[Strong Bad]

One-trick-ponies should get in the top 10. :o

[yse]

Okay that does it. RPG is off the top ten. This whole list belongs to me now. I simply cannot trust him to get any work done.

Without further adieu:

TSC's GREATEST PLAYER #9
Daniel "NintenDan" Zurad: The more trustworthy Dan!

(Apologies for the rant entering the top ten entry, but you know, I am kinda upset by this. :/)

NintenDan's time at TSC goes way back to December of 2003. If my memory serves, he posted one record time in Sonic Advance that day, and then left it alone for a little while.

Enter March 1, 2004.

Sonic Advance was swept. The era of mike89-Rolken domination was over!

Oh yeah and he did some cool stuff on SA2 as well. His timesheet now is pretty damn similar to what it was back then, and some of the times still hold up (particularly Weapons Bed 1).

Then, let us not forget the long-running rivalry on Sonic Advance 2 which RPG was supposed to be writing about but slacked off on. You know, the one where NintenDan had crappy bosses and worked on them to get to the top and then random time smashing commenced from both parties?

Come 2005, I got the Sonic Advance championship back for one day. Specifically, July 7 2005, the day we returned from the abyss of the great downtime. The next day NintenDan was back to 1p and all was well.

Oh, and he could play Sonic and Knuckles too. Lava Reef 1 K 1:33: nobody's even come close to it, even with a video!

NintenDan also applied his awesomeness to SDA in runs of Sonic Advance and Sonic Adventure (with Amy).

But as we all know, the real reason NintenDan's on the list is because of moments like this:

Apr 17 00:52:43 <Tac0> hello hello hello
Apr 17 00:52:45 <Tac0> is anyone here?
Apr 17 00:52:47 <Tac0> hello hello hello
Apr 17 00:52:48 <oldskoolgamer101> hello
Apr 17 00:52:56 <Tac0> uh oh over
Apr 17 00:53:03 <Tac0> we got an uh oh, over
Apr 17 00:53:13 <oldskoolgamer101> ?
Apr 17 00:53:24 <Tac0> chopper dave, chopper dave, we got an uh oh, this is not a drill, ove
Apr 17 00:53:36 <Tac0> also hi
Apr 17 00:53:38 <Tac0> what is you doing here?
Apr 17 00:53:44 <Tac0> I thought you is gonez?
Apr 17 00:53:53 <oldskoolgamer101> do I...know you?
Apr 17 00:53:56 <Tac0> or maybe is is been gonz to longz
Apr 17 00:54:06 <Tac0> or maybe I'm mixing people up again
Apr 17 00:54:36 <Tac0> I would hope so >_>
Apr 17 00:54:47 <Tac0> oh well whatever
Apr 17 00:54:58 <Tac0> I don't know half the new people around here anyway, so it doesn't really matter I guess
Apr 17 00:55:02 <oldskoolgamer101> sorry I have no idea who you are lol
Apr 17 00:55:09 * GerbilSoft (GerbilSoft@SCnet-BDD3567E.dhcp.drexel.edu) has joined #soniccenter
Apr 17 00:55:09 * ChanBot gives voice to GerbilSoft
Apr 17 00:55:16 <Tac0> well then who are you?
Apr 17 00:55:21 <oldskoolgamer101> but I am not new, just have not been here for years
Apr 17 00:55:31 <Tac0> well exactly, that's what I meant
Apr 17 00:55:41 <GerbilSoft> fail
Apr 17 00:55:54 <Tac0> thats why I am confused as to your current presence here
Apr 17 00:56:01 <oldskoolgamer101> not regularly anyway. last time I was here regularly was when shadowgamer196 used to be a regular chat attendee
Apr 17 00:56:21 <Tac0> yep, I remember that guy
Apr 17 00:56:35 <Tac0> he was always...shadowgamering...

Congratulations!

NintenDan's TSC Profile (#39)
NintenDan's Sonic Advance speedrun
NintenDan's Sonic Adventure (Amy) speedrun

#10: Cybrax
#9: NintenDan
#8: ???
#7: ???
#6: ???
#5: ???
#4: ???
#3: ???
#2: ???
#1: ???

