Did you catch what happened there? If you don't have time to watch the video, it is now possible to glitch through the lasers! This video, provided by Dark Otto with a PR 10 seconds off of the world record, shows us what is now possible through the findings of Bryan Bosshardt, Your Eliteness, David Clemens, and Ilari Pekkala. For more information, visit this topic for a more elaborate explanation. Note: The previous record just a few short days ago was 1:27!

There's just something about a fairly new player storming onto the scene and setting personal records that take people by surprise. It's a whole different ball game when that same player starts posting world records and (new) knowledge of the game at a fast pace. David Monteith has achieved some very solid times in the last month and has taken his "new Dave" mantra in stride as he flies up the rankings and the world record charts. Dam Agent 0:53, Runway Agent 0:22, and a sweet untied of Depot Secret Agent 0:40 have taken the elite by storm recently, most notably with the (relatively unknown and unused) control style of 2.4 - a style that takes hours to perfect and great patience before its rewards can be reaped. Not to be outdone by the "new guy", some old-timers are still around and posting some world records themselves! Karl Jobst now has Bunker 1 Agent 0:17 to his credit, as does proof-moderator Axel Zakrisson. Ryan "Goose" White came out of nowhere to post his Surface 1 00 Agent 1:49, and Jimmy Bauer became only the 4th player in the world to get Depot Agent 0:25. Some insane activity has been going on in the world of Perfect Dark as well! With his onslaught of untied world records (Escape Agent 2:11, Escape PA 3:16, Escape SA 3:15) and tied records (Air Base A 1:14), Taka has emerged as the new #1 ranked Perfect Dark player in the world, overtaking Ace by a solid 10 points. Goldeneye juggernauts Boss, Illu, and Clemens have also gotten a few records in their "other" game. Those being Investigation SA 2:07, Infiltration A 1:10, and a total sweep of Skedar Ruins (1:05 Agent, 1:21 SA, and 1:29 PA). These guys combined are probably the most furiously talented trio in either game, and can destroy any record with their collaboration of talent and knowledge. Beware, even Max Bout no longer has an untied record... To end this update, I'd like to direct you to a topic created by perennial historian Greg Woll on the Goldeneye boards. The topic's content is Greg's un-hoarding of valuable knowledge of the game in the last few months / years. Credit to Jimmy Bauer for helping with some of his findings. (Hint: The boards are blowing up with new and relevant content, check it out if you're not a frequent poster!)

10 years ago, Derek Clark launched www.the-elite.net as a universal URL all of the speedrunners from both games could call home. 10 years later it is still a very important, very welcoming, and very much alive community and website that has played host to some of the most memorable moments of our lives. In Perfect Dark, from the days of Snapdragon and Paragon, to Karl Jobst and Randy Buikema, to Your Eliteness and Big Bossman, and finally to Ace and Taka... records have been both shattered and set in stone in a game that has died far too young in comparison with its counterpart made 3 years prior. In Goldeneye, from Sterling to Steven, to Karl and Randy, to Bryan and Wouter, and finally to Rayan and David... this is the game that primarily has kept the speedrunning community alive as most of the former speedrunners move forward in life not just as gamers, but as friends. Massive kudos go out to the following people for a variety of reasons: - Derek Clark, webmaster and creator - Jon Barber, elite historian and administrator - Ryan Dwyer, rankings headmaster and creator - Scott Abbey, board administrator and creator - Greg Woll / Quentin Meunier, record historians and page creators - Wouter Jansen, pioneer in the mandatory video-proof movement and credited with taking the elite to the next level in integrity. - David Clemens, Bryan Bosshardt, Rayan Isran, Marc Rutzou, and any other active players who continue to push the limits of the games and refuse to be satisfied with the current records. So many more credits could be mentioned but would this update would be far too cluttered for such a thing. Thank you to everyone who has ever been associated with the elite for making the last 10 years a wonderful experience and here's to 10 more! May the games never die and the friendships go on forever!

