The Coolstory: Shifter

[The Roots]

It all started back in 2003-2004, can't remember the exact date. I bought an illegal copy of Midnight Club 2 at my local market. It was really fun to cruise around open areas, something that was really rare back then, when every other racing game only had circuit, sprint routes. Ok, I'm not going to deny the fact that physics of the game weren't very realistic, but it was fun to race and get new cars after 2-3 wins, like a boss. Although, races were pretty hard and intense... When I finally made it to Tokyo, I got stuck at Savo like everybody else, but after a week or so I finally managed to beat him. He didn't seem to want to give up so fast as the racing went back to Paris and even LA. A few more weeks and I was done with the Career mode! Yay!


[Online]

I didn't expect multiplayer to work as the copy was illegal. To my surprise, I was able to see hosts and even join them :O. First game I ever joined was a random cruise host. People were driving around just as I did, except one guy (can't remember his name), he wasn't driving, he was flying, literally.


[MODern Edition]

I asked the guy how did he do that, he said he was using MODern Edition of MC2. Google told me to go to this modderforum. People there were making some really cool stuff, tuning car handling and even adding new objects to the map. I downloaded the mod for MC2, installed it and a wild car jumped out of the forest. It was fun for a month or so, however, being a superman and saving the world everyday got boring after a while.


[The First Encounter Of Fishtail]

One day I was just cruising around, minding my own business, until I met a guy called CQMantis, who appeared to be from my country. He was really fast, much faster than me armed with mods and trainers. I asked him to share his hax knowledge, but he said it's not hax, it's fishtail. He showed me how to do it with Lusso XT. I was amazed by the fact you could go that fast without any mods or trainers.


[CTF]

Me and Mantis shared our contacts and played together almost every evening. He told me that there were way more skilled people in CTF mode than he was himself. That was hard to believe since he was already like 100x better than me already. I got curious and wanted to see it for myself, and guess what, everytime I tried to join a CTF host I got kicked out for no actual reason, GG.


[Races]

Cruising wasn't the only thing I did online, I also did quite alot of racing whenever I felt a need of adrenaline. I once randomly joined Tookumi's host, where I met a plenty of other great racers like Nitto, Volk, etc. As soon as the race started I was left behind in no time, I wasn't even halfway while others were already finished. Their driving was perfectly precise and fast, it was an amazing experience. I also liked the fact that they were really friendly and would even talk to me.


[Tookumi The Master]

I talked to them for a while and finally found out why I was unwanted in CTF, they told me that it was because of my random name and of course my unskilled driving. Tookumi was being really kind, I asked him to teach me and help me improve. He showed me how to take sharp corners, fake moves, and other essential tricks. I remember he told me to race against Volky's bike, I thought it will be a piece of cake to beat him since I was allowed to use Veloci, but surprisingly, I was only able to beat him after 2-3 weeks of daily racing against him. Of course he was still much better in Veloci. After all that I tried to master the things I've learnt and kept on practicing. Then when Tookumi and others decided I was ready to hit the streets of CTF, they told me I would need a better nickname, and that's how SHiFTeR was born.


[CTF Not As Fun As It Looks Like]

So after getting my racer diploma I finally managed to join CTF hosts without getting booted. As the time went by I met alot of other people who were much better than me, like MTX, Pav, oPm, OS Suraj, Trazzey, and so on. It was such a disappointment to see that after all the work I've done, I still kept on losing every single match. That's pretty much the only thing stuck in my mind from my early CTF days.


[Back To Racing]

I saw that I wasn't ready for CTF yet, and decided to go back to the driving school - racing. It never felt frustrating to finish 2nd, 3rd, or even last, it was just fun and friendly after all. It always gave me a huge amount of adrenaline instead of headache in CTF. That was the time I met even more likely minded racers, like Neo, a great Knight driver, and Dreemax 666, the SLF master. Dreemax was alot like me, he had no interest in CTF at all and would just enjoy racing. He was someone to take notes from, we raced together for ages...


[Back To CTF / My First Clan]

The months of racing with Dreemax helped me improve even more, my fishtail was now much more stable, I was capable of taking sharp turns. I thought I would now give CTF another shot. And yes, I was finally able to beat some good CTF players and even received an invitation to join a CTF clan named GSP. The owner of the clan was GSP Specialized, while I went by the names of GSP Yashimoto and GSP x5. Specialized was a strange guy, he didn't fishtail at all, yet he was really good at fake turns. We won several clan maches, and lost some, of course.


[The Lithuanian Gangsta]

Getting in crowded hosts wasn't easy, so I once accidently joined a random CTF Industrial host. A guy named Gangsta was driving a Knight with trainers if I'm right. Beating him was a piece of cake after all the practicing I had in races/CTF. We started talking and he asked me where I was from. Apparently it turned out we were from the same country, so another friend was added to the list. He learnt how to fishtail, and became as good as I was in a really short amount of time.


[FuN Dreemax / New Clan]

I really enjoyed the racing with Dreemax, and since I was mostly playing CTF then, I told him to try it as well. People of course didn't like the fact he drove SLF, they built some kind of hate against him. Dreemax didn't stand still and acted back completely the same. He made a clan named FuN (Fuck u Noob). I was invited to it, and so was eXuma and Gangsta (who was now named Redline). I know I'm skipping alot in this story, but that's pretty much all I can remember, sorry for that. X(


[oP]

One of the best Tookumi's followers, a great racer and CTFer named Flash had an oldschool clan consisting mainly of racers. Me and Redline were invited to join. The clan then started expanding as we got Veter, Twisty, ART and Unique to join us. It was one of the top clans in MC2 at that moment, maybe because alot of old players left MC2, or because we really were improving back then. Me and Redline started making racing videos - building the name for the clan. It was a great experience, however...


[MC2's Dead]

Alot of players left MC2, I lost my interest in it as well. New job, almost no free time to play had led me to quit gaming.


[JTX]

Ater a year or so I decided to hop on MC2 to see if there were people still playing the game. I saw alot of new names, the players were really skilled. Surprisingly, MC2 was back to life again! Redline told me that oP deal is over and invited me to join JTX.


And here I am today, I don't play much but you can still see me hanging out with my team in races or CTF.