Oh and time to crush more dreams! RR, Stef and Zeph aren't on the list >:D

[yse]

TSC's GREATEST PLAYER #8
Chris "Shadow Jacky" Chism: 3D's Elite

SJ is member 6, so he goes right back to the beginnings of TSC. Back then he played SADX with Cybrax and F-Man, and tended to be the one who got left behind by those two. But who's got the last laugh now!

After about the start of 2004 we didn't see much of SJ. However, proof of the awesomeness of the concept of the Top Tens came after the very first iteration, when it single-handedly brought SJ back into the fold. And what a player we have regained!

SJ's original stomping ground, SADX, was left by the wayside as he took on Sonic Heroes and Shadow. The videos page is full of his work in those two games.

Later, SJ played games taking him more out of his comfort zone. A few months ago, I played Sonic 3D Blast for a couple of days and got to 80% and 4th place. After making a point of how easy it was, a few people intent on stealing my glory went and actually played it properly, SJ and DsS being the two most prominent. Thorn's championship never stood a chance, and SJ sits at the top today with 99%.

I suppose the reason SJ is in the top ten is for that uncanny ability to set records that seem out of reach even for those TSCers styling themselves "elite". There's a few examples in Sonic Heroes of him being half a minute or more ahead of second place, which is not to belittle the achievements of those on the second tier because they tend to be the eredanis and DsSes of our site, just show that SJ is, and has been for some time, the master of 3D Sonic.

Congratulations!

Shadow Jacky's TSC Profile (#4)

#10: Cybrax
#9: NintenDan
#8: Shadow Jacky
#7: ???
#6: ???
#5: ???
#4: ???
#3: ???
#2: ???
#1: ???

And in terms of crushing dreams, now I'm going to say that Cherry, Ink and Upth are going to miss out. Sorry :((

[Shadow Jacky]

;_;

man, now I feel bad for leaving SADX so soon.

[Spinballwizard]

RR isn't on the list because he fails. >_>

But my dreams have not been crushed yet!

[Shadow Jacky]

apparently there are individuals who are in a disagreement over my position >_>

[DsSaster]

apparently there are individuals who are in a disagreement over my position >_>

Like? <_<

[yse]

Clearly SJ should've been higher.

Next!

TSC's GREATEST PLAYER #7
Ronald "SkyLights" Tallman: Tikal's Partner in Crime

(I was contemplating AHHHHetc but in the interest of aesthetics and space, I relented. Consider yourselves lucky.)

SkyLights actually didn't join TSC until December 2005! I was as surprised by this as many of you were. I thought he'd been around since before the downtime... but there you go.

Incidentally, this is about when Sonic Rush charts were added to TSC so I suppose it shouldn't be a surprise. And indeed it is this game that SkyLights has made his own since he's been here.

In fact, since first taking the championship soon after the charts were added, SkyLights has not been champion of Sonic Rush for approximately four weeks: two when Crowbar took a slight lead in June 2006, and the past two weeks when SDM finally took the lead.

Further to that, SkyLights can play other games too! At one stage he held the record for most championships (five; Rush, Rush Adventure, Triple Trouble, SSR and S&K), of which two are very well competed in and the other three... not so much.

SkyLights almost lost awesome points for AHHHHing in the chat all the time, but as it turns out only MK thinks that's bad I've decided that it doesn't count against him.

Congratulations!

SkyLights's TSC Profile (#7)
SkyLights's awesome sprite

#10: Cybrax
#9: NintenDan
#8: Shadow Jacky
#7: SkyLights
#6: ???
#5: ???
#4: ???
#3: ???
#2: ???
#1: ???

No crushing dreams today :(

[Magnezone]

:o

Also sonichero had the Rush champ once before Crowbar did. You can guess how long he held it; you guys don't even remember it >_>

[Shadow Jacky]

congrats SkyLights, this list is certainly becoming interesting. 