With a dearly-devoted wife of nearly 4 years now, and a second baby on the way, Shawn Johnson of the Goldeneye rankings has defied every theory and law of speedrunning. Not only has Shawn blasted his way into the top 10 in points and time, but he's now moved into a stellar position of 7th place and the 3rd-highest ranking American! The move into 7th puts him atop Goldeneye Multiplayer champion and legendary speedrunner Eddie Lovins! What's impressive is that Shawn still has a few garbage times that are "easily improvable" by top 10 standards, and a campaign bid for a top 5 position just might be on his horizon... Thank you Shawn for your dedication. It's guys like you who create amazing story lines for us to comment on and share with the rest of the elite. A husband, father of 2, and full time employee is ranked behind only 6 people in the entire world. Think about that. In other news, Virginia 2012 is approaching at lightning speed and if you need to start discussing travel plans or anything else pertaining to our annual Elite-Kart meet, visit the topic here. One final note is that The Elite has finally created a page of live streaming, created by David "DKK5" Kovaz, and Hugo "Cara" Van der Wolk! This page allows any speedrunner to play while simultaneously allowing us to watch everything they do... LIVE. It can be any level-specific world record attempt, or a full segment (Agent, Secret/Special, 00A/PA) speedrun. The stream will eventually be embedded permanently into the front page, but for now the link can be found here. Information about the page and how to participate for yourself can be found here.

Not the first, but a pretty good one, appearing on Gizmodo among other blogs.

I've made a few improvements to the rankings, most noticeably to the header of the page. If you're logged in, you can hover your name in the top right to reveal a menu. You can now set your timezone and your preferred date format (mm/dd/yyyy or dd/mm/yyyy). If you notice anything broken or something displaying incorrectly please let me know.

Today marks 1 month of new rankings! To celebrate, here are some statistics about our usage.

Times

There are 54,054 times in the database. 50,481 (93.39%) are current PRs. 3,451(6.38%) are old PRs. 122 (0.26%) are deleted but still remain in the database. (percentages don't add to 100% due to rounding) 2,318 times (4.28%) have videos. 436 times (0.80%) have comments. 6,172 times (11.42%) have a date achieved. 49,683 times (91.91%) have the system field not set (ie. Unknown). 2,771 times (5.13%) are NTSC. 1,600 times (2.96%) are PAL. Axel Zakrisson has the most times with 737 (most are old PRs). Bryan Bosshardt is second with 388. Wouter Jansen is third with 351. Axel Zakrisson has the most videos with 333. Bryan Bosshardt is second with 126. Ryan Dwyer is third with 107. Bryan Bosshardt has commented on 126 of his times. Henning Blom has commented on 95. Alex Anderson has commented on 60.

Users

There are 652 users. 49 users have logged in since launch. 26 use 1.2. 7 use 1.1. 619 haven't set their control style in their profile. 351 play GoldenEye. 467 play Perfect Dark. 166 play both games.

Traffic

The rankings subdomain had 4,901 visits in the last 30 days. The rankings subdomain had 54,162 page views in the last 30 days. In comparison, the whole of the-elite.net (including rankings subdomain) had 21,054 visits and 74,074 page views. For every 3 visits the main site receives, one person visits the rankings. However, the rankings dominate in number of page views. In the month of November, using the old rankings, t-e.n had 18,752 visits and 24,854 page views. The new rankings have tripled the number of page views that t-e.n receives. The GE rankings have had 6,226 page views, which is 11.50% of our total. The PD rankings have had 3,917 page views (7.23%). The rankings homepage has had 2,741 page views (5.06%). Jimmy Bauer's GE times page was the most visited, with 624 views. Axel Zakrisson's GE times page scored 532 views. Luke Pettit's GE times page scored 384 views. 3,241 visits (66.13%) came from a referring site: - 2,116 came from the-elite.net. - 384 came from our forums. - 114 came from Facebook (through likes). 1,512 visits (30.85%) were direct traffic (bookmarked or typed URL manually). 148 visits (3.02%) came from search engines. The most searched term on Google that led people to our rankings was... "ryan honkonen". This search term was used 15 times. Second was "axel zakrisson" which was used 8 times. Third was "goldeneye world recordes" (sic) which was used 7 times. 2,045 (41.73%) of our visits used Firefox. 1,189 (24.26%) of our visits used Chrome. 959 (19.57%) of our visits used Internet Explorer. 383 (7.81%) of our visits used Safari. 205 (4.18%) of our visits used Opera. Of our IE users: 99 visits were using IE9. 834 visits were using IE8. 23 visits were using IE7. 3 visits were using IE6, which we don't support. 4,068 (83.00%) of our visits were using Windows. 281 (5.73%) of our visits were using Mac. 225 (4.59%) of our visits were using Linux*. 186 (3.80%) of our visits were using iPhone. 87 (1.78%) of our visits were using Android. * I probably contributed to the majority of the Linux share, but disabled Google Analytics for myself around Christmas time. That's all, folks!

