Hello guys! Today I present you someone who has driven Trackmania before you even known about it, and still does – say hello to Marius 89! You can find more infomation about the project here. Watch out, this is long..!
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1. Could you tell us something about yourself?
Hi all, my name is Marius and I was born in 1989. You just see the creativity of my nickname. Until 2004 I lived at my parents in a little town in the mid of Germany. Then I joined a boarding school and got my university-entrance diploma in 2009. After that I did my basic military service and started studying meteorology in Leipzig afterwards. Beside playing Trackmania I like doing sports. I often played football in my free time and I'm playing tennis in summer for example. The most fun I have at driving Go-Kart I'd say, but it's so damn expensive, that I do it just 2 or 3 times in a year. Anyway in all kind of sports I have a big motivation and ambition to never give up before a match ends. This can be very useful in tennis matches. Beside sports I also like to play chess or to sing and I like to watch movies.
2. Now everybody are curious and want to hear you singing for sure! But how did you find TrackMania? When it happened?
When I was young I didn't play often at PC; I only had a Formula1-game. I always liked racing games, you see. When I joined the boarding school I saw another guy playing the oldest Trackmania and I instantly liked it. When I got my own computer at boarding school I got the game from him and started playing it. This was in December 2004. Back then I've built together with my roommate hundreths of maps. Most are crap we'd say today, but for me they are still a bit legendary. At first I hunted all the medals on the Nadeo-Maps, later my friend found TMX and gave me some maps by Panis and the records to hunt. Cause of that Panis became to my idol in trackbuilding. When TMN came out, I was very active on TMX. Later BigsLimited asked me to drive a war with them and then we joined the UL2, which was my first league. Driving leagues and competing with other players online are the reasons, why TM never got boring then. The members of BL joined ScrewD later. Now most became inactive unfortunately.
3. You drive, build and compete on all environments of Trackmania. Why?
As I started with the first Trackmania and bought/downloaded all following Trackmanias and add-ons, I got used to every single environment. Later came Maniaplanet with Canyon and Valley. Most of the TMUF-community went to TM² and I was as well very curious about the new environments. Most players stopped now to drive TMUF. I didn't. I see Canyon and Valley as the 8th and 9th environment. Why should I stop playing the old ones? I am a bit sad that TMUF died from one day to the next, when the Canyon-Beta came out. There was at this time the Giant Cup 9 ongoing and an incredibly high activity again in TMUF. It seemed to become the best GC-final ever, but before semifinals Canyon came out and many good players didn't care about the GC9 anymore. Nowadays there are only a few people who still play all environments. It's of course not easy to stay very active at both with the big amount of competitions which are parallel in both Trackmanias.
4. I can believe. Do you have your favorite environment to drive in leagues and cups?
Well ye, in TMUF my favorite environments were always Coast and Stadium. Both are very keyboard-friendly (I played with keyboard until GC6-final in 2008) and both make a lot of fun. Stadium has its F1-looking car and Coast has its special handling and is pretty relaxing to drive. I also like Canyon, but sometimes it becomes a bit boring. It seems so slow compared to TMUF. When I move from Canyon to Bay, which I also like a lot, there is much more action when driving. About Valley I'll write later more.
5. And which one is the best to build for you?
Here I would put Bay to the top. You can build so diverse tracks there and also very colourful and well decorated maps. It simply offers a lot creativity in building maps. It is in addition the best environment for trial maps, because the car has such a good acceleration. But great trialmaps are also possible in other environments like Canyon, Stadium, Rally and Snow. Anyway, for leagues I like building Coast and Stadium maps still a lot, in TM² all environments are nice to build.
6. Where is NoG? (New Old Generation)
NoG is in Awsomniac now. NoG was just a name, the team itself is since the beginning of TM² together. We joined BX3 in hope to get support for travelling to big LANs, but it didn't really work unfortunately. Most of our team became inactive in 2013, but with the release of Valley this changed as expected. Now we joined Awsomniac, that are well organised and give us the chance to go at LANs like Opale Arena. But as I said: the NoG team is still together; it's just another team-tag and some additional players.
7. You drive all environments, but TM has also specialists. Who are the best players of each environment for you?
Well ok, these are just my opinions. I'll write some more drivers into the (), because you can't compare some drivers, when they weren't active at the same time. And I'm sorry that I don't write anything about Blatie, Per, ikar and so on. They drove leagues before I did. I never saw them playing, so I can't compare them with others, but I think those guys were also amazing.