[yse]

OH CRAP I'M BEHIND AGAIN

TSC's GREATEST PLAYER #6
Joe "stanski" Stanski: FU shut it!

(This is more of a nod to SDA than TSC, but I feel it's still warranted.)

A trip down memory lane. I first remember running into stanski on SDA back in 2005. I'm pretty sure he wanted his first big project to be Sonic 2, so I (or possibly someone else) directed him here, as we have directed so many others in the past, though none of them proved to have the skill and (especially) perseverance that stanski has proven to have.

Flash forward a few months and, not only does stanski have a 20:02 speedrun on SDA, but a 0p championship here. And still he continues to improve in the quest for a better speedrun. Next comes 18:54, and finally the current record of 18:12! Back when I was the champion that was an acceptable sum of level totals.

Lately stanski has diversified in the speedrunning community, branching out to Toy Story and Dark Castle, the latter of which he also contributed to a TAS of.

And finally, I leave you with stanski's legacy. Controller standards. Personally, I believe we all should carry these standards into our daily lives. Controllers must:

• Have a working down button
• NEVER be face down
• Be supplied in boxes of 50
• Be replaced within two days

Congratulations!

stanski's TSC Profile (#22)
stanski's Dark Castle speedrun
stanski's Sonic 2 speedrun (and individual level videos)
stanski's Toy Story speedrun
Aqfaq & stanski's Dark Castle TAS

#10: Cybrax
#9: NintenDan
#8: Shadow Jacky
#7: SkyLights
#6: stanski
#5: ???
#4: ???
#3: ???
#2: ???
#1: ???

#5 coming up tonight, then I'm back on schedule. I think.

[yse]

TSC's GREATEST PLAYER #5
Gavin "SprintGod" Ward: The Perfectionist

If this looks familiar to you, you read the top tens too much. In truth, not much about Sprint's position at TSC has changed since I placed him #2 in the first Top Ten, so what follows is... pretty similar to what I wrote then. >_>

Sprint is a player very much unlike any other here at TSC. I know my philosophy to time attacking is something like "Post a full bracket of times, then work on the worst ones until you achieve #1." Sprint goes the completely opposite way, in effect: "Play one level, and play it and play it until it's perfect. Repeat for all levels in the game, then go back and beat them all for good measure."

Sprint joined on the 17th of March 2004, so while he hasn't been around here for as long as the founding members, he's still been with us for a while. His first act was to post his Sonic CD times, which he'd been working on for a long time. Let's put the magnitude of this into perspective.

Before Sprint joined, SM owned the Sonic CD charts with all but one record.

When he posted his times, Sprint became the new champion, leaving SM with just 3 of his 27 records. And all this without collaboration (from us, at least). That alone would've put Sprint in the top ten. But no, that wasn't enough, no way.

The next game Sprint would turn his sights on was Sonic 3. He then proceeded to obliterate every single one of my times up to Marble Garden 1 (though the progress was very slow, and now nonexistent). Probably lucky he never finished his bracket here, as I would've lost my championship in a snap. It took a while, but I finally did lose it. To my own brother. The shame...

Probably his greatest achievement in Sonic 3, however, isn't listed at TSC. He submitted this to Bisqwit's site back in May of 2005, a GMV of Sonic 3 and Knuckles being completed as Sonic in a mere 45 minutes (closer to 36 minutes if you just count level times). The recording contained a massive 160000 re-records! Another example of Sprint's immense patience. This has, of course, been beaten by nitsuja since (and recently Upthorn has added his improvements), with the aid of far greater tools, including Tails.

Back in July 2005, I challenged Sprint to beat my Sonic 1 and 2 times for Game Gear, as I held both championships at 1 point and 0 points respectively and felt reasonably confident of my times holding up. How wrong I was. With the aid of a few physics quirks, Sprint didn't just tie, but BEAT almost every single one of them, smashing my old totals into the ground. And all in three days!

