Multi-Class Endurance Championship

I've made a detailed post over at the MC2 Forum.

I will showcase that MC2 isn't all about Veloci's. Please take a look at the event and the event details.

I don't have any date or anything set yet. Depending on the turnup.

Check it out.

- Unique.

http://officialmc2.boards.net/thread/144/multi-class-endurance-racing

Midnight Club 2's Soundtrack Under The Loop

Hey guys, I decided to make a new post! :)

I got my cup of noodles and i'm ready to type, haha.

Let's get the story going.. I thought of a new post regarding MC2 again.

Let me ask you this again.. What really is the actual reason why you continued to play the game?

Now you might be wondering that can be alot of things, like for example:

The gameplay, or either the difficulty or perhaps the graphics?

Well for me it was something different entirely... It was the music.

When we look at the MC2 intro it was very clear to me when I first launched the game that it was something special..

Yes people this will be an active post. You'll have to watch every video I put here, hehe. :)

Regardless, when's truly the last time you've actually seen an intro of a game that's so well polished. The only thing that saddens me is that this was basically the beta version gameplay of the game of early 2002. As you can see which some cars in the game actually currently still have are the paintjobs. For example if we look at the end result that the Saikou and the Torque JX and the Citi Turbo actually still have paintjobs. It's kind of a shame that they didn't add these capabilities of customization. But the music in this intro was so powerful for me at the time. It's crazy! I'm possibly still one of the only guys who actually still has the orginal .bik file for the game on the PC. Hell in the past I even found out how to convert a video to .bik and I made my own MC2 intro. I think this is still possible.. Hmm I might do that one day. Noted. xD

Anyway moving on. When I used to ask people in the past what continued to make them play the game the answer was simple. People played the game more because of the music. Every song in the game has something special going on.

The fact was there was an orginal theme going on for the game the first time you actually do a race in the game versus Moses. I can already hear soundchips of Moses talking like i'm a little shrimp again when listening to this song again. It really feels great and you had an idea of what you were getting into the first time you drive in the game. But the most unique thing about the game is that the game actually has 2 main theme's.

Blu Warta's Midnight Club II Theme.

Which is also really great because as I got older and studied the lyrics alot more you can actually hear him talking about in-game features like for example talking about CTF with the lyric: "For the last chequered flag drop, and it wont stop" And in the 2nd verse he talks about going to New York, London, Tokyo. All references to the first Midnight Club and the 2nd together. I guess Rockstar thought both songs were amazing so they decided to actually have two MC2 themes in the game.. How incredibly rare was that?

The most amazing thing is how the songs weren't plucked out as random or what was the rage at the time. It was carefully designed and picked for every stage in the game. Like in L.A, it was primarily Rap and House influenced music.

And in Paris it was mainly Techno and Deep house and in Tokyo it was mainly Hard Trance and Acid Trance with some Ambient on the side.

Overall of all the 38 songs in the game the game had so much to offer. The way the sound cut into the race or how the songs we're placed made them all so dynamic. And of course the crazier the songs you heard the harder the opponent. In my honest opinion it made the game feel so much more alive. The constant taunting of the opponents would made you want to smash your keyboard or throw away your controller but once you've beaten them and finally listened to their song and driving their car it would feel like a life accomplishment. It's kinda funny because in all the Midnight Clubs the difficulty really stayed the same. It's not easy to win and it does grant the ones with the knowledge of the physics of every MC game.

But upon discovery I actually did what other people probably have never tried.. I tried to extract out the streams.dat instead of the assets_p.dat

I scrolled over the folders and found out something interesting.. Did you know that the Thomas Bangalter songs is actually the real life name of Daft Punk? Yes, I shit you not. Daft Punk was actually featured in the game.

Yes this song you always heard on your removed streams_pc.dat file is Daft Punk.

And when we actually listen to the song and compare it to other songs of Daft Punk you can totally see the similarities. It's funny because I suggest anyone right now to just extract the files from your streams_pc.dat. You can find out the soundclips and even unused song files.. For example multiple drivers in the game had actually sound clips of them driving a bike.. So for example Zen possibly could be someone driving the Saikou XS for example instead of just the Nousagi.

It's all very interesting, but when I actually was like 'hmmm.. I want to know more about this' So, what I did was finish up browsing through the folders but go on discogs.com instead. Now looking up some names like for example: Bipath.

I found out the the author of this pseunonym is actually Satoshi Tomiie which is actually a famous underground House DJ from the 1980s at the time and he made this song specificly for the game. Alot of more of these underground people were featured in the game under pseunonym's. So I got more interested and started to find out even more. So, then I went to look for more artists that I never seen before like Antenna, which is a duo from America which they actually misspelled in the game. 