It was a few weeks before Christmas. A little boy was on his way to the mall with his mother. The boy was excited because this was the first time he would meet Santa. He was looking forward to telling Santa what he wanted for Christmas, but he couldn't decide. "Mom, what should I ask Santa for?" The boy's mother didn't want to answer his question. After all, part of the fun of visiting Santa is seeing what your child wishes for. She replied, "Think about what you want more than anything else, but don't tell anyone except Santa." The boy stared out the car window in deep thought as his mind ran wild with ideas. Before long, the boy was waiting in line to sit on Santa's lap. He overheard the kids in front of him wishing for video games and various technology. The boy suspected his wish was going to be unlike any other wish that Santa had received. He briefly considering changing his wish, but he decided not to. He had already made up his mind.

The boy and his mother were called over to Santa. The boy sat on Santa's knee and divulged his wish. He whispered in Santa's ear, "I want new rankings for the-elite.net." Santa smiled and nodded politely. The boy continued, "I want players to be able to update their times and have the rankings updated immediately... I want the rankings to always be up to date..." The boy stared into space as his mind raced with ideas. "I want each player to have their own single profile, even if they play both games... I want to be able to look at any player and see all their times, points and ranks in one place..." The boy's requests started becoming more and more outragous, but Santa still patiently listened. "I want streaming videos that play straight from the world record table... I want an achievement system..." The boy's mother was standing nearby and was starting to feel rather embarassed about her son's ridiculous requests. "That's enough," she said, but the boy was not finished. "I want to be able to compare times between players... I want to be able to search a player's complete PR history... I want all times stored eternally with the date they were achieved and their videos." The boy's mother apologized to Santa, picked up the boy from his knee and started carrying him away. The boy struggled futily to escape his mother's grasp while calling out, "I want the in-game stage thumbnails to show on the rankings and stage pages! I want an interactive worldwide map of where all the players live! I want NTSC/PAL rankings and Rare rankings all handled by the one system!" By now the boy's mother had carried him out of view of Santa. There was no point continuing. During the trip home, the boy couldn't think of anything else. Would his wishes be granted? Would Santa deliver? Were his requests reasonable or even possible? Immediately after arriving home, the boy went straight to the computer and searched for statistics on how many Santa wishes were granted. His heart sank as he read story after story of children who had wished for one thing and gotten something completely different. It was as if the Santa they revealed their wishes to was a completely different Santa to the one who gave them their presents. The boy was almost certain his wishes were not going to be granted. He wanted to erase the day's events from his memory and pretend it didn't happen, but he couldn't. Finally, Christmas Day arrived. Beep beep! Beep beep! Like every Christmas, the boy's alarm woke him at some ungodly hour of the morning. The boy raced to his computer and logged on to the-elite.net to check the rankings. This was it, the moment he'd been waiting for. Had Santa delivered? The boy loaded the rankings and... frowned as the same old rankings appeared on his screen. Oh well. Disappointed, he stumbled out of his room to wake the rest of his family so they could open their presents. The present opening went just like any other Christmas. He'd open a present, find it's something he didn't particularly want, thank the person who gave it to him and put it aside. Repeat until all the presents have been opened. Eventually the living room was a mess of wrapping paper. All the presents had been opened. The boy hadn't received anything worth noting. He was about to leave the room when he noticed a small envelope behind the Christmas tree. It must have been missed earlier. The boy picked up the envelope and found it was addressed to him. He turned it over. On the back were the words "From Santa". Curiously, the boy opened the envelope and pulled out the contents. It was a card. The boy opened the card. The inside of the card was void of any writing except for a short phrase written in the center:

rankings.the-elite.net

HO HO HO! Merry (early) Christmas, Elite! That's right, gone is the need for your times pages! Gone are the 3 day waits for the rankings to be updated! The Elite has leapt forward into the modern age with what is quite possibly the most awesome software ever written! Here's a rundown of the new system: * Each player has their own login. You only have and need one login even if you play both games. * Once logged in, players can post new times and they will be immediately reflected throughout the site, including the rankings. * Players can set videos (eg. YouTube or Thengamer) for their times and it will be displayed along with their time - maybe even on the record table itself! * Players can write comments about their times. * Players can set whether their times are NTSC or PAL and they will be displayed on the NTSC and PAL record table if they're records. * Players who play both games will be automatically included in the Rare Ranks. * Players can post old times, set the date they were achieved and assign videos to them. * Players have their own profiles with heaps of info such as contact details and latest times. * Players can specify their location and they'll appear on our worldwide gamer map. * Each player's times page shows times, points and ranks all in one table. You can click buttons to highlight WRs or shade your times depending on how good or bad they are. * Players can compare their times with other players. You can select the other player by name or by rank. * There's an achievements/rewards system to encourage people to reach milestones. * RSS feeds are available by game and by type (PRs/WRs/untieds) so you can easily see when someone has posted a new time.

Accounts and logging in

Everyone who is on the rankings currently will already have a login for the new system. Players log in using an email address and password. Your email address is the same one you see on the old GE and PD roster pages. You'll need to use your email address to create a password. If you don't have an email address on the old rankings, can't access your email or have any other problems you can contact any of the following people and we'll sort you out: * Me (AIM: YourElitenessPD or youreliteness at gmail.com) * Ngamer (AIM: Im Ngamer or ngamer at gmail.com) * Derek Clark (derekclark at gmail.com) * Thiradell (AIM: Thiradell or taupefish at yahoo.com) Your passwords are stored encrypted using a method which cannot be reversed. No one can tell you what your password is, not even me, but the above people can reset it if needed. Please note that under no circumstances should you should ever create a second account. This is never needed and it would be unfair to the other players.

Document your times

The system is capable of recording old PRs. It it will automatically determine which PRs are current and which are old. Only current PRs will be included in the main rankings, whereas old PRs will only be shown on the Past Records page and player PR history. We would appreciate it if you could go back through your past PRs and fill in any missing info if you know it. Specifically: * Add any old WRs or notable PRs which aren't in the system already. * Set videos for your times, especially your current PRs. If your video isn't online, upload it! * Set the date you achieved your times if known. These can be gotten from the WR and PR topics on the forums. All the date information from Silver Angel's WR databases has been imported already. * Set whether each time was achieved on NTSC or PAL. Note that if you contact me I can batch update all your times to one system. If you're a dual-system player (ie. both NTSC and PAL), don't forget to add your other system's time for each stage and difficulty. You might hold a PAL or NTSC record! Remember, this is more than just a rankings system. It's documentation of the Elite's history. So please add every past PR you can find, including old strats.

Optional: Become a historian

If you would really like to be awesome, you can apply to be a historian. Historians can edit the video/date/system/comments for any players' times. Historians can also add times for another player provided it wouldn't be a new PR. If you're interested in becoming a historian, talk to Ngamer or myself.

Show your appreciation

The new rankings have been created entirely by me with ideas from a few others. I started the project on my own initiative and spent countless hours most nights for the last two months working on it (and I hope it shows!). I'm not charging anyone for my efforts. If you'd like to show your appreciation you can make a donation. Have fun with your new rankings, Elite!

If you take a look at the Goldeneye World Record page and browse your way over to the untied section, you'll note one very unique and very important thing - the top 3 longest standing untieds in the history of the game are ACTIVE RECORDS! Surface 2 00 Agent 1:26 (David Clemens), Statue 00 Agent 2:18 (Bryan Bosshardt), and Jungle Secret Agent 0:53 (Rayan Isran) have risen to the very top of the durability rankings and could continue to stand for a very long time. After researching the last 10 years of Goldeneye records, this is only the 2nd time something like this has ever happened, and it is especially impressive noting the quality of players who have been active to tie or beat these times since the first record was set in January 2008. It's very fitting that each record is held by a different person and legend to the Goldeneye speedrunning annals of history. Congratulations to all 3 of you and good riddance to the rest of us for never coming close to tying these records! Another special mention goes out to Marc Rutzou, whom after given a set of guidelines and rewards for his time, accomplished Train Agent 0:58! Lets just say there was a prize on the line for achieving this time, which sweetened the deal! (It was actually a very rare controller, but Marc elected to take a cash-prize equivalent instead!)

Congratulations to Elizabeth Mimms and Ryan Hutcherson for formally announcing their engagement to be married! They started dating shortly after the 2009 Virginia meet and have been Mario Kart's flagship couple ever since. Liz should thank Nathan Stinson for reaching deep into the history of Mario Kart 64 and digging Hutch out from under that rock!