Tuesday 29 March 2011

28 Day Song Challenge in One



I tried to do this on facebook and couldn't keep up to date with the lot of it. So I reckoned I'd put it all as one in my blog here, because what else am I going to do with it now that I've finished my team profiles? :P Well, apart from Van-Uber and Tigron, but those can wait...

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Day 01 - My favourite song
Metallica/The San Francisco Symphony Orchestra: Battery
In all honesty, Metallica isn't that great a band. There, I said it. But something about S&M makes it infinetely better, the sort of gothic orchestral backdrop to the music making this literally something else. Also the best music for WipEout Zone mode ever. Period.

Day 02 - My least favourite song
The Black-Eyed Peas: My Humps
What gets me about this song is that their first song, 'Where is the Love' gave the impression that the band was a meaningful and soulful group using modern day music for more than just money. And then their next track? An anthem to boobies. Fuck you, BEPs.

Day 03 - A song that makes me happy 
Peter Gabriel: Sledgehammer
Yeah, the music video is creepy, the dance even more so when Gabriel does it live, and yet I don't really care. This is one of the few songs that I can literally sing along to and never fail to have a smile on my face. 

Day 04 - A song that makes me sad
Rick Astley: Never Gonna Give You Up.
Just watch it. How can anyone not see this and feel despair?

Day 05 - A song that reminds me of someone
Delain: On the Other Side

Day 06 - A song that reminds me of somewhere
Nightwish: Meadows of Heaven
Northern Scotland, just beside Loch Ness. Go onto the water in the early morning, and you'll see what they mean by the title. Nowhere save Norway is more beautiful, and that's not quite flat enough for the 'Meadows' tag.

Day 07 - A song that reminds me of a certain event 
?????

Day 08 - A song that I know all the words to
Jonathan Coulton: Still Alive.
I'm not a nerd if I can't repeat this word for word, am I? :P

Day 09 - A song that I can dance to (sort of)
Seal: Kiss from a Rose
Not exactly fist-pumping stuff but... yeah. I can give a good go at a soft waltz.

Day 10 - A song that makes me fall asleep 
Mansanoti Akori: Awakening
If you're scratching your head and wondering what on earth, this was the suite that played on the Nurburgring in the fatally underplayed racing sim for the PS2, Enthusia. So peaceful and relaxing... just what you'd needed when you'd slid off at Karrussel for the umpteenth time. <<3

Day 11 - A song from my favourite band 
Wolfstone: 5/4 Madness
Maybe I'm biased. But aren't we all when it comes to our opinions of who we love...

Day 12 - A song from a band you hate 
Lady Gaga: Bad Romance
There's no end to the amount of bands I hate thanks to shitty music, but considering that this is the band I hate, I decided to go by principle of why I dislike the band -  or in this case the singer. This isn't someone who went into the business for the music - she went in to show off and recline in the star life... *grumbles*

Day 13 - A song that is a guilty pleasure 
Celine Dion: My Heart Will Go On
This could have probably gone under songs that make me cry and make me fall asleep, but I think that given that this is well, Celine Dion... The first stage in overcoming your problems is to admit you have a problem to begin with, isn't it? :P

Day 14 - A song that no one would expect you to love 
Duran Duran: Mediterrania
I got this when it was on free offer over Christmas. I've heard a lot of bad things about DD, but I liked 'A View To A Kill' and decided to give it a go. It's a good relaxing song, and I'll listen to it when cycling sometimes.

Day 15 - A song that describes you 
Bon Jovi: Wanted, Dead or Alive
Vaguely. Very vaguely. But I can dream, can't I? ;)

Day 16 - A song that you used to love but now hate 
Nickelback: Hero
Somehow, I doubt I'm the only person in this sort of situation when answering this question.

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Day 17 - A song that you hear often on the radio

Day 18 - A song that you wish I heard on the radio more often
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^The above questions are disregarded thanks to the fact that I never listen to the radio, and it'd be unfair to answer 18, and I'd almost certainly get 17 wrong.

Day 19 - A song from your favourite album

Day 20 - A song that I listen to when I'm angry
Lostprophets: Everyday Combat
What more is there to say? I used to try and vent frustration after difficult days at school listening to this and playing Burnout: Revenge 

Day 21 - A song that I listen to when I'm happy
Victims of Science: The Device Has Been Modified
Because there's always time for SCIENCE. And CAKE.

Day 22 - A song that you listen to when I'm sad
Jesper Kyd: Ezio's Family
Best videogame music ever.

Day 23 - A song that I want to play at my wedding
Klaus Badelt: He's A Pirate.
C'mon. Now that I've given you the idea, don't you want to try it? :P Just before you sweep her out the door? Kinda a moot point for me considering I'm never going to get married, but it's a nice thought.

