Darren

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Darren

Darren

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"Hey, it's that dolphin shoals guy!"

Anyways, pretty much everyone here knows me as Darren (my irl name) I'm 18 and am from Massachusetts, though I currently reside in New Hampshire for college. I've been around the Mario Kart 8/Mario Kart 8 Deluxe community since around April 2015, but my earliest ventures in the competitive Mario Kart community date back to September 2014, when I joined the players' page for Mario Kart 7. I am probably most known for my various achievements in time trials, mainly in the pair of Mario Kart 8 titles. Time trials have always been a strong suit for me, even since Mario Kart 7, where I soared through the players' page ranks tremendously quickly, going from outside the top 100 to top 20 status within a matter of months, while also setting a handful of top 10 times along the way. My TT skills transferred over quite well to Mario Kart 8, despite a rather slow start. In August 2015, I set my first ever world record on, you guessed it, Dolphin Shoals, which was freaking huge for me at the time. Fortunately, this was not a fluke, as I was able to set WRs on three other tracks throughout my MK8 career, two of which are still standing today. Currently, I am a member of High Definition, and have been for the past 2 years. In the past, I have been a member of Dynamite and Palingenesis. I still time trial occasionally, getting top 10s every now and again. Combined with my love for the game, my determination to improve, and being surrounded by some of my favorite people, there has always been an incentive for me to constantly come back to the competitive MK scene. Thanks for listening to my TED talk.

Social media and other stuff:

Twitter
Youtube
Discord: Darren#3047
My Current MK8/MK8DX World Records
Switch FC: SW-1702-1733-1502
 
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Darren

Darren

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Life Outside MK

Outside of MK8DX, I am a full-time first year student at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH. Many of you have probably never heard of it, as it is quite small, with only around 2,000 students. I am currently undeclared, but I am somewhat considering going into either criminal justice or communications among other things. While college is nice and all, the internet here is rather under-performing, which disallows me from playing online matches, in effect making it so that I currently cannot play clan wars/worldwides and so on. This is an issue that I hope can get resolved soon, but for now I just have to be patient, and play during school breaks or if I happen to be at home for the weekend.

Also notable of my personal life is that I have Pervasive Developmental Disorder (PDD), essentially meaning I have autism. Here are some of the symptoms, that I copied from wikipedia because I'm too lazy:
  • Difficulty using and understanding language.
  • Difficulty relating to people, objects, and events; for example, lack of eye contact, pointing behavior, and lack of facial responses.
  • Difficulty with changes in routine or familiar surroundings.
  • Repetitive body movements or behavior patterns, such as hand flapping, hair twirling, foot tapping, or more complex movements.
  • Inability to be comforted.
  • Difficulty regulating behaviors and emotions, which may result in temper tantrums, anxiety, and aggression.
  • Emotional breakdowns
Luckily my condition is pretty mild, so most of these symptoms do not affect me to a great extent. I am pretty much at a point where I am not really affected all that much by PDD, and most people I encounter do not notice it, but the signs are there if you really try to look for them. I mainly struggle socially, not having many friends in real life, and not being a major interactive force within the community. Emotional breakdowns also occur sometimes, but these are rare. I was originally disheartened when I learned that I had PDD, but I've been able to come to terms with it, and I sometimes cherish that it is a part of me since it sets me apart in a way. I am sure that quite a few people in the community here are autistic as well. If you are one of those people, feel free to talk with me about your experience. I think living with autism is quite a fascinating topic of discussion and I feel like autism really doesn't get proper attention/awareness. I feel like many people are not well educated on the key elements of autism, and that the word "autistic" is generally applied to situations that do not particularly represent literal autism, although I do not think the word is necessarily overused nor offensive. Just a hot take I guess, I'd be interested to see how some of you feel. My discord and other social media are in the OP, so feel free to add me and hit me up, I try to be approachable as possible around others in most scenarios.

Some other fast facts that are noteworthy
-I am a triplet (I have a brother and sister)
-My first video game console was the Wii, which I got as a Christmas present when I was 9. The first game I played on it was Little League World Series Baseball 2009, followed by Wii Sports.
-My first Mario Kart game was Mario Kart Wii, which was also a Christmas gift, in 2011. Since then, I have played every title in the main series excluding Super Circuit.
-Outside of Mario Kart, my favorite video game that I have played enough to give a fair judgement is Super Mario Odyssey, followed up by Super Mario 3D World, which I think deserves way more credit than it gets.
-I have not played a single Pokemon, Super Smash Bros., or Kirby game. These are just some of the franchises that I have ever touched. Too much priority on MK8 and IRL I guess.
-My sole speedrunning achievement is a 21:52 in Super Mario 64 16 Star. I achieved this in July 2017 after running the game for about two weeks. I mainly did this to compete with Cynda, who was in HD at the time, and also running the game. I've done runs of MK8 as well when racing with others, but I don't really count those.
-When I set my first Dolphin Shoals WR back in August of 2015, I had no other top 10 nor had I ever achieved one. Talk about a one-track wonder.
-I won my class spelling bee in 4th grade, winning on the word "wilderness." All I got was a dumb trophy though,which I still have.
-As children, me and my brother used to collect baseball cards. Our collection is actually quite decent, and we have an entire nightstand just to fit them all. I wonder how much some are worth....
-I am a spoiled Boston sports fan. Go Sox
-I have never traveled outside of the U.S., but I have been to more than 10 U.S. states, which I cba to name them all. Honestly, I'm just filling space at this point.

There's probably more to share, but nothing else came to mind while I was writing this. I'll be sure to add more if I think of anything that I deem noteworthy enough.

Despite me inundating this post with personal info, I am actually quite reserved, and I tend to not be so open about my personal life. Some info in this post I was reluctant to share, but I doubt many people will read this anyways, so I don't really have much to lose. I like to keep my online and real lives as separate as possible, only really talking about personal events if anything major is happening. That is all I have for now, who knows if I will add more. Hopefully you learned something about me that piques your interest.
 
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Darren

Darren

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Site Supporter
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Got bored while staying up into the ungodly hours of the morning, so I added quite a bit to the second post. Feel free to take a gander, would be well appreciated :giggle:
 
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