Notable of Sprint's dominance is that he records just about every single time he sets. This obviously requires an even greater commitment in time, internet usage and whatever else. It also sends a message to any who would challenge him, saying that "I've got so much confidence that this time will stand, that I'll even show you how to do it and I still think you'll be unable to beat me!"

Sprint sporadically comes back and beats his SCD times, but that tends to be it. And he never did complete his Sonic 3 bracket.

Nevertheless, congratulations on a top five finish!

SprintGod's TSC Profile (#18)
SprintGod's TAS library

#10: Cybrax
#9: NintenDan
#8: Shadow Jacky
#7: SkyLights
#6: stanski
#5: SprintGod
#4: ???
#3: ???
#2: ???
#1: ???

Will the next player be another one starting with S? Only time will tell!

Also mad props for guessing the top four in order.

[Combo]

Congratulations to those who had made it so far. I can't wait to see who are the 4 that are left.

[yse]

TSC's GREATEST PLAYER #4
Michael "mike89" McKenzie: Being obsoleted by the day

(I really hate writing about myself. This is why we had the rule that RPG and I couldn't write about ourselves in the top tens. But we'll see how this goes.)

As you can tell, I've dropped myself a few places since we did this last. It basically turned out I didn't have high enough standards to compete with the very best any more, so putting myself any closer to #1 simply wouldn't be fair to those who can churn out the impossible stats time after time. (This should give you a good idea of who the remaining three are!)

I'm one of those lucky few who were around at the very beginning and remember how awesome the site was around 2004. Maybe it would've been better if Rolken was right about having as many as 100 members... but I digress. When I first joined I had my Sonic Advance and Sonic Adventure 2 times added, the former of which I was champion of by default (because there were no other competitors at the time). Then Rolken posted his timesheet and my first rivalry began. Until we were both stopped in our tracks by NintenDan (see #9) around March.

Having always been among my favourite games of all time, the GeneDrive (thanks SBW) games were always going to be among the best for me to compete in, and so it proved when I took Sonic 2, 3 and Knuckles and held them all for some time. Sonic 2 fell to Aitamen and later stanski, Sonic and Knuckles went back and forth with eredani, and Sonic 3 I held for about three years, until my brother took it.

Next to be added were the Game Gear games, which I always thought were a bit of a laugh. Having never played any but the first two before, I downloaded them just to have a look how they played. I ended up taking the championship for all but Triple Trouble at some stage. As for who superseded me, Sonic 1 and 2 went to Sprint, Chaos I believe eredani beat me on first, before we knew how PAL affected the game, and Drift and Drift 2 were thrown around by a couple of players; RPG, PsyBorg, SS101 and later DsS among them.

And then along came Sonic Advance 3. You guys all know that this is my favourite Sonic since the GeneDrive era, so it comes as no surprise that I was once very good at it. NintenDan was the first dominant player, with that Chaos Angel 3 video, then, as I recall, blueblaze put lots of BS stats up to make himself the champion, but I eventually passed even him for the championship. After which he was banned and I got a massive lead, and I think it took Quartz, the successor to NintenDan as the Advance series master, to mow me down.

Then came the Great Downtime. When the site was restored I was among the first players to submit and the temporary record of ten championships that I held at that time is still a record today, and probably unlikely to ever be beaten. I tend to revise the record to 7 because that's how many I had when the dust settled (including NintenDan regaining his 0p Advance championship), and I think even that still stands, possibly tied.

But more importantly from my perspective, I found myself about 400 points off the SA2B championship. The first day after the downtime I knocked off another 100, and I began to believe I could reach my final, and greatest, target. Another such day followed before RPG decided he'd had enough, and he and SS101 moved away even quicker, ending my only real run at the Crown Jewel.

The next major event for me after that was the advent of the Top Tens! This is why you all love me and, to a lesser extent, RPG today, because let's face it, you all look forward to this, don't you?

Hot on its heels was the Sonic Olympics. Not much needs to be said about this because it's all been said before, it's done and dusted, and the old barriers have been broken down to some extent with SDM being active in both communities (as far as I know, anyway).