Day 24 - A song that I want to play at my funeral
Rooster: Angels Calling
I still maintain that Rooster was a band that was criminally overlooked in a time when everyone was supposed to be fans of Avril Lavigne, Busted and McFly *shivers* Their 'Rooster' album is a good one throughout for the most part and this one just kind of fits...

Day 25 - A song that makes you laugh
OK Go: Here It Goes Again
I did like this one before the treadmill dance, honest. :P

Day 26 - A song that you can (or could) play on an instrument
Mary Poppins: Supercalifragilisticexpiallidocious
No, honestly. When I was a lot younger, I had a book of classic Disney songs for the piano, and given that I hadn't watched a great deal of them besides the one everyone should at least know, I chose to try and learn this one. Could only do it right hand, but I had it fairly well sorted. That was a while ago though...

Day 27 - A song that you wish you could play
The Outlaws: Green Grass and High Tides
These men must have fingers coated in steel.

Day 28 - A song that makes you feel guilty
Rise Against: Hero of War
Just listen to it, or read the lyrics. 
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Wednesday 23 March 2011

WipEout HD Fury - FEISAR Team Profile




3 – Federal European Industrial Science and Research (European Union)

Team Principal:
 Nicolo Testa

Slogan:
“Race for E-Unity”

Backstory:
Never quite the unique presence that AG-Systems always was, nor the overachievers its’ progeny Auricom and Qirex were, FEISAR has always been out of the limelight, a shame for a team that has participated in every single season of AntiGravity Racing since its’ inception and taken home four world titles in the constructor’s championship and five pilots’ championships. FEISAR has been described as both one of the great pillars that holds up AntiGravity racing and one of the relics of a bygone age, a failure amongst the teams with almost one of the worst race-to-wins ratios on the grid. But as much as some may mock FEISAR’s sometimes troubled results and inconsistent ship development, every year they turn out a solid ship that has rarely fallen too far back in the pack to become unrecognisable.

FEISAR began life as FEAR – the Foundation for European Anti-gravity Research, the famous institution that Pierre Belmondo worked at, and created his first working prototypes of his AG craft before the first ever official unveiling of one of their machines. And when he had finally seen off the last of his detractors and was being hailed as a new liberator of man, freeing them from gravity by such brutal means as propellers and jet engines, he returned to work there at its’ commercial business arm with an intent on keeping his beloved technology out of the hands of the money-driven and the greedy. (Perhaps ironically, considering the name.)

When Japanese investors offered to buy out the commercial arm of FEAR and move it to Japan, perhaps it told something about how Pierre Belmondo considered the Europeans he worked with when he agreed and shipped his entire operation to Tokyo to become AG-Systems. Japan, after all, had been one of only three countries to refuse the higher tax on petrol that had almost resulted in the end of all Belmondo’s work. Without their best and brightest, FEAR began to suffer.

Without the driving force of Belmondo, there was no direction to the team and it began to fracture and shatter. In the end, what had begun as a single scientific entity was taken over by the European Federation, the organisation that had evolved from the European Union many years before. With the announcement of the F3600 racing league, they decided that FEAR would be better suited for building racing craft as a single European squad to take the fight to AG-Systems, and later Qirex and Auricom.

The only problem was that none of the Federation could quite agree on how to go about setting up the development plants and factory locations. The central base and research facility had been near Grenoble in France, but there were a myriad of other locations that were setting up around Europe. In the end, the infamous plans of setting up various locations and revolving the squad about them was set up to the anger of most actual scientists who didn’t agree with the pandering to European Unity idea. France was still the centre of technology and theoretical physics, but the ion drives were built in Sant’Agata, Italy. The Aerodynamics plant was in Vantaa, Finland, pilot training centres were located in Stuttgart, Germany and the airbrake plant was in Dover, United Kingdom.

This led to slow development, and often arguments in team between scientists, engineers and Eurocrats alike. The only rocks in the organisation were the pilots. While the other teams sought hard and experienced pilots for their craft, FEISAR took a less serious approach to their picking of pilots and dozens of hopefuls got to practice and try out the European ships behind Sofia De La Rente and Paul Jackson. It was mostly because of this that the other three teams had such a wealth of talent to pick from after they became disenchanted with FEISAR. All the F5000 champions for each class were initially linked with FEISAR at some point – Stefan Geist of Qirex, who went on to win the Phantom series was an actual FEISAR pilot for the Vector and Venom series before he was promoted to a full race seat at the Russian squad.

FEISAR gained ground throughout these races though, and slowly the European squad eased themselves up the ranking thanks to their excellent handling capabilities. They took their first championship in the first Venom league of the F7200 with Rocco Tiepolo and there was widespread rejoicing in the many factories. That is, save for the Dover factory which had been taken over by Icaras. They won again in the second Rapier league with a name who would become more to some people – Wolfgang Van-Uber.

