Alex Penev is a Mario Kart 64 and Mario Kart: Double Dash!! player, staff member, all-round gamer, and a popular personality (he narrowly won the inaugural Karter Contest 2004 over Finn Berger) of the kart community.
Alex is a former Mario Kart 64 world champion for both non-shortcut and shortcut. He pioneered some strategies (notably Kalimari Desert) and many shortcuts, and has had several long-standing WRs. Most were shortcut WRs, and they have all fallen as the years went by. His most famous WR was for CM non-shortcut flap, which despite being done with an inferior strat (lap 1 instead of lap 2), stood for more than 5 years. Some of his other long-standing records, such as LRSC 3lap and CMSC 3lap, were eventually beaten with the use of new shortcut routes.
Alex is currently ranked 18th in Non-SC and 5th in SC in MK64, but was the highest "combined" MK64 player for several years, well into his inactive period. He has never officially retired, and has even made a few returns to try out new SCs (e.g. he was the first to hit the emulator-discovered YVSC on a console).
Alex was also MKDD champion early in the competition, rising to the top of the ladder in a couple of weeks' time during January 2004. While he dominated the game for 4 months, he has been inactive since July 2004 and has since slipped all the way down to 50th.
Alex has also competed in games at N64HS. In most games he competes in, he becomes either the best or one of the best. He holds or has held WRs in Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, and Pokemon Snap, among others (he no longer keeps track).
In addition to gaming, Alex is a competent programmer, and has helped the kart community by creating the current front-end for SMK, MKSC, MKDD, and MKDS. He also designed (and presently maintains) the backend database for those sites, and drew some of their graphics. In more visible roles, Alex was a former MKDD updater for several months, but has since delegated the updating duties to active players. Nevertheless, he still updates the MKDD news and players awards each week. He is also a forum admin and respected poster.