Limit.

When you are playing something competitively, be it an FPS game like Counterstrike or a racing game like Initial D or even a music game like Guitar Hero, you will always have a limit of your own when you play.

Training or learning on your own does help you improve your game, but eventually when you are at the top of your game, there will be a barrier. This barrier is different for everyone (can come late or early) but this barrier is usually a barrier that is tough to knock down because there is (usually) no more room for improvement. At least for the person.

Maybe for example, you reached a pinnacle by scoring a fast time in Mario Kart, but as hard as you try you never seem to be able to beat that guy who was way faster. Eventually you might beat it, or you might not. It can turn into a psychological mess if you stress yourself over it.

Here's my example, with Initial D v3:

This is...or rather, was my best track/weather condition to play in Initial D v3. And I might be second now, but I'm happy to know that I at least managed to snag the top spot for a short while.

When I first started playing this map, I got an early 2'49"737 (see rank 10), and thats with plenty of mistakes. Even then, I continued to improve and I got what I wanted, a 2'49"190 (rank 5), but it took me roughly 5-6 months for this (as well as buckets of money retrying). I thought I was on top of my game....

Until I got beaten.

At that time when I posted the 49"190 up, I was 1st. It didn't take very long for it to get knocked down to 2nd. And then there's the urge to take back the record. And so began the battle against the barrier.

A huge barrier. I actually thought of giving up because there was hardly room for improvement. The feeling went on until during the last game, I saw a big improvement. And the fight went on until I broke the barrier. And scored a 48"787. :D

Which was #1 for 9 months until it got shot down. By that point I've already stopped so I didn't bother to continue. I might be able to beat it...or...naaaah...

More or less I was inspired to break the barrier because of the feeling of rivalry. (The dude that is #1 btw, is a Sarawakian, from Miri IIRC).

Looking back at Initial D, there were plenty of runs which were not at limit yet, but with Version 4 already out in Malaysia, and the fact that I have better priorities with my money now, makes me decide not to pursue such targets anymore.

And recently, just yesterday, I finally reached the limit for now....for Ouendan 2.

There was no other game has managed to push me to display my best before this. Not Ouendan, not EBA, not Mario Kart DS, not Tetris DS, not Counterstrike, and not even Initial D. It was Ouendan 2 which managed to bring the best out of me. Why? I don't know. And to think I spent MORE time each on all of the other games!

Initial Target: 187000000
Current: 188120370

It was an unexpected one. My calculations told me I would be hard-pressed to reach even 185 million. When I got to 187 million, I thought there was NO way I would be beating this.

And 6 hours later, I managed to push that to 188 million. But futile attempts to increase that suggest that I probably have hit the limit for now. Not the absolute max, but it did take a lot of work. (And I managed to get Zenryoku Shonen on Insane all 300'd too :p). Whether I might be able to push this to 189 million....well...that's hard to say.

So for now, thats my limit for both games....in Initial D, I will never go back to test the limit anymore seeing that the newest version has arrived, and as far as Ouendan 2 is concerned...it's not the absolute best score, but I'll have to work hard to increase this further. But I must stress that although it is difficult to break the barrier once you reach it, learning is a wonderful process, and it helps to break the barrier. There are many more limits in life that I have experienced, but it will take me a very long while to blog it all out.

What are your limits? Be it in gaming, or in life, strive on, and you will be able to set new limits for yourself.

Thank you for reading.