Snow: Kaka (Arubiano, Lolomax, Soro, at TMX earlier: Keen, viandox)
Arubiano dominated in GC9, Kaka was inactive at this time, but overall it should be Kaka.
Desert: Lolomax & Maruk
Nothing else to say; these 2 guys dominate this environment in my opinion.
Rally: BlackCat (Oxyde, LM Devil)
BC had always the top dedis, just Oxyde could beat him and Figos came close. Before BC, there was LM Devil the best driver if I remember well.
Island: in TimeAttack: Novem, Norman, Lucario, Kenji. In Rounds: Zooz
Novem came really close to the perfection in Island in TimeAttack (Kenji as well). Speccing him made always a lot of fun. Nowadays Norman and Lucario dominate TimeAttack, but in Rounds there is just one guy who almost always dominated on this environment in the past: Zooz!
Bay: in TA: Zaitsev. In leagues and Rounds: 20-100
Zaitsev can go to perfection on Bay like nobody else. For leagues and Rounds I looked all the dedis of the 6 past Giant Cups and the results of the finals. Bay is an environment which had not the same player in the top all the time. It changes a lot. Overall I'd say all good all-rounders of TMUF can be on the top here. But I've chosen 20-100, because he was always near the top dedis, and he scored often very well on Bay.
Coast: Tona, LaPoule, Tobbe, Marius89 (earlier also Kajin, Nillstorn, Dengel)
This is dependant on the maps. Everybody of us can be first in the dedis. In previous FETs and GPCoast I was succesful, while Tona and LaPoule can be pretty good in Rounds. Tobbe is known for his freaking times in TimeAttack.
Stadium: KarjeN (frostBeule, Carl Jr, Yoyo; from TMU-drivers: Sandder, Roa, RamiroJr, Tunga, clement, Marius89, Tona)
When I started watching Trackmania videos on youtube and TM-tube, one of the first videos were Frostbeule's compilations of his records. That was new to me and I liked him a lot. Nowadays there are many different people who all can be succesful. On this high level the day form and luck decides. CarlJr is a cool guy and pretty good nowadays. Anyway I put Karjen to the top. He drives recs on Nadeomaps, TMX maps, VeryShort maps and ofcourse league maps and from what I hear he can go to the perfect time nearer than most other players. Beside that he beated frostbeule in some important competitions already. Some weeks ago there was the final France vs Sweden and Karjen played beside Tech also the Fullspeed and the Dirt map on high level. This impressed me a lot. He seems to be able to drive everything perfectly in stadium.
Canyon: klovni (onio, Norman, Ludo, Zypher, Pac, Devil and and and)
Ofc here are many others to name as well. But why klovni? Well he won the TGC1 and most of the best players played this league; he also won at ESWC. Ofcourse this was a lucky win, but if the same person wins the 2 most important Canyon cups, I must put him to the top. Beside this he was the main reason, why NoG/BX3 have won TWL0 and TWL1. Ty klovni!
Valley: We'll see! I think Pac, Laurens, Zypher, Onio, Devil and Kyb(!), who impresses me a lot count to the best players. Also Nerzull played awesome in the first days, especially on dirt and I can also perform well on this environment. Let's see at Opale and the first big ET leagues.
8. Who is the best overall driver in Trackmania United, and who is the best on both TMU & TM2 combined?
It's never easy to tell just one name, but here in TMU I'd say clearly Lolomax. He just became a bit active again and played the first round of GC11. He directly made a new record with over 1650 of max 1750 points. It's simply amazing. His best environments are of course the TMO-envis Snow, Desert and Rally. But he also drives pretty good on the TMS environments and even Stadium is not bad anymore. Each environment has of course players who can fight against him or who are even better (at least in TA), but nobody has his level over all 7 environemts. When I spectate him, I see the immense control over his car. Even when playing Time-Attack, he drives strong times, but you don't have the feeling that he has to risk a lot for this. It seems like he couldn't fail. And exactly this he shows in matches. His regu is crazy and he's just a few tenths behind his pbs in matches. Driving against him in leagues is always hard. Of course there are many other great players as well, but I have the feeling, that their performance is more dependant on the day form and they'd need a perfect day to beat Lolomax, while he is always on top positions.