Wolfgang left FEISAR soon after the end of F7200 and took the Stuttgart factory for himself. With the loss of the aerodynamics plant in Vantaa to Xios, FEISAR knew they were losing ground and not even the reclamation of the Dover plant was enough to keep the team’s spirit up at first.

What none of them had reckoned on though was that the F9000 was a big shake-up. A very big shake-up. The twisting tracks and brand new methods of racing meant that the brighter young pilots adapted faster and FEISAR finished runner up to Piranha in the first (Chronos) league. They took the Tethys league with Daniel Johnson, breaking Piranhs’s 3-championship streak, but after that they seemed to fade away. After the Crius league, the first AntiGravity races without an Auricom on the starting grid, FEISAR dropped out and began to focus on commercial transport in the same way Auricom was doing. Though not as reliable as their American counterparts, FEISAR found good work in making private grav-cabs and even now from Lisbon to Vilnus you can flag down blue and yellow taxis. When the time came to start the new project for FX150 however, the normally company-driven focus of FEISAR was smashed aside by a new man.

Nicolo Testa had been a FEISAR fan for all his life, but had only come to work for the company in the middle of its’ hiatus from racing, working on the taxi business. He had been noted many times for his impatience, his temper and his desire to go beyond the boundaries. His designs were radical and imaginative, and when explaining his theories to his superiors he would speak at length, drawing great diagrams and explaining in depth. He was the perfect man to be the Team Principal of the resurrected FEISAR and as soon as his bosses gave him a modicum of autonomy, he was working like a man possessed.

FEISAR began to centre around the Bologna-based engine facility, eschewing some of the other locations that had been taken by other teams, though they continued working at Dover until it was taken once more by Icaras. Testa is known as a fierce and impassioned leader, but his success is clear for all to see – A victory for Thanos Ikrausus, Ezio Di’Rosso and Latoya Ruchiov to take the FX350 trophy certainly leaves a good impression. He is determined to see the next ships do even better than the narrow victory they won over Icaras that season…

Allies: Triakis, Harimau
Rivals: Icaras, (Goteki 45?)
Arch Rivals: EG-X

Searching AntiGravity Racing Archives for subject ‘EG-X stolen FEISAR designs’

Error – records have been expunged. Alpha-level security in place. Data locking requested by Nat-*static*-o, approved by AntiGravity Race Commissioner Tarvus Orcorus 

Ship Details:
Like AG-Systems, FEISAR’s ‘Fury’ ship suffers from an alarming lack of development time as the European squad desperately played catch-up in the latter part of the FX400 season to keep pace with Harimau and AG-Systems, and ward off the unwelcome attention of Icaras nipping at their heels. As the FX500 specifications state the enlarged dimensions of the ships necessary, it looks like FEISAR mostly just enlarged their blueprints. Why change a winning formula after all?

FEISAR-X5-Alpha, codenamed the ‘Octavian’ in keeping with Nicolo Testa’s habit of naming FX FEISARs after Roman generals and emperors, has a more sophisticated airbrake system than its’ predecessors X3.5 and 4 to keep with an enlarged engine capacity and some minor tweaks to the shielding capabilities. A new wind tunnel in Italy has helped immensely with the shape and the new FEISAR is much more dangerous aerodynamically. One weak point is targeting systems – FEISAR pilots have said they have difficulty with locking onto allied ships and their attempts at laying mines in strategic positions tend to end up messy.

Lead Pilot – Ezio Di’Rosso 

Often, a pilot will begin their career with FEISAR only to move on when they have learnt the skills to be a pilot the hard way – the European team is famous for their poor management skills, but twice, a pilot will emerge that is determined to take FEISAR to the top and refuses potentially better offers with the loyalty to their starting squad. Daniel Johnson was one such man during the days of the F9000 and despite his retirement from racing now, he has many positive things to say about his spiritual successor, a man with similar goals for FEISAR.

Ezio was one of the first men to apply for the position of a race pilot with the announcement of the FX150 racing league, and his application seemed to stand out despite one or two references to car and ship stealing in his native San’Atagia. The Italian did not have far to move to FEISAR’s Italian stronghold where the engines were made in a factory that in times past had made the petrol engines for a long-forgotten prestige ground car company in Bologna. After proving himself to the thruster department in several simulators and a run in the FS-9K-VII ship left over from the F9000 league, the Roman officials in the mess that is FEISAR’s head office pushed and lobbied until Ezio was the second pilot for the initial series, the old hand Thanos Ikrausus of Greece having been on the cards for several months now. With an experienced older pilot who had flown in the final days of the F9000 and a young hotshot, FEISAR took to the new league and Ezio showed off just why he deserved the place.