As Round about Midnight which should be written 'Midnite'. (Because that's how the song is released as) These small details as changing the name to Midnight to comply with the game's ''Midnight'' Club. Like they actually did with the title of the game in honor of the orginal 'Mid Nite Club'. These are all these small details that they put in the game. It's truly fantastic who worked at the sound engineering or atleast the producing of the game's sound management at the time. I could go on with even one more. Let's actually go to my favorite song from the game of all time: Jack Henderson - Syntrax.

Hold on, I just finished my cup of noodles.. It's really good with shrimp. I thought it was a nice touch starting the post with Moses and eating this :D

So here it is. In my opinion the best song in the game. The whole intro the hard bass with the epic breakdown to the drop of the song. The snares in the middle of the song with the slow kicking beat. Yes. It's perfect. And then you have the drop at 3:00 mins and then you see the tokyo lights driving fast in your car. Yeah I honestly think it's one of the best songs in the game and probably this is the song that got me into Hard Trance in the first place. But let's actually stop the BS and make sure you have your information. 

So what I did was actually look up his name because I never actually seen the name 'Jack Henderson' after this game itself. Well I went on wikipedia first and found out it's not a real person. It's some kind of saxophonist or whatever. So I was like 'What the fuck is this?' But then when I went on discogs.com I actually had the same thing. This wasn't a problem because what I did was misspell the name to ''hAnderson''. That actually worked and it gave me 2 songs. Syntrax was there. What strikes me the most of all is that all songs in MC2 are considered rare. All of them. Every artist is under a pseunonym and/or has a misspelled name to make it harder. They are either incredibly hard to find or incredibly unknown. So you basically had the best of the best because it was all underground music.

But to get back to the subject of Jack Henderson, it's basically a pseunonym of 2 guys: Klaus Hänsel, Martin Kaiser. Now at first you're probably thinking who the fuck are they? Well I would say you're right but also not right. because Klaus Hansel is actually the name of a guy you might know as Eric Del Mar. And if that still doesn't ring a bell. Martin's name would be Ray Clarke. If those names dont ring a bell, i'll help you.. You know the Brain 26, 54, 2872, 213798123798? They are all from the same label, and the same guys. How mindblowing is that? So alot of the names that are the Hard Trance or Acid Trance you know are all related. It's really crazy how everyone had a different name while all being part of the same label in Tokyo. So meaning that almost 90% of all the songs of Tokyo are all from the same music label. 

Is your mind blown yet? Mine was.

To finish up the post let me ask you this? What was your reason to continue to play the game? And if it was the music? What's your favorite song from the game?

- Unique.


Let's finish the post with the song that everyone feared/hated/loved. Enjoy.

It tasted good! :)

L.A. Race Event

As simple as the title says i'll be hosting another race event.

This time concentrated on Sprint/Jump/Time Trial customs.

Just a quick notification.

You guys can also check the post with more information at the official mc2 forum.

http://officialmc2.boards.net/thread/135/race-event

-Unique.

Revival of the old Wangan Midnight project?

Well since most of the JTX projects in the past were actually made into reality later on by Redline. (i.e think DRIFTSHOW 2010 & INDIGO)

But the only one that wasn't made into video since it wasn't a video project but rather a gamemode project was the Wangan Midnight project.

People that actually know the JTX blog and have been there since the start know that this was actually the very first and orginal project we've started.

Some days ago I asked what people wanted me to make a post about at the blog, but nobody answered.

So I figured I show you guys the true beginning of JTX projects in general..which was the Wangan Midnight Project.

Take a look and imagine how it felt like back then and right now.. This must be alot more intense now since it's played on 4K rather than 640x480 like in the past for me :)

My request is that maybe you guys would like to join me?!

- Unique.

Tokyo Race Event

Hey guys, I'm planning on making a new race event.

I hand selected a few races from a profile called Shortayyy on the PS2.

Which is from the 2009-2010 era of customs.

I think some of you might appreciate this one for something different rather than CTF. Check it out and please join. Let me link you the link:

http://officialmc2.boards.net/thread/127/tokyo-race-event

Please, join. ;p

- Unique.

Download the customs from the event:

https://mega.nz/#!HBlw3aLQ!zskOrT2MBy0vLdLUUDh2rnJw9mf-oL_ZtF6k_Z6mbog

A history lesson

So hey, take a seat. Let's talk about ''Nostalgia''.