TMU and TM² combined: Like I said there are not many players who still play both unfortunately. Beside me, there are just Tona, Minato and Pranksta who play everything on high level at the moment I think. If we also count the players, that were earlier on top in TMU and nowadays in TM², the NoG-players BlackCat, 20-100, Figos and klovni are also players that are strong over all 9 environments. And maybe Sandder, he achieved same points than Lolomax in GC6 finals and seems very good in Valley and was good in the Canyon Beta. But at the moment he drives keyboard, which would give overall a too big disadvantage. A cup over all environments would be interesting; I guess the day form would decide who wins between these players. ^^ In TimeAttack we shouldn't forget Riolu, who hunts successfully world records on Nadeo-maps of all 9 environments, Luffy would be close to him as well. Too bad they don't participate more in leagues.
9. What do you think the community is exactly one year later?
That's a hard question, but I think the following: In TMUF there will be only a few people less than now. I mean the people who still play this game - though TM2 exists and got a new environment - probably won't suddenly stop. Most of them will probably be active in competitions next year as well.
Canyon is dead at the moment because of Valley. But it was the same with TMUF, when Canyon came out. Anyway one year later some people played the old TMUF environments again, cause just one new game becomes boring after some time. So I think in 1 year there'll be more players who play Canyon again, and ET's competitions which combine Canyon and Valley will help a lot with this. And I think that it is very important that ET continues to combine the environments to keep the community together.
Valley I also compare with Canyon when it became one year old. There was the first Giant Cup in Canyon and the amount of players and their motivation and skill was very high. And I'm sure Valley has an even better perspective than Canyon and won't loose many players within the next year. Valley might be interesting for a longer time (see question 12).
10. Being an active mapper for leagues, you must know how to make a good league map. Can you lighten it up?
I can try, but of course everybody has its own opinion about what is a good map. When I start building a league map, I often look in the editor for a block or a transition to drive on, that you didn't see in other league maps before. Then I try to put it into the map in a smooth way to have something original. The rest of the map is often built around this part. Overall it is important for me to have no random luck parts and the track should keep a good flow all over the track. This is especially great in FET-maps. It increases the fun to play the map a lot. Anyway the most important thing is the diversity in my maps. I always try to get the car driving on as many different surfaces as possible to show everything of the environment. I dislike to play maps that are monotone and just on 1 or 2 surfaces. I often see this in Stadium (only street) or Canyon (only GP+Platform). A good mix of left/right turns and a nice decoration complete a good league map for me.
wormi: If you have read everything so far, gg! Half way through! 
11. Which league is your favorite and why?
The GiantCup I'd say, followed by the FET as these are the solo-competitions of ET in which you are responsible for your own placement in the finish. Don't get me wrong: I also like the team leagues. I started with Bigs Limited driving team leagues and the spirit in our team was phenomenal. From league to league all players improved their skill a lot, which was only possible in a team. When we joined ScrewD, we played our best league UL4, but then most of our players became inactive because of their final years in schools and the start into the real life with studying or whatever else. Anyway we missed our best lineups then all the time and had to play with the less players we still had and if you are motivated to win the league this can be annoying, because you can't win it alone in this case. You are always dependant on the performance of the rest of the team. Anyway I was never interested to join the biggest teams in this situation, just to win the league. It wouldn't feel like a real win, if others in the team win it for you. I always wanted to continue with the few Screwd-members that still played sometimes (just johnny and t!bo05 nowadays), but to be able to participate in leagues we needed more players at some day. So we fused with ((( and founded Screwnanas and played another good season then. TnT was just too strong at this time. But at least we've won an ESL cup in TMUF. Afterwards Canyon came out and most old ((( members were inactive as well or played for other teams. Then Dunno was founded as a fusion of some teams which all had too less players for an own team. We (the active rests of Air, ScrewD, (((, TWE, some UNl, and additional players) are fighting now for the win against CMC, but still we have often problems to get 3 drivers; especially in the end of the leagues. If I hadn't such a motivation to convince our players to train and play the maps, this team wouldn't survive the whole league I think. Same with BX3 in the TWL1 finals and especially in the whole TWL2. We were never more than 4 guys. Without the big invest of time into the organisation of our matches, I think this team would have had to stop in the group phase already.