A smooth and skilled pilot, Ezio’s hawk-eyes were able to pick up danger ahead by miles and though his craft couldn’t catch the powerful Auricom ship or the nimble Assegai in the first league, it outperformed the much more technologically advanced AG-Systems, and did so again when the weapons were turned on and celebrated a second place in the championship. It took longer for his team to rise up to the challenge in the FX350 and take victory over Icaras, a fight that he said added about five years to his life. He attributed his victory to his mentor Ikrausus, who in turn declared Ezio to be a perfect launching point for FEISAR’s future while he had an easy retirement after the FX400.

Ezio’s determination to match his team principal’s is legendary and there is little the Milanese pilot can’t put his mind to and make the craft do. His looks have also helped when publicity shots or advertising campaigns are needed, though to the despair of a lot of fans around the globe, Ezio has appeared recently with an engagement ring on his finger. He stays coy about who he is betrothed to though, and not even Float Nation’s best spies have found out.

Second Pilot – Latoya Ruchiov 

Last year’s third pilot, Latoya moves up with the advent of the FX500 season into a place of a great deal more responsibility with the departure of Thanos Ikrausus, the Greek expert who had been no more than a trainee pilot at the time of FEISAR pulling out of the F9000.

Latoya was one of the many dozens of young hot-shots who signed up to the FEISAR Study programme when the FX150 was re-announced, though while she did well to get through some of the initial tests she was found wanting in some of the later challenges. She ended up on an immensely extensive list of trainee pilots for the reserve FEISAR seat. Many of these pilots ended up leaving FEISAR for other squads to act as development pilots, one of which was none other than Thierry Caluroso, now twice world champion for AG-Systems.

When the FX350 finally allowed a third pilot, Latoya was one of very few pilots still loyal to the squad that had taken her in despite rumours of an offer from Qirex. The Euro squad eventually went for the Scottish pilot Heather McKellen, leaving the Hungarian as a second reserve pilot. It meant that she was given a ringside seat into the workings of how FEISAR treated its’ pilots – by her own admission somewhat poorly. McKellen famously had been shaken many times by the rudeness and brusqueness of the team and especially with Testa’s do-or-die approach to racing she didn’t seem to take well to the hyper-professional new FEISAR.

The dismissive nature of FEISAR’s pilot correspondents caused Latoya’s fellow reserve pilot to leave, giving her a sudden burst in responsibility. It seemed that while she appeared professional before the team, an interview with Heather McKellen stated that she wouldn’t have been able to finish the FX350 without the support Latoya gave her when she needed it. When the treatment continued into FX400, McKellen left the team and Ruchiov was forced into her place in short notice. Despite the kindness she’d shown to her fellow female pilot, she had lost none of the drive that FEISAR wanted and began slamming home a series of mid-field results with an eventual win at Orcus White for the first time. It was enough to keep her on for FX500, though in his retirement Thanos said that he didn’t envy Latoya’s new position. It was make-or-break with her and FEISAR after all.

Third Pilot – Park So-Gun

A last-minute defector from Goteki 45, So-Gun stunned quite a few people when he was presented along with the team’s new craft wearing the blue and yellow, most of all the members of his old team, who nearly exploded at the sight. Rumours had abounded that the Korean was considering leaving Goteki 45 last year, but nobody had predicted that he’d move to a team for beginners once more.

As the first ever champion of the JX200 league for Van-Uber, he was given a seat for the FX350 league with the Makana-based squad, and impressed many with his skills, showing that he could hold his own and occasionally he even surpassed his team mates in terms of time trials and speed laps. His race technique was sometimes criticised and he flew into rages easily when the race didn’t go his way – which it often didn’t at the Chenghou Project.

The reason for his leaving Goteki is said to have been a fall out with his fellow team-members rather than with the actual administration of Goteki 45. Even so, people are asking why if he’s looking for a more personable team he goes to FEISAR as opposed to somewhere like Icaras or even Mirage. The question of whether he will settle into the team and the ship is no issue – he is more than capable of flying, that much is unquestionable. What is an issue is his team choice and it’s believed unlikely that he will see the season through to the end in the FEISAR.

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WipEout HD Fury - AG-Systems Team Profile




1 – AG-Systems (Japan)

Team Principal:

Sakura Tanaku

Slogan:

“Friends in Speed”

Backstory:
The reigning champions, the Oldest Team in the Book, Belmondo’s Team, the Transcendants, the Rising Suns. All these and more are titles that have been bestowed upon AG-Systems, the second most successful team in AntiGravity racing with seven championships under their belt, the most recent added in the FX400 league. Much like FEISAR, it seems that after their shaky start to AntiGravity racing, they have finally managed to find a driving force that has sent them right to the start of the field. Some say it’s a lead pilot and a development team that finally work hand in hand instead of one having to deal with the other, some say it’s a decent budget at long last. Whatever it was, the black and yellow squads that first called themselves the team of the Father of AG-Racing are now at the head of the pack in red, white and cyan.

