1st Crazy Bounty - VERIFIED !!
Hello fellow gamers:
At this time I am very proud to announce that the 1st "Crazy Bounty" has been successfully claimed !!
Cristiano Assumpcao, a member of Brazil's now-famous "Metroid Team", has won the cash prize assigned to "Crazy Taxi" (Sega DC) mini-game (S-3) "Crazy Party" in a world record time of 59.87seconds, becoming the first player in history to break the one minute barrier !!
This is truly an incredible achievement. Of all the "mini-games" in "Crazy Taxi", which was one of the hottest competitions between gamers in the summer of 2001, this event was the one that separated the men from the boys, as I used to say when I wrote the newsletters for that competition.
The goal in this event is to pick up seven (7) passengers and make it to the goal area before the time expires, that timer being 1:40.00, of which Cristiano only needed less than a minute to get it all done.
The passengers are located in various hard-to-get-to locations...on top of coulmns accessible only by traversing spiralling paths, on top of roofs, hiding inbetween parked cars, of just simply "hanging out by some boxes or phone booth. But no matter how you slice it, this is the hardest of the events to complete period, let alone in record time.
I watched Cristiano's performance about 12 times, including twice via frame by frame, and I have no doubt that the performance is real and that it is glitch-free and in accordance to the rules governing this competition.
In total, Cristiano played for 1:33.07 before he started his record run...and that does not count the hour upon hour from the summer 2001 competitions in which Cristiano and about ten other gamers tried hundreds of times each in order to produce their fastest possible times.
Cristiano made over three hundred attempts (307, to be precise) before he nailed it. Of these, the majority (137) were terminated either immediately or shortly before picking up the first passenger.
Seventy one (71) attempts were cut short after picking up the first passenger, thirty eight (38) after picking up a second passenger, and twenty six (26) were stopped after picking up a third passenger.
Even for a pro player like Cristiano, you never know that everything is going "right" until you come down to the last few passengers, and even then only when you've picked up the very last one, as anything can happen...the maneuvers you need to make are among the most complicated in the game...such as coming to a complete halt within a tiny pickup goal area after speeding up a spiral incline, or jumping off a ramp while turning your car ninety degrees and trying to land flat, all in the space of a second or two. And then, when the 7th and final passenger is finally picked up, you have to drive like a bat out of (you know where) over a thin, borderless, twisting road and get to the goal area, your only enemy being the clock...and yourself.
Continuing where I left off before, out of over 300 attempts, only three (3) attempts picked up 4 passengers only, while thirteen (13) attempts picked up 5 passengers...that makes sense to me because Cristiano's completion strategy most likely will rarely leave him with only 4 passengers not picked up.
He had thirteen (13) instances where he picked up 5 of the 7 passengers before deciding to abort, while only two (2) where he picked up 6 of the 7. As a fellow player, and knowing his style and tactics quite well going back two years now, he almost always continues from 6 to 7, and did so eighteen (18) times within the 90+ minute taping.
Of those eighteen (18) attempts where all that was left to do was to drop off the group of passengers in the final goal area, sevene (7) of them resulted in Cristiano falling off the thin road leading to the goal area, while the other eleven (11) lead to completion times, all of which were stellar and 1:03.20 or less, and four (4) of which were between 1:00.00-1:00.59, so he came close a few times.
Because completion of this particular event is almost "pattern-like" in terms of the gamer's choice of which passenger to pick up first, I cannot divulge very much of Cristiano's run...in fact, his closest competitors will learn of his strategy immediately based on the time of the first passenger pickup and pretty much every one thereafter. All that I can divulge, without Cristiano himself filling in the rest of the information, is that his last passenger was picked up with approx 51.30 seconds left on the clock, meaning he had to get his passengers to the goal area within the next 11.29 seconds...and he did so in the next 11.13 seconds. Wow, talk about cutting it close !!
So, it's now official...the first of the "Crazy Bounties" is hereby CLAIMED by Cristiano Assumpcao effective July 6th, 2003, the date of receipt of package, and his prize shall be awarded on September 6th, 2003, as per the terms of the compeition.
Congratulations, Cristiano, on a job well done, and thanks for participating in my competition.
Robert