And this is the main reason why I like the Giant-Cup the most. You are fighting for yourself and you get the placement you deserve in the end. And compared to team leagues much more participants are able to win which makes it much more exciting. With 16 players playing at the same time, every own round in the finals is exciting until the finish. The FET is sth in the mid. It has something of my old F1-game. Playing long races makes a lot of fun. Especially battles that last many rounds against other cars are so nice. I'll never forget my battle with Laurens last TFET, where we fighted 13 laps in a row for the first position and until the very last turn - that we entered side by side - our biggest difference was 0,2 seconds. I remember many other cool FET races as well. The good thing is that you drive as well your own race and you are responsible for your placement, but this league is also driven with teammates and this makes you again dependant on the results of your teammates. And unfortunately this costed some titles already in TMU when I had to play one half of a final alone for my team for example.
Beside ET leagues I like the Knockout, Relay-Race cups and Boardmania the most. And let's not forget the Copper and Planets Millions cups, though they also produce a lot frustration during one race. xD Trialmaster became as well to an important competition for me.
12. Valley is a hot topic at the moment. What do you think about it?
In my opinion Valley is a great environment. It has by far the most beautiful landscape and decoration. It looks pretty realistic and I like these flying birds a lot. You can build very diverse tracks with the dirt parts, the narrow street on ground and in air, the wider street, platforms and grass. The decoration blocks offer you a lot creativity and can be used in many awesome transitions. I think you can even build nice trial maps in Valley (will try it later).
The most important thing for us players is the handling though. In my opinion Nadeo did a great job here. Some people wanna have joystick-environments again like Rally or Island, but I think it's the right way to have keyboard-friendly environments, if you wanna be succesful in Esports. It offers much more drivers the chance to perform well, especially those who don't have the money to buy good pads all the time. An unfriendly environment for keyboard would loose many players quickly I guess. Before Valley came out all the players speculated how the handling would be and I find it very interesting how Nadeo manages to create always a totally new handling in their new environments. I think this isn't easy when you have so many other environments already. Ok, I already heard that some people see this different and compare Valley a lot with Canyon, but in my opinion they have not much in common; let me explain: Valley consists of 2 things that have a totally different handling (dirt and street). I'd say such a big difference in handling was in no other envi before. It allows different players within the envi to be in top which I like a lot. And in mixed tracks like ET searches for VTC1 this can be very interesting. The handling on street you can't compare with Canyon. Valley is in general a noslide environment. Even in these narrow turns which you must slide, you try to end the slide as early as possible because it makes you a lot slower. But you also can't compare Valley with the 6 old TMO+TMS environments. When you had too much speed for a turn in these environments, the car started to slide and you lost speed. This does not happen in Valley, which makes it to something completely new. Valley is about the perfect combination of releasing and steering, but compared to the TMU environments it is easier, because you don't have the risk to fail hard by getting a slide suddenly and you steer mostly full to the left/right, while you have to steer more smooth in TMUF. This makes races between players more close. And the dirt handling is of course something absolutely new in Trackmania. The car is very difficult to control. You have the feeling to drive a Rallye game. With just the street passages Valley would become boring quickly, but the dirt makes it interesting for a long time. And why? Because it's hard to find the perfection. Even after one year we can improve ourselves on dirt I bet, at least in regu. It won't get boring that fast. I guess the amount of dirt parts/tracks will raise by the time, especially when people find smooth transitions into and out of the dirt, or when Nadeo gives us better blocks than we have now.
Only thing I don't like is (like in Canyon) the handling in loopings and wallrides, but for league tracks this is not so interesting. But a very very good thing are the little objects in the editor that you can place where you want. I'd like to have them in other environments as well. They are perfect to block cuts and I'm sure by time people will creat great turns and transitions with them, especially with the ramp. They offer many possibilities!
13. What kind of environment would you like Nadeo to add into TM2 later?
Well, at first is the question what we can expect by Nadeo. Right after you sent the questions to me, there came this thread at et-generation.com about the same topic and some of them are saying exactly the same things that I think.