AG-Systems was initially set up to be the commercial arm of FEISAR in its’ youthful form as FEAR, Pierre Belmondo wanting to keep a truthful monopoly on the technology in case it fell into the wrong hands who wanted to use it for greed, or worse, for military applications. One saving grace for the Frenchman was an approach from the fledgling Japanese consortium that had decided to leap onto the use of AG-Technology quickly. ‘Forever Floating’ as the consortium translated into English had already begun constructing lifts using Belmondo’s technology to reach the gigantic skyscrapers that Japan had slowly begun to develop. Over teppanyaki at the consortium leader’s home in a Kyoto penthouse, Pierre saw the potential for his company to become what he wanted it to be, away from the constant intrigues of Europe.

AG-Systems moved to Kyoto within the year, though some of its’ members were lured back to FEISAR by the promise of better pay. This arguably left some of the more ‘pure’ members with AG-S, those that treasured either the freedom to develop limitlessly, or to work truly for the name of purity rather than money. For about three years, Belmondo operated AG-S with his two most trusted advisors, Holst McQueen as head of technology and Delia Flaubert as head of design.

Unfortunately, the two began butting heads as soon as their quarterly bills came through and Holst started pressurising for more work to be done on refining the current AG-devices rather than spending money on creating brand new things. Flaubert got behind her mentor until the Canadian and the Frenchwoman were roaring at each other across the table at volume enough to knock over the vases of flowers on the table. It was after this happened once too often that Belmondo declared that enough was enough, and the two had to leave the company. His sympathies went with Flaubert, but he didn’t want to create a rival team to AG-Systems filled with malice from only firing McQueen. Instead, by sending them both away, he created Qirex and Auricom and kept AG-Systems out of the years of warring between those two.

In the early F3600 and F5000 leagues, AG-Systems and their pilots were plagued with difficulties between the two, for AG-S would never allow a single design to be used more than twice, forever changing the setup of the craft or making new adjustments to make it faster and handle better. Despite the appreciation most pilots showed for such a dedicated engineering team, it was at the cost of any sort of consistency and it needed extraordinarily skilled pilots to keep up with the constant development, which ironically was denied to AG-Systems. After all, the best pilots knew they wanted a position at either Auricom or Qirex. It was the most spiritual and purist pilots who came to Belmondo’s old team for a job, and though this kept the Japanese squad very happy, their only championship in those first years came from Mitsoto Gato in the Venom F5000 leagues. It took a different tactic to approach the hotly contested F7200 league.

The man for the job was Katsuogo Muro, a graduate from FEISAR study who moved to the Japanese squad half from pressure from his own public and half because of his long-time adoration for the Rising Suns, as they were known in their home country. Taking both Vector and a Venom championship in the F7200 league, Katsugo wowed the crowds and was a much adored pilot, even by Qirex and FEISAR who had historically been the most wary of AG-Systems in the past. There was global shock and a great ceremony in Japan after he fell to his death when taking part in an ‘extreme sports’ challenge on Japanese Datacast. Without their most skilled of pilots, AG-Systems was in disarray and from then on never stood on the podium, the technologically advanced ships at least able to keep the Piranha and Assegai teams away at first before their money woes began to catch up with them. The constant development had eaten away at the team’s funds and now that Pierre Belmondo was dead as well there was no central, influential figure to rally the troops and convince investors to pay up.

Much like Qirex, the Japanese-based squad were forced to look for a new buyer and also like Qirex, they ended up taking the wrong peoples’ money. Nobody is quite sure who set up or where G-Tech was founded, but as investigations after the end of the riots caused by the fall of the F9000 league, many members were from Overtel and Tigron to perpetrate their idea of a hyper-violent league purely to create datacast ratings. G-Tech ships were slow, pathetically shielded, and had no handling whatsoever, but some pilots just had no choice but to fly for them and cough up sums to fly each month, all of which went straight into the pockets of the corrupt businessmen who owned them. The only person who seemed to like G-Tech at all was Englishwoman Naomi Turner, who was so determined to keep racing that she didn’t care where she had to do it or what magazines she had to pose for to keep her seat.

Given that the G-Tech crew were ‘sleepers’ so to speak, it was believed that they would escape the fall of the F9000 league and be able to retire, but a drive by loyal and honest lawyers found each and every one of them and forced them to pay up the damages they’d caused to the sport. It was an impossible sum, but there was nobody else to blame after the members of Overtel and Tigron were all dead. Most members of G-Tech lived out the rest of their life in a penal camp on Mars, and not one is still alive.