The next two years have proven that at TSC, you can't rest on your laurels for one moment. I've found it increasingly difficult to get back into games the longer I stay away from them, and as a result I have been knocked out of every single championship I once possessed, and more recently out of my coveted #1 sitewide position.

However I did do other cool things in that time, such as compete in Mario Kart DS, F-Zero MV, and submit a few speedruns and a TAS.

Go me!

mike89's TSC Profile (#3)
mike89's MKDS Profile (#227)
mike89's Banjo-Tooie speedrun (with Cheato's cheats)
mike89's Sonic 3 & Knuckles speedruns (Sonic/Knuckles)
mike89's Vectorman 2 speedrun
mike89's Sonic 2 (SMS) TAS

#10: Cybrax
#9: NintenDan
#8: Shadow Jacky
#7: SkyLights
#6: stanski
#5: SprintGod
#4: mike89
#3: ???
#2: ???
#1: ???

PS, you all suck at guessing!

[Combo]

DsS, Smizzla and eredani?

[EngiNerd]

Rolken's on this list.  Why?  Because even though he doesn't compete much, there would be literally ZERO TSC without him.  He holds the keys, man.  All of them.  Even the ones in Mad Matrix.
*shot*
And RPG for the LOL.  Can't imagine this place without the maniac.

[DsSaster]

As you can tell, I've dropped myself a few places since we did this last. It basically turned out I didn't have high enough standards to compete with the very best any more, so putting myself any closer to #1 simply wouldn't be fair to those who can churn out the impossible stats time after time. (This should give you a good idea of who the remaining three are!)

...that would seem like me, smizzla, and eredani!!!  Though I fear smizzla will be number 1, hopefully I will be. :/

temporary record of ten championships that I held at that time is still a record today, and probably unlikely to ever be beaten. I tend to revise the record to 7 because that's how many I had when the dust settled (including NintenDan regaining his 0p Advance championship), and I think even that still stands, possibly tied.

There was one time where I held 7 championships.

[Taillow]

...that would seem like me, smizzla, and eredani!!!

Hopefully in that order!  Or Dhaos 3/Eredani 2/Smizzla 1.  I dunno, and frankly, I'll wait and find out.  Good so far.

[Shadow Jacky]

I still have hopes for yoshifan, f-man (even though he stopped a long time ago), and uh....crap I forgetting someone >_<

[P.P.A.]

#1 will be sonicandamy.

[Zeupar]

Sonic or Amy? >_>

[yse]

(Doing this now cause I am not going to have time tomorrow morning)

TSC's GREATEST PLAYER #3
eredani: The Silent Assassin

(Other candidates included the Swede of Speed (stolen from SDA), which might've worked in, y'know, 2005, when we only tracked times.)

Would it really be a top ten without eredani? Ever since joining in late 2005, he has perhaps best epitomised what I've been saying about those "impossible" stats. As I have mentioned in a previous top ten, when eredani joined he was so good so fast, I had a very hard time believing he was legitimate. Now we know better, and a damn good thing too.

If I were trying to sell eredani, it would basically be as "Sprint v2.0, now pwning more than ever before, quicker than ever before!" While Sprint had a few specialty games, eredani has got records in pretty much everything.

My favourite (at least, for its relevance to the top ten; it actually really sucked at the time) memory of eredani occurs multiple times in 2006. It works something like this:
[09:45] <mike89> ok, time to go beat DE1
[10:00] <GerbilEgg> New Record: eredani got 2:01 on Death Egg 1 / Sonic
[10:05] <mike89> got 2:08!
[10:05] <mike89> ...wait, what?

After which I learned not to discuss what level I was playing at any given time in the chat. To be fair, it did take this happening on several occasions for me to shut up about it, and even then I couldn't keep my fingers to myself all the time.

Oddly enough, eredani is only really strong in three games: Sonic and Knuckles, Sonic Heroes and Sonic Chaos, all three of which he was once champion of, and being seriously challenged on all three, simultaneously: S&K by yours truly, SH by SJ and Chaos by... well, everyone, since everyone wanted a piece of the Chaos pie.