First of all, how you doin'? Good? Well that's great. I'm fine too I guess you could say I feel nostalgic right now.
Now that begs the question what defines nostalgia.. Well when we take a look at the actual word and the meaning of the word: "Nostalgia'' is a sentimentality for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations". I guess I had a similar reminiscent of this. During my time in Midnight Club 2. Yes let's talk about Midnight Club again since the blog is and was based on MC2 of course!

Now where i'm trying to go with this is that everyone has a moment of nostalgia when playing an older game you used to play, come back to, or something else.
Allow me to explain! Of course if you've read my auto-biography. You are well aware of it that I just kept coming back to the game in a form of nostalgia.

Some weeks ago I was talking to Lars also known as Togica about the past. Well of course this isnt a major thing but what he kept going on about is about the racing in the past that I did. Like he knows that the JTX guys were basically telling him to start all over again by learning how to RACE rather than CTF only. So we made him do multiple races and he has made videos about them in the past. I can't really show them since he deleted most of his oldest videos. (I gotta say I dont really know why people would want to delete their oldest video's because those are basically the definition of Nostalgia.) However as you know JTX was into racing aaand CTF. It's not a thing we hidden or expose. It's just we tried out all the things there were in the game. 

Either way, I actually made videos about racing in the past aswell. Something that not many people actually knew. Now going back to the conversation of making videos + racing and Togica. He was mentioning to me as I told him later before I basically stopped making videos about them that people didn't believe that I was TEK Exordium. Well if you want to know, yes that's me. But I made the videos to proof something. Looking back at all the videos that were uploaded before the 2010 period. Everything and every single thing out there was about CTF. That just bored the hell out of me trying to search some cool videos about MC2.

Looking back at some of the videos like the very first CTF video ever uploaded to YouTube; 

Now everyone who ever played Midnight Club, all have seen this particular video of Tookumi. That was what kind of started the trend of uploading what you could show and see in Midnight Club. Now of course everyone wanted to proof grounds by doing this. The first one who actually started doing this quickly after were of course the videos of Dreemax. Now multiple people made videos about this game in the past but never uploaded them to YouTube. So this was a first. But the trend started by everyone suddenly wanting to upload to YouTube. Which was a good thing cause I remember 2007 very well.. Youtube was booming and there were even dedicated ''Gaming'' director filters for people who wanted to show their gameplay.


Now I got bored of this for 3 years when every player would only upload CTF games rather than show what I've been seeing all those times when I played the game... Which was of course the racing part. 

Now of course Tookumi even took care of this since everyone knew that he was a racer by heart. So he uploaded multiple videos like this in the past aswell which was cool to see. They even made more replica videos of this style in the past, like:

And something I didn't realize until I actually looked at this way, my own video when I basically got my old computer brand new:

Well the reason why I like these videos alot is because alot of people don't seem to realize that THIS is what the game is about. Having fun racing with your buddies seeing other perspectives and showcasing how someone drive. Not how to rush the fastest way into a dot. Now to not piss off people it is essentially racing with tactics, but it doesn't showcase how consistent of a driver you are.
Looking back at some of the CTF ''Racers'' you could say.. I can still say that probably Flash is the most consistent driver in the game, ever. I have no regrets of saying that. Take a look.

Flash was a racer and a hell of a good CTF player aswell. Many of this style of training became amazing drivers. Including Redline who also was pushed into learning how to race first, ctf later by well..me.

However I got to idea of making my own videos after looking at a particular video from an actual CTF guy. Called.. Vrede!

This used to be uploaded on the old MC2Oldtimes channel which was taken down.. I'm guessing 600 videos of copyright songs won't get you anywhere.. xD

Anyway he showed me a different side of CTF. The fun side!

When we look at the video we can see the dude isn't fast. Hes using a gamepad, the dude is just driving and chilling around yet he owns them all. Hes faking them, and added in funny annotations, people even cheering him on. He kind of inspired me with my own videos as Exordium to show them the fun side of racing rather than CTF. Have a look:

I started adding in funny annotations on what I thought at the moment of recording. Because racing in the game wasn't about being number 1, just mainly being about having fun. Fair enough this video wasn't popular. But I didn't give up. I wanted to show people the fun and cool side of this side of MC2.
When we look at the very first two videos I've uploaded on that channel was to showcase how racing actually used to be back in 2007. Because I actually started to make videos in this format to show how it used to be. You can search those videos up if you want to. I'm not going to put up every video because I don't wanna bore you guys, heh. 