The AG-Systems name took a while to resurface, but the idea came about with two graduates from the University of Kyoto discussing what they wanted to do for their final year dissertation. With underground AG-Ship racing all the rage at this point in time, they decided to create a new ship and race it under the ‘Forever Floating’ tag. The ship was of course red, white, and cyan and the two engineers soon found a couple of eager pilots to fly for them. Sakura Tanaku and Inatu Itsua soon became well known amongst the underground AG-community as a hard-working, intelligent and creative couple who held Pierre Belmondo and many of the great names of before as inspiration. The couple were engaged shortly after achieving excellent marks in their dissertation, but they have been unable to marry, forever focussing on their newly formed AG-Systems team. The money that they had intended to be for their wedding went to buying and restoring the old AG-Systems buildings in Kyoto. They invited most of their friends from the underground leagues to join them and so AG-Systems was reborn once more, to the delight of many AG enthusiasts. It was perhaps this rebirth of one of the classic teams that caused the AG Race Commission to announce the new FX150 league, with AG-Systems given automatic entry.

Tanaku and Itsua were somewhat overwhelmed by the proposal but soon got to work – Tanaku made herself Team Principal as Itsua took care of the design and construction of the ship. With a team of eager young enthusiasts, they lacked the knowledge and experience that Auricom, FEISAR and even Assegai had, but they made up for it with good hard work. Their first breakthrough came with a sponsorship deal with the popular ‘Joy Noodle Bar’ chain in Japan that also settles their catering needs. Even today, Joy Bars in Japan and across the world will offer ‘AG-Systems Special’, which consists of leek, lamb and garlic.

Their pilot lineup was somewhat poor at first – part of the Joy deal meant that they needed to use a pilot picked by the noodle company, which neither of the team heads was happy about. But Hitomi flew for the team in the first three leagues under the new ‘FX’ setup. It wasn’t until they got their dream boy in Calursoso that the squad has truly come into its’ own, and the results speak for themselves. Constructors’ and Pilots’ championships in FX250 and 400, most perfect laps in all leagues, three times top of the ‘preferred team’ public votes and best livery for Croshaw’s cyan ship. Now coming into the FX500 league on a high, it’s doubtful if anyone can stop Belmondo’s legacy from eclipsing Qirex as the most successful team in the history of the sport.

However, not all is rosy. While in the past the only enemy AG-Systems ever had was money worries, the new teams in the newer leagues have brought new and worrying challenges to the more pacifist of teams. After Triakis entered and began bothering Auricom for wins, it looked as though the Americans were going to go to war with the Australians once more, but Auricom has been nothing if not predictable, and when Qirex rejoined the championship they got the stars and stripes pointing at them with all barrels on auto. This left Triakis to duel with AG-Systems for the leftover places, and slowly a bitter anger came from this constant abrasion. Victory in the FX250 league was only a hair’s breadth between the two ships at times and all pilots and team members felt the strain. FX300 pushed this even further, though Triakis emerged victorious in the end.

Before this, the teams had fought hard but had always managed to congratulate each other in the style of exhausted and firm rivals who respect each other, but when Triakis’ Reverse-Inertia Decelleration System was found to be illegal and they were exempt, both teams were shaken. Triakis was furious that they had been denied their legal victorious rights, and AG-Systems were also shocked that their honourable rivals had been so dismissed by the courts. To this day, AG-Systems and Thierry Caluroso officially disregard the inherited victory in the FX300 league from Triakis, but the Australian military squad are still bitter and hyper-aggressive when they can be. It doesn’t help that AG-Systems have made a firm rival out of Harimau International as well after some close scrapes from FX300-400.

Allies: Assegai, Auricom
Rivals: Harimau
Arch-Rival: Triakis

Searching AntiGravity Racing Archives for Subject ‘AG-Systems and Triakis’
681 Matches Found...
Opening File...

WM: Vince? Vince, can you hear me?

*radio silence for a long while*

WM: Vince? I know you’re alive, I can see your vital signs. Can you hear? Can you move? I can’t see any broken bones…

VS: For the love of God, you t**t, of course I can hear you. If anything’s going to survive a holocaust, it’s one of these.

WM: How are you feeling?

VS: I’m s**ding p***ed off, what the f*** did you expect?

WM: *laughs* Same as always, huh?

VS: *dry chuckle* I guess you could say that. Don’t put me back onto the wall again for a while, will you?

WM: No worries Vince. I know you prefer to be alone with your thoughts for a bit.

VS: My thoughts and Nelson maybe. Who got me?

WM: *sigh* Samirsdøttir, of Qirex.

VS: Cheers. I appreciate you doing this for me.

WM: You’re an old drinking buddy of mine, Vince. We grew up together. Rules and regs are meant to be broken for people like you.

VS: I grew up with a lot of people. Doesn’t mean they bend the rules for me all the time.

WM: I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times, I had no say in the dealings. I may be your friend, but I wasn’t willing to sabotage my job here. Neither was Thierry.

VS: The frog was in it?

WM: *long pause* S***. I guess it’s out now. Thierry tried to lodge a private appeal for Triakis to be re-instated. He was told he would have his pilot’s licence revoked if he didn’t.

