cup didn't go any further, so we can't say how well they would've done. Other PunaBall players that impressed during last year were Bar and DjLoL, but they disappeared after the first half of the year, just like many other players.
There have been many other PunaBall players around, during 2008. Some of them were considered as real talents in 2007, but most of them ended up disappointing our expectations. Turok (aka Luisma) and Alex (aka the other half of the TurboSliders nicknames) are two striking examples: good basic skills from the beginning, nice speed, but they couldn't improve their gameplay at all (Turok, expecially, seemed to do worse than previous year). Anyway, they had several breaks that might have conditioned their preformances.
Back to active players, Buggis seemed to love F1, and probably just that. Whenever I joined the F1 server ( I played about 400 races), hell, he was there! Quite surprisingly he drove less than siLciR, but it's still impressive to have an average of 16 races per day in a 44 days period. Third place overall in that competition, mainly due to his high activity, but he developed some nice skills and speed. Too bad that he doesn't seem to be liking default cars (except AntiSlider), because with that kind of dedication he would certainly become a nice player.
And when it's up to activity, we can't forget to mention dat guy (aka Danilo DiLuca). His activity as PunaBall servers was comparable to Storm's and only few others'. He confirmed of being addicted to TurboSliders, just like when he started playing (he won his license by winning the Demo Christmas Cup organized by Mike Nike back in 2005). One of those "few others" mentioned before is Speedy: he ended up being the most active PunaBall players of the Pesol server in 1.0.8 version. He has to be mentioned also for doing well in the F1 cup organized by Scud (My Cup), obtaining a victory and some podiums, resulting in 2nd final position in front of Tijny (okay, they didn't have the same number of races, but still
Portuguese players have been very active in year 2008, hosting cups every now and then and joining official cups with quite a nice constancy. Their speciality remained AntiSlider rough racing, but they started to play xbumpz, missilesracing and more mods. Default cars racing unluckily remained partly out of their plans, although they often joined organized racing cups. Best results were obtained by rostami, silver medal at KrC 1.0, and Zaga, silver medal at TRC #1. Zaga seemed to be the most skilled (rough) player, but he disappeared as soon as TurboSliders 2.0.0 came out. Got to mention other players too, because they really improved much during last year: Padero developed nice AntiSlider skills, just like devic, fixxxer and Pix. Got to mention serial_man as well, but I must admit that I don't like the way he plays: he brakes too much in front of other players, also when it's not so needed. Sting remained an average player at both racing and PunaBall, but I appreciate him for being a good guy. Other players like fluorescente, lost_killer, r9, nolan and Rikas have been more or less active too (I hope I forgot nobody).
Badeend is another player I appreciate for the same reason as Sting. He hasn't been very active, but he played some PunaBall every now and then. His level wasn't comparable to what he showed back in the old days (he didn't quite dominate the TDi PunaBall League, as predicted by many - he played with Tijny), but it's always a pleasure to play with him. He also took part to the GPOR F1 Open Season 1 (over 120 races with 25 victories) and to Scud's F1 cup "My Cup v.2" (third place at second race).
Somebody I missed during the second half of the year was Jan: after starting a team for Finnish players and organizing a PunaBall cup (where he reached the semi-final playing with miksa), he completely disappeared from the servers. Probably he wasn't one of the fastest racers, but he has always been a gentleman bringing good things to TurboSliders. Lately I talked with him and he explained he started playing Speedway, which takes most of his time. That's a shame, but I understand him: Speedway requires less dedication than TurboSliders, and the community is quite well organized (let's not talk further about this topic anyway, because I think the Speedway-deal was Ande's biggest mistake ever). Together with him, some other finnish players partially (or totally) disappeared from the TS scene and moved to Speedway mod: Lamppu and Palomies.
Keppana tried Speedway too without falling in love, apparently (or at least, so it seemed). His trackmaking activity continued, focusing mainly on rough tracks (that's his speciality!). He managed to join several cups and he organized some of them as well. The Speed Racing season looked like a good idea, for instance, but the schedule didn't quite help him with the number of players (Football European Cup), so the cup got freezed after the first race. Things went better at the Marathon Mania: many players joined that event and he obtained the silver medal. However that wasn't his best result of the year, since he also managed to win the Total Rough Cup #3 in front of very big names. What a summer for Keppana, hehe!
Other [fS] players have been unconstantly active during last year: miksa disappeared for a while between the end of the OIPC #1 and the beginning of the GPOR Open Season 1. His skills lowered a bit because of that, expecially the PunaBall ones. With just a better dedication (and probably a better connection) he could easily battle for the podium at any kind of competition. Chevron has been a bit more active than miksa, expecially in Full Contact server and in organized cups. He also started to create some (rough) tracks.
2008 has been a nice year for me, as a player. I obtained very good racing results, dominated F1, increased my speed with default cars. I'm not really satisfied with PunaBall results though, because I expected to win the OIPC #1 after beating Borg and Tijny in first round. Too bad that we couldn't repeat ourselves in the final, but that's life. The second tournament went rather well: olio did a great job learning PunaBall, and I got to admit that I hoped to battle with top teams there. The game against Matti and Storm was amazingly nice and unlucky: our defense rocked and we scored several goals on counter attacks; then two lucky goals by them and game over.
My default cars racing activity has been quite huge, so I managed to keep up with Tijny more than in 2007. I still think that he's faster with at least three cars, but the gap got really little now. I'm expecting much better results from 2009!
About my team life, I'm happy that olio decided to follow me through the new adventure. Ippon ended being a team few months after kicking wazaari, because most of players started being unactive. We could've continued with Ippon, but that would've been the third big change happening to that team, so we felt like starting a completely new project. So far we didn't recruit anybody and I'm sure that there won't be news in the near future, because at the moment there aren't players matching our criteria. Or at least, some players are definitively interesting, but they currently drive for other (good) teams. Anyway, we are also following few new names that in some time might become interesting, but it's too early to guess if one of them will be recruited by our team.
Last but not least, I'd like to thank some players I didn't mention yet. They are stummihouse, who organized the GPOR Open Season 1 and provided nice statistics for it, and all server hosters (Philippe, Mizu, TheDude, JollyGoodGames, Ape, Terra, and also those occasional ones). TurboSliders wouldn't be any fun without their quality servers: GPOR server (by stummyhouse) offers custom cars seasons with ranking and statistics, Pesol (by Mizu) offers the same for PunaBall, Community Servers (by Philippe and JollyGoodGames) are places where to host any kind of cups. Thanks a lot, guys!
Okay, it took days to write this, and I feel it's long enough now. I might have forgotten some players worth of mentioning, but I didn't that on purpose. If you weren't mentioned, all you have to do is to do well during the next year, and you'll get a spot in the TurboSliders 2009 history!
Thanks for reading, and please leave your own comments and stories (at least as long as this article!).