Anyway as I said I wasn't going to give up on this idea of showing the funny and cool side of racing so I've made a second ''Random Shit'' video: 

Now not many people ''like'd it'' or commented it. But I did know they were being watched because to my surprise people actually started uploading their own ''random shit'' video's. Which to me was amazing because nobody seemed to want to see some guy with 30 fps at 640x480 showing some races. A good example was actually from Nace: 

This video was removed and made public again in 2012 but it was uploaded in 2010, as I remember. It was a random game showcasing the funny parts and random stuff that could happen. Great! Those were the kind of videos I kind of wanted to see! Notice how he also added in annotations and comments. Either way when I finished making Random Shit 3, which was the final version I tried to not only show the funny side of racing but also the serious side of racing as you could say. 

Until this day this is still my absolute favorite video i've made in the past.

Anyway to round up the post. Let's give you some Q&A's.

Why the Red veloci instead of White?

- Simple.. Red before high school was actually my favorite color and I actually always drove red on the PS2 all the time. I soon adapted to that when I went to PC. So this is a piece of nostalgia. Of course then I later found out that the White veloci is 500x better so thats why when I was under the ''Exordium'' name I just drove that because I felt nostalgic.

What was your intention on Exordium?

- To show people what the racing past of 2004-2007 used to be like.

So you're trying to say you were an ''Undercover''?

- Actually, nah. I never actually hidden it. My channel shows I was Dutch. People knew my actual age but never asked for my actual name. Which is why it's nowhere mentioned.

I think I made my goal in 2010 and briefly in 2011 to show people the fun side of racing. And I knew I had reached my ultimate goal when on the last video Dreemax actually commented this; 

''Bring back old memory from old good races in 2005 :) Good vid!?''

Also if you want to know in the time who the ones were who actually knew it was me (Unique). 

2 people - Vryheid and Tatyana.

 Later I told some other people but not many cared about Exordium so I didn't feel like telling everybody.

Thanks for reading and I hope people will now believe that I was actually the author of the TEKExordium channel.

- Unique.

Maze Bank Ascent TA

Heya guys,

I decided to make some more time attack videos. With the addition of new stunt races it seems the older ones get forgotten so I wanted to attack this particular track again since this race made have this crazy winningstreak in the first place when I first started the game. Alright check it out.

It's crazy good render settings.. Enjoy in 4K 60 fps with no bufferloss and frameloss at all. Dope!
Love this card already. :)

- Unique 

JTX Is On Blogspot For 7 Years!

This could be a surprise to some but a small post here. 

The JTX blog surpassed 35,000 views today at 9-2-2017 at 8:32 pm!

That's madness. Thanks everybody!
I thought I'd mention it because when I look at the analytics I can see that people still check the blog!

- Unique.

A personal note to myself

Hey guys, what's up?

You guys doing good? Well that's good because the past 2 weeks I wasn't that great.

You're guessing why? Well I decided to make some changes regarding my computer.
So let's get started. Anyway I wanted to basically futureproof my computer to it's fullest so I don't have to ever have to change anything to it anymore. So what I tried to do was look on the internet and buy my dream graphics card. So I looked around on the internet and typed in; ''What's the best GTX1080''. I clicked basically on the first page on google and I found a site called Slant.co or something like that. So when I checked the page I saw that there were basically 15 GTX1080's. I didn't want to go overkill and get the best damn card there is so I decided to go for the top 5. I decided to take the one on the third position considering looking at the pro's and con's.

So eventually I bought the #3. Which is the MSI GeForce GTX1080 Gaming X 8G.
It's kinda funny because when I looked over the card that I originally planned to buy is actually the ASUS ROG Strix GeForce GTX 1080 it's actually the worst of them all!! I couldn't believe that. So I went for the MSI variant. So knowing how large the card would be in my old computer, it would actually fit. However since my PC is basically a special edition and also a special edition motherboard it would be very risky to buy it. However then there would be no space for the new power supply which I also later bought brand new. So I bought an Corsair RM650x with the card. Well that was actually perfect because on doing my research! These would go very snuggly together.

There is only one really big problem... I never actually touched anything inside of my computer before. The only thing I actually did know was how to add a new RAM sticks to your computer.. Which is..yeah..let's not comment this. So with my courage I had a huge card and a huge power supply. And what to do next with absolutely 0% experience. Well I was able to figure out how to open my case properly and look at the components. So I compared the size compared to my old GTX960 and it can fit on that spot but then there would be no space for the new power supply...so yeah..great. So at this point I had to wait atleast a week in order to buy new stuff because I don't want to spend all my money in one-go of course. That wouldn't make sense! Anyway I figured I need a new case for this. So I looked at some of the cases on a site called Coolblue.nl which is a really really good site I might add. So you have many different options like a Cube housing, HTPC, Miditower... at the end I was like what the fuck is the difference?!?! So I was like.. 'card is big..So I go with the largest shit you can find. So in the end I chose a Full Tower. So I bought an Corsair Obsidian 750D. The most craziest thing is that this tower had space for like 9 harddrives.. Holy shit. So in the end I bought it and got it the very next day. Well of course not knowing if the old motherboard which was specially made for this computer case or whatever. I decided to go ahead and buy a motherboard with it aswell. So I bought an ASROCK Fatal1ty Z97 Killer. It sounded raw so why not. But boy.. the trouble I had with this motherboard..

