This year long ExciteBots journey has been one the greatest gaming experience I have ever had. Not only did this game introduce me to the world of online forums, but to the depth a videogame can have when you play and communicate with other players that love the game as much as you do. :)

It is now December. Christmas day one year ago marks the anniversary of when I first opened this game up. I knew this game was going to be great, but never did I expect an odyssey like this one.

Currently, I'm nearing 8,500 excite wins and 850 poker wins. I have made the difficult decision that once I hit 10,000 excite wins (or 9,999 excite wins, we really don't know the fate of this milestone yet) and 1,000 poker wins, I will retire this license from online game play. I've spent countless of races on this profile winning, losing, learning, improving, and having fun. I need to end the wins at some point in time, and this milestone is as good as a time as any. Besides, if my Wii were to break someday, I can be safe knowing I won't have the profile on some weird number of wins like 10,632. :P Of course if the wins do stop at 9,999, then I would be forced to stop playing the profile anyway (what would be the point?) I have no plans on passing Barbie up in poker wins. She clearly has me beat in that category. I'm perfectly happy with just the excite wins record. :) I'm aiming to achieve these milestones on February 20th, 2011, six months since claiming the excite wins title.

So after I retire this profile, what's next? I will be taking a long deserved break from ExciteBots. I know for certain I couldn't quit this game cold turkey and I know I will never quit it completely. I will be taking the opportunity to play the other games on my shelf (what, TopStar has OTHER games? What madness is this?!) Like theJude said once, life is too short to spend on just one video game. There's Super Mario Galaxy 2, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Monster Hunter Tri, Wii Party, and much more to be played.

How will I be playing ExciteBots in the future? This passed October, as some of you had read, I lost my zero bets lost profile, TopZerO. I recently revived a new zero losses profile by the name TSRzerO. I have to thank BIG AIR for renewing my interest in that project because zAIRo, his zero losses profile, put me into the betting mood again. :) Unfortunately for him, zAIRo lost a bet for some unknown reason. :( BIG AIR hasn't had the best of luck when it came to keeping a 0 losses profile, every time it was either a freeze up with the Wii, a disconnection, or no real reason at all. He too is considering a break from this game once he hits the 6,000 excite wins mark. :( In short, TSRzerO will be my new main for when I do log on and race. My betless profile, MicroTS, will probably make an appearance or two every once in a while as well. :)

Will I continue to be around this site? Of course! I can't ditch this community as easily as I can throw a game into the garbage. :lol: I will continue to maintain the many stats and rankings on this game because, if you guys haven't figured it out yet, I love keeping track of it all. :D I want to continue seeing the community and players grow, even if I'm planning not to be on the tracks as much anymore.

There is so much more I could do with this game. I could work on improving the All Bots / All Course records. I could do an All Bots / All Courses run in offline mirror mode. I could re-attempt in taking down Aaron's speed records. I could work on an All Bots / All Courses that studies speed instead of stars. This game is a statistical paradise. :D These are all wonderful projects, but I myself can only do so much at a time.

I'm currently number one in this game. Over the course of 2011, will this change? Will I end up like JamesSk and be overpowered by somebody else? I know I have taken this game to an entirely new level than where it was at one year ago. I've seen many of my own tricks being used by many other players. Though for quite some time this phenomenon has bugged me (and still bugs me to some extent today), I have grown to appreciate the fact that the many tricks I created are being used in many races today. :oops: I've pretty much run out of ideas at this point in time. Yesterday was the rare exception however. I managed to pull a 260 base on lap one of School Fiji using a new trick. This means 600 is in the ballpark of this course (crazy I know.) It's things like this that has kept me excited in this game for so long. There's always something to learn no matter how good you are. I miss the days when I broke records daily, left and right. When I found new tricks like Easter eggs before the hunt began. Learning all your own tricks, teaching yourself, and mastering the methods of farming those stars on your own is what has made this game fun for me. To learn everything and become good solely from copying somebody else is no fun at all. Take pride in the scores you achieve, own them.

I still have another two months before the "end" of this journey takes place. Before that time comes however, I want to get together one final tournament on my TopStar profile: ExciteBowl X (perfect number too, isn't it?) I missed out on ExciteBowl VII, the tournament that was supposed to be the "MegaBowl". I'm hoping BIG AIR, CodyRs, SNOOOOG, BTC, and FLASH could all be a part of tournament, but as we have learned from the past, setting up a time and date where everyone is comfortable is a challenge within itself. :? This would be the tournament that would really show how I hold up in a full room with five of my toughest competitors. :)

I want to thank everyone in the ExciteBots community for taking the time to comment and read this eleven-part story. It took over 10,000 words to type this tale and I can tell you for certain, this was only the summary. ;) Every race I've been a part of, has had it's own story to tell. I want to also thank the ExciteBots community for making my time here such a memorable one. :) Cheers to you all and to all a happy new year! :):D:) The End.