VS: What the hell was Caluroso trying to get out of letting us back in? Deny himself a championship?

WM: AG-Systems took it badly, Vince. I know you cut off contact, and you don’t like hearing, but nobody on that team wants that victory. As far as they’re concerned, Triakis won fair and square, and Caluroso believes that as well. He wants you to start talking to him again Vince.

VS: I don’t believe that for a second. What sort of team wants to throw away a world championship?

WM: Whatever you may think man, it’s true. Anyway, my mouth is running away again. I’ve said too much, Vince. You give this a long, hard think. Switching you back to the wall.

VS: Thanks Will. Pint on Thursday again?

WM: As always, my friend.

-Ship Radio Transmission between Triakis pilot V. Stephenson and Race Commissioner W. Maybank, after Stephenson’s elimination in 2200 at Vineta K

Ship Details:
The imaginatively named AGS-500 suffers from something of a lack of development time. Much like the major players of the previous leagues (FEISAR, Icaras and arguably Harimau), the constant tweaking of the AGS-400 to win them the FX400 league has left them with little time to test and develop a brand new ship. Much like the two European squads, it seems that the Japanese squad has enlarged the older ship to the new specifications and kept most of the shape of the ship fairly similar. Differences to the old ship are more than just cosmetic though.

AG-S has abandoned the air-cooled system from the previous years after reliability issues at low speeds meant they lost a lot of ground to other craft in the early leagues. Instead of the rotating propellers at the back to help force air through the back part of the ship, it now uses a circulating coolant system similar to that in the Piranha craft, though with less distance to travel, it doesn’t take up as much power as the Brazilian solution.

In addition, deciding to abandon the fight for maximum top speed, it appears that AG-Systems has turned its’ attention to the maximum output from the thrusters. This was never an issue with the old craft, but now it seems that there is at the very least another three GigaNewtons of thrust coming out of the back of the ship, meaning that of the entire grid, only the Goteki 45 can get off the line faster. Inatu Itsua and Jason Croshaw have both said they look forward to an AG-S vs Goteki 1v1 race to settle the matter for once and for all. So far, Goteki has declined the offers.

Lead Pilot – Thierry Caluroso 

There is a common saying amongst AG-Pilots the world around that if you want first places, you need a Frenchman. It was Pierre Belmondo that pioneered AntiGravity technology to begin with, and Sofia De La Rente that set the record for the longest and highest solo AG-flight in the world. Many years later, Belmondo’s great-great-granddaughter, Natasha Belmondo, took the world by storm as an Auricom pilot and then as a Xios champion all the way to the bitter end of the F9000 series. Throughout the history of the sport there have been other less well known names who still provide close and nail-biting racing, and unlike some teams who limit where their pilots come from, the door is open across the world to a Frenchman.

This legacy’s Gaul of the moment is a young man from Bordeaux who began his life right beside a popular holiday destination’s AG-karting track and spent a lot of his young life learning the art of flinging one of the small, metre-square devices around the track best he could. It didn’t take long for a couple of eyes to catch the skilled young Frenchman and he was offered a place at FEISAR Study. A regular sight as a reserve pilot at race weekends, the young man often impressed in practice sessions but was always sidelined for the more popular Italian in the team. He became close friends with a lot of the paddock during this period, most notably Vincent Stephenson of Triakis whenever he came to the tracks for testing purposes. His patience with FEISAR only lasted for a short while though before he set out to find a place to fly at the same time as his friend after Triakis confirmed an entry.

Caluroso found a place at AG-Systems as the team was undergoing some experimentation. They had run in the first two seasons with Croshaw and Hitomi, the former a great development driver but not a race winner, and the latter almost purely there for the sponsorship deals. Deciding to take a risk, the couple running AG-Systems gave Caluroso the main pilot’s seat, and let Croshaw take over Hitomi’s ship in Friday running for practice sessions for ship development. The Japanese pilot would race as second pilot, and keep the crowd’s attention as well as the money of the sponsors. Tanaku and Itsua took a big risk, but it paid off.

Thierry took to the lighter AG-Systems with more powerful engines like a duck to water and began to astonish everyone with his laptimes, not to mention the barrel rolls he could pull out. He claimed his skill came down to a friendly rivalry with his friend Stephenson in Triakis, though as the season went on and the weapons and close weapons began to put stress on the two pilots, the relationship between the pair of them became unbearably tense. This came to a head halfway through the FX250 season when the two pilots had a shouting match on the podium much to the surprise of Nyoko Kassan, who was trying to enjoy his first ever win for Assegai Developments in a Flash race.