It's obvious somehow that the TM2 environments are sequels to the TM1 ones, especially TMO yet. Canyon is equal to Desert and Valley equal to Rally regarding the landscape. Maybe a Snow sequel will be the next, or sequels to TMS-environments, like a real big-city-environment as sequel to Bay. Of course I'd like to see something new, but to be honest Nadeo used almost every possible climatological zone. Snow is for the polar regions and big mountains, then comes the temperate zone with its green grass landscapes like in Rally/Valley. The deserts at 30°south/north are also used in Desert/Canyon. The TMS environments are about the transition from land to water. We have cliffs, the beach and docks, while Coast is a mediterranean environment with GP-parts and Bay concentrates on cities. So what is missing and could be something new? Well ye, someone also said it in the thread: Jungles are missing in the zone near to the equator. Otherwise we might have to leave our planet. How about an environment on the moon or mars with such a little Mars-car like in the map by Crusard "Eye in the Sky"? But both make me not very happy. I mean what blocks you wanna have on mars to race on or who races with cars in the jungle in real? What kind of streets you have in the jungle? Will that be all on dirt then and become too similar to Valley's dirt?
Well, I'd like to see the old TMU environments with good graphic in TM2. But with more blocks; like it happened in TM2 Stadium. Or maybe Nadeo can continue their sequels, but use the old TMU cars in these new environments. But if they bring a completely new enviroment, then I dream about following things: I wanna have these objects like in Valley, I wanna have moving blocks (windmills and Valley's birds are all imaginary. I think moving blocks that are not imaginary could be amazing; Many possibilities in league maps, trial and Hide&Seek), Some years ago I thought about beaming spots/CPs in which you drive and you come out of another block with the same speed and so on, and I wanna have weather which causes different handlings in one envi (like rain or snow and the possibility to program easily with MT or sth like this, that it changes after some time from rain to sun or vice versa or whatever). About my dream environment: Before I knew Trackmania, I played this Formula1-game and one day I thought I wanted to build my own F1-track with cool turn combinations and so on, but this didn't work in that game; so maybe this could be the dream environment in TM². A GP environment with which you can build perfectly F1 looking tracks, with pits, tribunes, with the possibility to place curbs where you want and gravel beds as large as you want in different environments in general (desert like Bahrain, grass like European tracks, ...). The car (F1-looking car of course) handling near to how it was in the F1-game, maybe just a bit more keyboard-friendly and when you are too fast in a turn the car starts to spin. Another F1-project would be very easy and I'd love to play FET there.
Hm, ok that was just the dream, but in real I'm sure we have to wait over one, probably 2 years until a new TM environment comes out. :/
14. Your top 3 websites, games, songs & movies.
Websites:
- TMX / MX
- bundesliga.de
- formel1.de
Games:
- Trackmania
- FIFA06
- Ultrastar
There is no other real PC game at the moment ( many years ago: F1 Racing Championship, Command&Conquer Stunde Null, V-Rally3)
Songs:
- Enjoy the Silence - Depeche Mode
- In the End - Linkin Park
- Nothing Else Matters - Metallica
I often hear radio and like also the 80's. But impossible to choose 3 of thousands of songs; deal with them.
Movies:
- Avatar
- The Day after Tomorrow, Independance Day, 2012 (all by Roland Emmerich)
- Die Tribute von Panem
Beside many other movies I could write here (mostly action movies, with some fantasy I also like)
15. What are your next goals as a league driver?
Now the coming weekend my first LAN outside of Germany, Opale Arena 5. And well, I drive almost every competition and the goal is of course always the first position. But the most greatest success for me would be a win in the Giant Cups. Beside that winning a TMU league or the first Valley leagues would be cool.
16. Good luck. Now, describe yourself with four words.
friendly, athletic, Nutella, eater
17. If you have something else to say, please write it here.
Thx for the interview wormi! I'm sorry that my answers turned out so long (This always happens xD), but I have much to tell. Next year I am playing Trackmania since 10 years, and without any big breaks (just 3 months when I began at military), so I have experienced a lot in Trackmania. Thanks to all the people that came along with me at some time in Trackmania, especially all my team mates from the very beginning at BigsLimited until nowadays at Dunno and Awsomniac. Thanks to Nadeo that they still work on this game and publish new environments. And thanks to the whole community that keeps this game still alive. I hope this won't change and that we have a nice future together. And last, but not least: Thanks to all people who read the whole interview!
Thank you Marius! Really big respect for those who will read all of it indeed 
Cya next time! 
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