Let's talk about that.. geez. I had some serious trouble with this motherboard. I basically got everything set. Everything was still in the boxes, and ready to be installed. So the very next day that I got all the stuff I basically started to look at my old computer about where goes what and how stuff goes somewhere.. I really had to guess what there was in the end. So in the end I checked the manual of the case and I got everything right after a while I guess.. I removed the processor and so on. Which miracly took me about 20 mins.. (I suck. :D) and then I just started going on.. however then came the cableing.. Man.. I got stuck at this for like 2.5 hours.. I mean fuck off jesus.. You need to require 500 kilos of balls trying to figure that out by yourself with no help at all. It wasn't even funny and at the end I just ragequitted and left both of my cases just laying around with computer parts all over my bedroom.. It wasn't even funny. So I just decided to watch TV and just enjoy my time.. Only at some point it actually became dark outside and I was like .. Oh yeah I can actually go and play games to pass the time..but NO.. everywhere around my bedroom there were computerparts laying around. So I scratched my head thinking well i'm fucked. Well thank god I had my phone and could check what to do but of course not every video is the same motherboard so it wouldn't even matter if you'd search up those things so I was pretty much at an dilemma right here. So I kinda of strolled back to the TV.. and someone was at my door so I pretty much opened the door and met my friend Laura. I kind of told her what i'm doing and she basically was like.. Well I got a nephew if you want I can call him for you. I agreed almost by an instant!

So yeah eventually the dude came the very next day at Friday at around 20:00. So they both arrived the guy looked at my GFX card and was like.. giving me that 'YOU SERIOUS FACE'.. I decided not to comment at this and keep a straight face.. while I was like muhahaha. Anyway he checked at my old computer and inmediately started to work on it. So let's skip this a bit and in the end he got everything working but the drivers on this motherboard are just really retarded. If you basically do not have internet you can't install the drivers. When you basically first launch this motherboard it will have no internet by default.. So how are you supposed to install the drivers for it?!?! Now luckily there were options to install drivers via an USB port. But everytime it installed the LAN Driver it would just freeze up and stop working.. That shit pissed me off because I had to wait for this like 1.5 hour only finding out it wouldn't work. So the dude basically has preliminary exams so he basically studied the rest of the weekend. So I didnt have internet / pc or any kind of anything like that.. Except my phone.. Well I'll survive. Watched some shows and blabla. 


Eitherway the weekend is over and he comes back with Laura. And he's holding a CD/DVD Drive this time because if the CD drive is atleast installed the drivers I would already be very happy. Eventually we placed it in. But the computer now didn't recognize the CD Drive.. Goddamn.. this motherboard was really starting to piss me off. So I told the guy to leave again and atleast thank him for helping me out because when I look back there would be absolutely no fucking way in hell that I'd be able to do this by myself.

Anyway for some weird reason the very next day it actually did work.. So I actually installed the drivers and thank god finally I had internet. I basically done some tests with the card to see if it works perfectly and it did.. well of course to finalize testing and shit you should play some games. I was like oh man this is gonna be awesome. But nope the router did not recognize the ethernet adapter.. ARE YOU KIDDING ME!! So atleast I had my internet back and I could browse some sites again and chill out but it was so stupid because for some reason I could get download speed but I wouldnt produce any upload speed... Man. So I just went with it and just played some games by myself.. However since you don't produce any upload speed and since we're in 2017 where every game needs an internet connection.. good luck trying to play games. lol. So for some reason the only game that actually did work was GTA V. But people in social club saw me as offline. So what I did was just record a video which I did and uploaded.. It's the GTA V | Stunt - Duel Time Attack video I put up on youtube. And then I started thinking after finishing it and uploading it that maybe I should just mess with the settings of my router.. And for some reason it works now. So thank god I can finally play games and finally enjoy this crazy computer... All I learned from this is to never buy a new case and never make a computer again. Once Nace told me that making a computer is like LEGO.. YEAH FUCK THAT.. OK LOL. Hahaha. Anyway I figured this would be a funny story to put up on the blog.

Kay, thanks for reading and have a good day.

- Unique.