However, it seemed the relationship was shortly patched over a week later when the two turned up on a beach in north-eastern Makana covered in bottles of beer, wine and a couple of scantily clad women. The tabloids of course had a field day with it, and both teams had a hard time trying to cover up the problem with reserve pilots – Croshaw and Acosta weren’t the skilled masters of their art that the Frenchman and Englishman were and there was much rejoicing when the two returned to a series of wins for Triakis and AG-Systems. AG-S won the championship by a whisker and the joke between the two used to be that the one second between the two was due to the one extra bottle of beer that Stephenson had downed on the beach. Despite the easy friendship, both teams were on edge after such a close finish and wisely, AG-S swapped Hitomi for Croshaw for the FX300 league.

The full race series on Makana proved testing for the two pilots and tensions began to rise once more, as the championship progressed harder and harder, and with Harimau beginning to nip at their heels (Auricom and Qirex were of course too busy fighting each other to mount a decent challenge) there were more than a couple of cases of stress leave for some engineers. Of course, the outcome of that championship is history now – Triakis’ illegally deemed Reverse-Inertia-Decelleration system meant the championship was gifted to AG-Systems.

Caluroso seemed to be hit hard by the ill-gotten win and his flying focus was lost for FX350 for the most part. Certainly he had a lot of detractors saying he had lost his touch by the time AG-S ended up only 4th in that championship. When FX400 came back though, he decided to strike back hard. With most perfect laps, most wins, most barrel rolls and the pilots’ championship easily sewn up, it seemed that Thierry had his mojo back and he looks to carry it on into the FX500 league.

Unlike some of the other popular pilots on the grid, Thierry is a much quieter man than his peers. He is fairly young for an AG-Pilot at only twenty-three, and has no end of admirers judging by the banners waved in the crowd sometime and the amount one woman offered for a night with the pilot. She was turned down for that offer, but the gift that Caluroso gave his fan as compensation, a data slate complete with a series of shots he did for a modelling company in Japan, were soon on the internet and getting rather a lot of popular comments, particularly the elaborate tattoo work of a panther with a rose in its’ teeth between his shoulderblades.

Second Pilot – Jason Croshaw

The ideal test pilot with no qualms whatsoever about saying his mind, Jason was picked for the AG-Systems role early in the team’s return to the sport after he came from the University of Auckland to the underground racing league many years prior to FX150 with the aim similar to that of his employers, of working to achieve recognition as an engineer. Unfortunately, his barbed manner and caustic criticism of other engineers, pilots, and ships whenever he flew one himself made him somewhat unpopular amongst the underground league.

Despite this, the two Japanese who began AG-Systems began asking Croshaw to fly for them again and again, claiming that the more aggressive the criticism, the better they could make their ship. Croshaw claims that he is amongst the reasons that AG-S was actually ready for FX150 to begin with, and that if every team had a development pilot such as he, they would have been untouchable.

This somewhat unhumble approach has gained Croshaw few fans amongst his fellow pilots and he is seen as something of a loner, though not thanks to a lack of conversation – he simply alienates everyone with his tone. A lot of newcomers to the sport haven’t even tried to approach the man in his trilby for fear of what he might say to them.

The fact that Jason has been a useful rock in the AG-Systems team is undeniable, but rumours have abounded that if he doesn’t perform in these leagues on track, he may be reduced to a reserve and testing pilot for the rest of his career to allow newer pilots with potentially more skill to be allowed time with the new toys. The ‘Friends in Speed’ junior team has been slow to set up, but it is coming into its’ own slowly and the two pilots there are eyeing a new race seat after this season.

Third Pilot – Chiaki Hitomi
Adored by the public with a fanbase most people would kill to have, Chiaki Hitomi is the only major embarrassment to AG-Systems, their black sheep. Chosen by Joy Noodles for sponsorship deals as a mediocre pilot with a huge fanbase thanks to her form and personality, AG-Systems were a little wary at taking on the untrained woman from Osaka. Every race she attends there are men and women along the sides of the track screaming their love for her and her fan page on the FX500 datacast pages has the largest number of suscribers and fans. 

It is believed that she first began attending the underground tournaments prior to the FX150 as a singer and dancer, and was talked into having a go at some of the slower speed vehicles by a whooping public. When it turned out she could do a three lap race without hitting the walls, she began to do it more and more often as a curio, eventually purchasing her own ship (which to the dismay of some hardcore AG-Systems fans turned out to be an F9000-era Vector G-Tech craft) and regularly racing, to few results.

Her luck in the big leagues has been equally poor, and she claimed only one gold medal in the entire FX400 series, that being at a Venom Time Trial at her home track of Metropia. The crowd was believed to have been louder than any of the ships when she ascended the podium. But aside from that, she has been a poor pilot, especially at higher speed classes and AG-Systems are desperately looking for other popular Japanese pilots to replace her for Joy Noodles. Her only real contacts who take her seriously in the paddock are her fellow pay pilot, Mahmud Abakann of Mirage and Buster Harding of Triakis, who is believed to have a soft spot for her.
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