There is a particular kind of weather—when winter is loosening its grip but spring still hasn’t fully arrived—that makes old memories surface on their own.
Not long ago, a few coworkers and I tried the mobile version of KartRider. I kept running Town Highway, the track I knew best. After more than twenty races, something still felt off. Maybe I just never really got used to touch controls. Even a few years ago, when I played Honor of Kings, I was using a keyboard or a controller instead of the phone screen whenever I could.
So I switched to a keyboard. It was definitely better than touch input, but the results were still underwhelming. Little by little, it became obvious that the mobile game and the original weren’t quite the same. In the end, I downloaded the PC version again.
I remembered the old server layout vaguely. China Netcom used to have two servers, I think, and China Telecom maybe had three. Now there were only Telecom and Netcom left. Apparently the servers had been merged.
Then came the part that really dates a person: trying to remember old account names.
I first guessed my elementary school account might have been k3639920.
Account does not exist.
Then I thought maybe it was marslhyjh. That one was clearly from middle school, from the phase when Mars was my English name.
Account does not exist.
Then: nerolhyjh? I had registered that one around the time I used to play with Xiaofeifei and Dayu, also in middle school. Back then I was obsessed with Jay Chou, and my character name was FINALBATTLE.
Account does not exist.
At that point I figured those accounts had probably all been reclaimed. So I tried the one I made in high school: iamlingfeng777.
Wrong password.
What even was the password?
...
...
After a long while, I finally remembered it.
When I logged in, the game immediately loaded the beginner tutorial, which seemed strange. Then I opened my inventory and found almost nothing in it—just the basic kart and the toilet kart that had just been given away.
That could not be right.
Had I only selected Netcom and not the specific server?
I checked again and again. No, Netcom 2 was simply gone.
I searched around and found out the server merge had happened back in 2016. There had been no unlimited character transfer period. If you didn’t move your character in time, it was basically the same as giving it up automatically.
So that was it. I had to say goodbye to my Thunder PRO.
I still remember the first day I ever saw KartRider. It was one of those rare days when no one was home. My mother gave me five yuan and told me to sort out lunch on my own.
Naturally, I took it to an internet café. A shady one.
And of course, that was the exact day a surprise inspection happened. The place got hit in a crackdown, and someone with a camera even took a set of headshots of me and warned that if I came back again they’d call my parents.
I had only just registered my account at that point. I hadn’t even finished creating a character yet.
Still, the café must have had good connections, because it was open again like nothing had happened the very next day.
There was no banned-word filter back then, so my character name was probably something like Rogue A-Fei.
By middle school, the game had a real moment. Xiaofeifei and Dayu were especially hooked on it.
But the two of them played in completely different ways. Xiaofeifei poured nearly all of his playtime into sharpening his technique. Dayu, on the other hand, spent his time researching scripts and hacks.
I wasn’t that interested at first. I preferred games that let me feel immersed in a world, and had never cared much for lighter, more casual titles.
I remember one rainy day when Dayu didn’t show up—meaning he didn’t come to the internet café, Jichang Internet Café. Xiaofeifei and I were basically stranded there by the weather, so we figured we might as well play since we couldn’t really go anywhere else.
At the time, I had just given up on Perfect World International, while Xiaofeifei was grinding Town Highway, which was considered the hardest map back then. He even recorded videos and uploaded them to Youku.
There was another day with fierce winds and a dust storm, visibility under ten meters. For some reason, classes weren’t held that morning. By then I had already moved on to World of Warcraft. I was listening to The End of the World while fighting in Warsong Gulch. When it was finally time to go to school, I ran into Xiaofeifei and the team captain on the first floor of the café, locked in a desperate battle on Forest Hairpin.
Later on, I started to feel that racing games were actually pretty thrilling, even if I was clumsy at them. By then the game had added a lot of brutally difficult tracks, so I began trying other racing games too, like Crazy Racing and Disney Magic Hoverboard.
Neither lasted very long. Both shut down early.
Then later still, in my final year of high school, I got into Hearthstone and pulled a few all-nighters with it. After that came college. In my first year, one day a few roommates who barely ever played games suddenly started playing KartRider.
That got my hands itching too, so I downloaded it again. They were all on Netcom 2, so I made a character there as well. I think the name was probably Dreamer Vigeir—I used that name for most of my characters back then.
My luck was absurd. In the beginner draw, I got Thunder PRO right away. Apparently it was an expensive kart, something like over 200 yuan a year, and there wasn’t even a permanent version for sale. But I drew a permanent one.
I’ve always been the kind of person who likes revisiting old memories. I remembered that Xiaofeifei’s best track had always been Town Highway, so I took my new kart there and started practicing over and over. When I had spare time, I also ran Charlie’s Toy Castle. Those were the two tracks I knew best.
And after that, I never logged into the game again.
Not until yesterday afternoon, for the mobile version. Not until last night, for the original.
Goodbye, Thunder PRO.