Red Bull
Max "Red Bull" Bout has been one of the most skilled Perfect Dark and GoldenEye players of the Netherlands throughout the last six years. He is currently ranked as the best Dutch Perfect Dark player and is part of the Top 5, playing on both PAL as NTSC systems. During his membership of the Perfect Dark Elite, Red Bull took several time-outs and has been banned for a long period, but most important, he also made several impressive comebacks making him an unforgettable player on the Perfect Dark World Rankings and contributor to the Perfect Dark Overall Combined time.
Joining the Elite
Max Bout joined the Perfect Dark Elite in the year of 2001. Impressed and stunned by the world record video's of Marshmallow, who was ranked as "World Champion" back then, he shared his enthusiasm with some of his friends and decided to take his speedruns of Perfect Dark to a higher level.
Getting to the top
Max Bout made the change to controller style 1.2 after this controller style was proven to be faster. he improved most his times again, and entered the top 30. His peak was on the 24th rank in time ranking. He was nominated once for the "Player of the Month" award in 2001.
Banned
Soon after his peak, Red Bull was contacted by Jon Barber, to see if he could show proof of his personal records. After Max Bout found out that it was technically impossible for him to put a video or photos online of his proof, he was banned from the Perfect Dark Elite on January 2nd 2002 because of lacking proof (also see the PD Elite Proof Section [1]).
2002 - 2005
Red Bull never actually stopped playing after being banned from the Perfect Dark Elite. He continued playing for himself and for fun. In fact, he also climbed up in the GoldenEye ranking to the top 30. His love and dedication for impressive achievements on videogames not only resulted into GoldenEye and Perfect Dark records. Max Bout has also been very active and gained professional skills for games like Super Smash Brothers Melee, the Legend of Zelda series, Super Monkeyball 1 & 2 , Imperial Conflict and more.
2006 - The return
In the year of 2006, Max "Red Bull" Bout rejoined the Perfect Dark Elite, this time with scrolling proof (a video in which you'll see an overview of all his Personal Records) [[2]]. Accepted by this proof, "Red Bull" joined the rankings again. He had dropped from rank 24th to somewhere in the 50's in the time he was "inactive" according to the Elite, but after a couple of weeks playing, Red Bull has reached his old peak of the 24th rank again[3]. In Goldeneye rankings he dropped down to 100-120 rank during his inactive period, but after a quick session of speedruns Max managed to get back in the top 100.
2007
In 2007 "Red Bull" kept on improving himself, achieving PRs worth more than 85 points and tied World Records like Defection Agent 0:06 and The Duel PA 0:09. Because of PAL disadvantages, around may 2007 Red Bull decided to stop playing Perfect Dark temporarily until he owns the NTSC version of the game. In the meantime, a new Co-operation site was launched by Carathorn, holding the best times of Co-operation teams. This site was improved and updated by Mitrhil [4]. Red Bull and Carathorn matched up and played Co-operation for some serious Co-op records.
NTSC
Halfway 2007 Max finally got his hands on a NTSC console. In only a couple of days Max got himself over 25 PR's and gained spots on the rankings fast. From that point on, he has PR'ed almost every stage all over again, increasing his skill to a level that reached the top.
World Records
After the insane World Record streak of Rayan Isran who became champion late 2007, a lot of members expected Perfect Dark to be totally dominated. However, Max decided to get his first untied world record. Braking the Escape SA World Record that was 3:20 back then was his primary target. It took him a very long time to beat it, but after he finally beat the world record by 2 seconds, there was no stopping anymore! Max got the "taste" of World Records, and increased his already insane skills even more. from that point on, he got over 20 World Records and many untieds.
Some of his insane Untied World Records are:
Skedar Ruins SA 1:25,
Skedar Ruins PA 1:32,
Deep Sea SA 2:59,
Deep Sea PA 3:10.
Max "Red Bull" Bout is currently ranked 5th in time and 7th in points.
Contributions
Red Bull played online poker together with Carathorn, in order to win money so they could buy Rayan Isran his NTSC console and NTSC PD Cartridge. Rayan Isran was ranked 3rd at that time, and they decided to buy him this gift that he, according to Bully and Cara, "deserved because of his great talent". Some reactions from The Elite were:
"Incredible generosity!"
"omg you guys are super generous and doing a great favor to ge & pd speedrunning."
"What a great contribution to the elite you guys are making!"''
in December 2007, Rayan Isran got his NTSC Console shipped all the way from USA to Pakistan, and quickly became the new Champion with an amazing lead, that still stands today.
Rayan later described it as the "best gift he has ever gotten".
External links
Perfect Dark Time page [5]
GoldenEye Time page [6]
Super Monkeyball 1 & 2 video's [7]
Co-operation times and video's with Carathorn [8]
Most of Red Bulls video's can be found in Carathorn's Getfile on AIM.