Team Marubaku?

[Alans_Coffee]

I've heard about these guys in some of these threads and on Youtube, specifically the 'Masters of Driving' thread. I've tried googling them, but it's kinda hard to find solid info about them. I'm curious about their history and if they're still around :/

Anybody else curious?

[MrThunderwing]

I don't think they're around anymore, but their YouTube account still has all their old videos on it: https://www.youtube.com/user/MARUBAKUOFFICIAL

They were basically a group of arcade Racing enthusiasts based (I think...) in Japan. They specialised in mainly Sega Model 2 and Model 3 racers and would set lap times with near superhuman precision that are outside the scope of most normal human beings, back when the games were still contemporaneous in the arcade - meaning that they got that good playing on the REAL arcade hardware. God knows how much money they must've pumped into the machines back in the day to get to that levels of skill, particularly in the really tricky games like Scud Race.

[isamu]

There performance in Scud Race and Daytona 2 still mezmorizes me to this day.

[Alans_Coffee]

Those clips are incredible! I didn't know you could pull off such high speeds in these games. They must have poured a serious amount of time and money into this!! I wonder what the team members are up to now since the time they disbanded, and I'm curious if they still regularly play these games on their own time. I envy them though, I wish I could play these games on the actual arcade cabinets

Anyway, I think it would be cool to make a kind of retrospective video on them. I think these guys deserve a bit more fame and recognition!

Thanks for the info!

[Jiterdomer]

They were discontinued before the start of 2010s decade.

[Tracker_TD]

For what it's worth I've still seen the name pop up a bit, even recently - in fact MBK-PSX, a Rave Racer record holder, popped up in 1st on the leaderboards for SEGA AGES: OutRun when it released on Switch! Nowadays it looks like he makes Minecraft videos with his kids, which is adorable. He still hits the arcade plenty though, has RR runs up as recent as this month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhnXhKH8eDU

[isamu]

For what it's worth I've still seen the name pop up a bit, even recently - in fact MBK-PSX, a Rave Racer record holder, popped up in 1st on the leaderboards for SEGA AGES: OutRun when it released on Switch! Nowadays it looks like he makes Minecraft videos with his kids, which is adorable. He still hits the arcade plenty though, has RR runs up as recent as this month: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhnXhKH8eDU

I played with this guy online in RR7 and he is crazy fast.