Brett Powers, perhaps better known as Donut has been in the MXS community for a while now
How did you get into MX Sim, I’m interested in how people in the OG days found out about it, was it a friend, a YouTube video or something else?
If I remember right (holy hell I sound like an old head), i was watching Kawasakiz 46k YouTube videos - looks like he rebranded to "46K Videos" recently. Dude is super OG. I actually tried the game out and thought it was kinda trash - I didn't know you could turn arcade physics off lol. I remember joining a lobby and getting blown out by Brina. I was like dude.. how are you supposed to go any faster, I was really pushing the boundaries of those arcade physics. Maybe a year later, somehow I found out there was an arcade physics option and got on tha grind.
You are definitely an OG mxsim player, one of the lower UIDs still in use today, do you ever look back and think on how much of your life has been in and around this small game and its community?
I never gave it much thought until some ppl started calling me a sim 'OG' or that they discovered the game because of my Sanday video lol. It's obviously my favorite game, so it’s nice to have some roots in the community - like some secret setups or tracks to burn. I might sound corny, but I think all the sim players are so die hard that ppl have made good friends in the community. I literally have some sim friends’ spots across the country I can crash at and bring my bike to ride the area. I think posty just did that for his last video.
The Donut YouTube channel has been one of the largest mxsim channels, but it looks like you aren’t really active on it anymore, any plans to come back to it now that you’re playing so much?
the age-old question! I took a new role in my company 2 years ago, actually right around when you can see my last upload with any effort. It’s a job that sends me around the country and involves a lot of hours in a week. I mean I still have free time, but I prefer to spend my more limited time riding, chilling on sim, friends/family bla bla bla. I'm quitting that job this year to go somewhere else with waaay more flexibility and less hours. The plan is to get back to YouTube - I’ve missed it. I also took a look at my uploads and noticed I really don’t have much sim stuff, I gotta change that!
The DTF facility and Sanday 2.0 were legendary tracks back in the day especially once you got those trees and a house added, is there any desire to build another track?
Good lord those tracks are awful man hahaha. It's hilarious to me that those blew up. I've created maybe 5-10 tracks since then that are worthy of a release (a few of them are actually decent!?) I just need to take the time to make videos for them. We're really due for a new trees and house joke, it’s getting played out.
How would you compare the eras of MX Simulator, the pre erode days to the current wall rut simulator we’re playing now?
I love how there’s eras and styles of tracks throughout the years. I’d say we have the ol slick days up until maybe 2014ish? The tacky tile info / premade tracks 2014-2018ish and then erode up to today. As much as I love those 2017 tracks, erode is really what brought me back to the game every week. You can’t turn a flat field into a dope turn track in any other game. The erode (with the right settings) is insane. Remember the 50/50 divide in the community when rF went to erode? Good times lol. I like that its more adapting and kinda winging it throughout a race rather than some kid grinding every intricacy of a pre-made track and just super tryharding his way to a win. I highly recommend everybody go steal the Valkenswaard tile info and throw that on your favorite tracks for erode races. Our wildside team has made like 50 sand erode tracks at this point lol. How do you think we dominated Southwick last season!?
Its seems like you’ve only raced sporadically for the past few years, what caused you to come back in full force for this year’s ams season, are you just having more fun on sim again?
erode and ams. ams is the move lol. I can just show up and have fun with decent results. When I raced pro I would have to try hard sweat my ass off for like a 12th. I wanna move back to pro soon, maybe if I get good enough to casually score points every week. We'll see!
How would you compare the modern day ams to the pros from a few years back?
I guess us guys in that top 5ish ams bubble are obviously fast enough to race pro, we're just being assholes and sandbagging to win some races haha. I've always had the consistency and not the speed. A lot of other guys have the speed and not the consistency. Those top pro's obviously have both.
The Wildside team seems like a pretty tight knit group, how long have you known those guys?
The sand erode goats!! I think 2017ish? I bounced around some teamspeaks (teamspeak looool) and discords and wildside was chill. And we kinda have somebody for everything; JGMX for tracks, Reno makes us dope gear, Smid can kinda do anything, I (used to) make content lol, Sam has aggressive bowels. Everything u could ask for in a team really.
So, with you being so active in 2021 do you plan to keep that up in 22, maybe even go back up to pro?
Heavy on sim right now. I’m not big on racing SX since the starts are so important (I suck at starts) but I figure I might as well try. Pro race for Daytona and hotlanta maybe ?? Pro nats? Idk. And once I switch jobs I'm hoping the sim content starts flowin.
If you could ask JLV to do one thing for MX Simulator what would it be?
Isn’t it great that this is a hard question. The game really doesn’t have any glaring issues. Aside from everyone requesting to remove front end lock, I think being able to use the editor online with your homies would be a game changer. Could make for some interesting race series and content too lol. But I’m no game dev, idk if something like that is even possible in java (or is this C++ ?) I'll leave that to JLV.