5 Greatest Real-Life Rivalries In Video Game History

The Anti-1.000 Alliance [Mario Kart 64]

Mario Kart 64 is a hotbed for the speedrunner community — there are dozens of top-tier players jockeying for World Record race times for each track, and for a very long time the WRs were held by a variety of competitive players. Until the best Mario Kart 64 player in the world entered the scene.

Matthias Rustemeyer is a German speedrunner that might be the greatest Mario Kart 64 player of all time. He’s so good, he came close to attaining all 32 Mario Kart 64 World Records — the perfect 1.000 — and almost becoming the sole player to ever achieve WR times on every trick with (or without) shortcuts. Maybe it was spite or pride that drove them, but the MK64 community couldn’t just let Matthias attain every World Record. They had to combine their efforts just to stop him.

And so the Anti-1.000 Alliance was formed. Several speedrunners worked together to knock out Matthias’s World Record times — only for Matthias to quickly recapture the WR. He was just that good. Even with a coalition of players trying to beat his times, Matthias managed to earn every WR except for one. But that last WR was his downfall — other players managed to crack his (almost) perfect 31/32 WR in MK64 as time passed, and Matthias never recovered.

The funny thing is, Matthias was the nicest guy you’d ever meet. He enjoyed the challenge, and the community loved his participation. Keeping the Perfect World Record run out of Matthias’s hands wasn’t personal. It was a point of pride for the community that nobody hold every WR simultaneously. But Matthias came close.

Rivals never back down. Learn more about the biggest rivalries in gaming on the next page.