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The Integrated Oven And Grill: A Comprehensive Guide
Michael Fried plays all 5 Mario Karts, and is an active poster on the Mario Kart forum poster, where he currently goes by the name "Darth Friedious." He is also an MKDS staff member, and a well known member of the kart community. He has worked on various kart-related projects, including creating standards for MKDS, and creating and updating wrvids.com, the one and only central, organized source of videos for every Mario Kart game (as well as some other games).
Even though he is naturally very competitive, Michael is never selfish about sharing strategies, as he considers it important to improve the overall strength of times in the game, not just his own. He often explains strategies to people through AIM (mjf345) or MSN (mjf345_at_hotmail_dot_com), and sometimes posts detailed strategies on the forum for no reason other than because he feels like it. In all 5 Karts he's played, he's had a very good history of providing plenty of video proof.
Michael is among the best in MK64 and MKDS, and not quite as good but still pretty good in SMK, MKDD, and MKSC, and has thereby earned the title of best all-round karter. He lost his title for a short time when MKSC was added to the rankings, and was passed by Sami Cetin, but then reclaimed his title when he started playing MKSC (August 2006) to get some extra points. He is doing well so far in MKSC, with a rank of 6th and several world records.
After Michael started playing MKSC, he slowed down in MKDS and eventually quit. Recently the only MKDS he has been competing in is Non-MT, in which he currently holds more than 50 world records. Michael is a former world champion in MKDS, and held the title continuously for the first 99 days after the game's release, a feat never before accomplished in any Kart. At one time he even held all 64 world records at once. He finally lost his title to Miguel Rodriguez for awhile, and then eventually reclaimed the title for 2 weeks in June before losing it for good to Thomas Bolton. Since then he has fallen all the way to 13th.
In August 2006, Michael created and updated an MKDS Wifi ranking site, where people could play rated Wifi games and receive a rating, based on a rating system similar to the one used in chess. It was fun for a short time, but didn't hold peoples' interest for long, so the idea was given up a few weeks later. Surprisingly, Michael didn't do very well in these rankings, mostly due to his n00bish item skills; he was much worse at Wifi than he was at time trials. Michael is good at mission mode, however, and is currently ranked 1st in missions on Cyberscore.
The Kart Michael has spent the most time on and considers himself most skilled at is Mario Kart 64, even though he was never world champion in this game, as he was in MKDS. He holds one world record: Yoshi Valley fastlap (video). He is also the first person to land the Rainbow Road spiral shortcut on all 3 laps, and he discovered a new strategy that saves .1 in Frappe Snowland. He is currently ranked 7th in non-shortcut (4th NTSC), 11th in shortcut, and 3rd in universal.
Michael played Super Mario Kart for 2-3 months in late 2005. He didn't get near the top before retiring, but he did manage to reach God (by the old standards). He holds one world record: KB1 trick flap (video). He is currently ranked 34th (NTSC).
Michael played Mario Kart: Double Dash!! in the game's early history and peaked at 5th place, at one time holding the Mushroom City world records. He is currently ranked 107th (60th 60hz). Michael is not happy about being kicked out of the top 100, and will most likely return to MKDD after he's done with MKSC.
Michael is well known on the Mario Kart Forum where he is the 2nd most active poster and posts in all the different sections of the forum.
Michael has contributed to the Mario Kart community in various ways. He is a proof moderator for the Mario Kart DS site. He created the standards for MKDS. He finds all the fastest videos for each Kart and uploads them to his organized collection of Mario Kart videos. He updates the list of MKDS WRs based on all known sites and the MKDS Non-MT rankings. He created the Halford standards for MK64. He is also an administrator of this wiki, speedrunwiki.com.
In addition to Mario Kart games, Michael also plays several other games. His favorite video game series is The Legend of Zelda series. He has competed for fast times and high scores in various games including, but not limited to The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Diddy Kong Racing, the Donkey Kong Country series, and various online Flash games.
Michael considers having fun to be a very important part of life. He takes Kart more seriously than most people and often tries to encourage people to kart more. He strongly disagrees with people who say that video games are a waste of time. One of his personal quotes is "There's no such thing as too much Mario Kart."
