Transcription
The sixth-grader who secretly became the best player in the world in competitive Mario Kart DS. World records are separated by fractions of a second. Players spend years optimizing every turn, shortcut, and drift trying to climb the leaderboard.
Then in 2020, a video appeared. Just someone scrolling through their personal best times on a handheld console. Nothing out of the ordinary, but something stood out immediately. Several of the times were world records, and the video description said, "I've compiled all the records my sixth-grade son has set so far."
The community was immediately suspicious. None of the records were posted anywhere. All of them just quietly sitting on a save file. An unknown player named Taiga suddenly appearing with times this good didn't make sense, especially because the footage was just a casual home video posted by a father. People started questioning whether the runs were legitimate.
[music] In response, Taiga's father uploaded more footage. He was playing on a 3DS, hardware almost nobody in the competitive scene uses, and he was steering with the circle pad, [music] a technique virtually unheard of at that level.
Still unconvinced, the community sent Taiga's family a device to upload his save data directly for verification. And when players finally went through the data themselves, they discovered [music] even more records, times he had never mentioned to anyone.
Today, Taiga holds dozens of [music] world records and sits at the top of the Mario Kart DS leaderboard. A sixth-grader playing on hardware nobody uses with a technique never seen before [music] in a game older than he is.