Earlier this year, eredani boldly claimed he would reach #1 sitewide by the end of it. Personally, I'm failing to see where his challenge is going to come from, but everyone here knows that whenever I say something like this it ends up biting me in the arse. So consider this your wake up call!

Congratulations on a top three finish!

eredani's TSC Profile (#10)

#10: Cybrax
#9: NintenDan
#8: Shadow Jacky
#7: SkyLights
#6: stanski
#5: SprintGod
#4: mike89
#3: eredani
#2: ???
#1: ???

Some clarifications:

Sonic or Amy? >_>

We already did two players as #1 once. It's not happening again.

There was one time where I held 7 championships.

Yeah, I thought so, that's why I said it was possibly tied.

[Stefan]

The last two: yoshifan, sadisticmystic?

I mean sm is number one for certain.. and yoshifan is too good to not have made this list at all.

[Spinballwizard]

I'd call Russel "SadisticMystic" Jones God for #1.

Not really sure on 2 though. I'm not sure if DsS deserves it or not.

Also I want more crushing dreams. :(

[yse]

Prepare for the SHOCK OF YOUR LIVES.

TSC's GREATEST PLAYER #2
Mike "SuperSonic101" Erman: Through the Fire and Flames~

(More on this later!)

It has long been my opinion that, of the Big Four of SA2B (Cybrax, Rayku, RPG and the aforementioned), that SS101 had the greatest effect on the competition scene. Cybrax wasn't around for long enough, Rayku had his stats deleted (by me, when SM gave me a faulty query!) and RPG, as the past week has shown, was never really worthy of the honour anyway.

Yet there was a time, back when having 20 people in the chatroom was an achievement, when this was not the case. I distinctly remember SS101 being very content to copy Cybrax's videos, and not contribute a whole lot of his own. But one day, and dozens of poorly encoded files, changed all that. Suddenly, SS101 was the teacher, and he was the one being leeched off. Unfortunately, I don't think he handled that as well as some players have.

SS101 left the game in 2006 well on top... in his chosen category of times. SS101 was a big believer in the old rankings format, which only counted time-based statistics in the overall rankings, in which he was substantially ahead until yoshifan finally overtook him. However, times change!

It should be apparent by now that that is not enough to secure the #2 spot on this list of incredible players. What really got SS101 this spot is the work he's done since then with Guitar Hero 3. SS101 is ranked in the top 100 in the world (and the Score Hero charts have a far larger participation than even mariokart64.com!), and even more impressively, only four months after getting the game managed a semifinal finish in a national GH3 tournament (though, to be fair, it's only Canada), missing out on the final by a mere 300 points.

Congratulations!

SuperSonic101's TSC Profile (#34)
SuperSonic101's Score Hero rankings (#32 PS2, #89 overall)

#10: Cybrax
#9: NintenDan
#8: Shadow Jacky
#7: SkyLights
#6: stanski
#5: SprintGod
#4: mike89
#3: eredani
#2: SuperSonic101
#1: ???

I think this is the most wide-open race for #1 yet. Any takers?

Also I want more crushing dreams. :(

Be careful what you wish for...

[Taco]

OH MAN!

I TOTALLY DID NOT SEE THAT COMING!!!

SHOCK VALUE = AWESOME SURPRISING CRAZYNESS

how did you find this all out by the way? Because I never see ss101 anymore : /

but anyway, congrats supersonic! I really want to see him play guitar hero now!

[DsSaster]

Pssch, it's obvious that #1 will be Rolken. >_>

[Stefan]

sadisticmystic is number one. I am fairly certain.

[Rick_242]

Though I fear smizzla will be number 1, hopefully I will be. :/

Look at the topic closely.

It says TSCers.

Not Players.

There is a difference.

I think.

[Shadow Jacky]

either yoshifan or SM.

I know yoshifan has extended his reaches to other sites and SM...well that's self explanatory.

dammit, makes me wish I competed in more places.