Fade to FlashbackBy B Quiet N Drive

Hey everyone, BQND here bringing you a look back at the life of Urban Players Racing. I started this post when Kenji had Red Rings, and at the same time his 360 was broken! (that what happens when you don't practice safe sex) and I wanted it posted during that time but it took a little longer than I expected to finish this.

Did you know, Urban Players Racing started off as Urban Players iNC (Incorporated) with only three people, the founding 3;

Kenji Urban

TnTZuidema
Longshot x 69

I was the fourth member of then UPi and eventually earned the role of team administrator. The purpose of creating UPR was to build an alliance of people who race clean and hard and don't mind sharing their set ups and paints. We have accomplished that with our current team (all team members listed to the right) and look forward to getting a few new members when the time is right. We're pretty picky about who we let in but we seem to get someone new every now and then. Here's the story with plenty of pics and some commentary from Kenji and myself. ENJOY!!!!! [Prez Edit; Junago, our Latvian Connection, is about to be our newest member!]

The Urban Players Elite.

Above is what I like to call The Presidential Motorcade.

Each one of the 4 staff members of Urban Players Racing has one of these Blacked out Mercedes with a small logo on the bumper stating their role on the team.

Onto the history;

This one came from the very first race, the VERY FIRST track appearance.

These two pics are actually from the FIRST UPR (then UPI) track day.

Here is the first standard UPI car. The Enzo. This one is mine. I had a crosshair to dot my i. At the time we all had our own symbol for that. It had been decided that we would all try and customize or personalize the dot in the 'i' of UPi so we were recognizable.. this didn't last long as kenjis dominating and controlling personality eventually took over and changed us all for the better (claim under dispute)

Soon we were all making UPi related paints for a range of cars.. The moment we managed to have the UPi paint "finalized", was also the same moment when the "problems" began... i'll continue to explain somewhere on this post..

Note Kenjis awesome flaming star dotting the i on his hot rod. (Pres Edit; U know i thought it was hot too, but now it just looks uber lame) (Administartor edit; using the word "uber" is what makes you lame)

A rare pic of Team UPi against another Team from Hong Kong, the Watsons Water boys, CYWong and Saikit. This picture is a great example of the point i tried (almost unsuccessfully) to argue. Although the giant UPi is visible across the side, having two cars sitting next to each other having such radically different colour schemes gave the impression we all belonged to UPi, but everyone had their own agenda - it didn't look like a team to me. This opinion and slight distaste for the free-for-all approach to UPi paint schemes would be something that bothered me like it was a STD, annoying and inconvenient every time i looked at it, but too much hassle to fix. Until i snapped of course. More on this further down the page. -Kenji

The paints were supposed to be uniformed and the same on every car but as you can see we started changing them slightly and this laid the ground work for the paint situation to become a mess. [Prez edit; It was messy, but as i have hopefully said before, i think its my fault.. when the concept of having people in a club in forza, WITH my name on it (UPi/UPr) occurred, it went from the conception stage to actual reality much much quicker than it ever should have been allowed, and with no really solid paint ideas, coupled with the fact that i had not realized how to paint properly.. led to a messy situation]

Eventually there was more experiments than there was uniformed paint and things kind of starting falling apart. Here's a few of the things I was trying.
[Prez Edit; came down to one thing really. I had learnt how to paint, and came to the ultimate conclusion that the current UPi paint scheme, was fucking shit. Being a graphic designer, and knowing that the paint could be done 200 times better, it started to get to me, and eventually, i ended up hating the original UPi paint. I mean, i HATED it.. Soon, i was complaining about it every single night, and my insistence to change the paint started to affect our gameplay as i was unnecessarily embarrassed with our paint. TnT and Longshot to their credit, were defiant to the end - with there being nothing wrong with that, i just wish i didn't have to pull rank ;) and eventually, after in threated to kill kittens at random, Longshot and TnT reluctantly agreed to trial;

The UPR platinum phase.

Looking back now, i believe its worth saying that my choice to force everyone into this silver "shield" look was fucking awwwwwwful.. it did however, make us look uniform. Uniform of the worlds most boring looking club. At this same time that Urban Players iNC formed the subsidiary "Urban Players Racing" and we began promoting UPR as our club. Its my opinion that this was the most significant factor in the re-birth of the Urban Players.

Around this time, TnT decided he'd go on extended holiday without telling anyone, and went "up-state" for a few months. Thats all i have to say about TnTs absence ;) This same time also saw a reduction in Longshots gaming hours, (work related) which practically ended any confusion or difference of opinion concerning the paint scheme of UPR, because quite simply, it was going to be exactly how i wanted. HOW I WANTED... and eventually through some careful bribery, deceit and trickery, i gained the support of BQND in the aspect of color and style, possibly through the painfully extended online conversations we had. Often these were deeply intelligent, thought provoking discussions, that pushed the boundaries of current video game paint scheme application. A small portion is included below, just to give you an insight into the genius that is UPR.

kenji; hey! whats up!
bqnd; nothing, did u like the paint idea i sent you?
kenji; not really..
bqnd; well... fuck you then..
kenji; no, fuck YOU!

Eventually we came back with some red cars as a temporary fix for the paint while we (we being Kenji) worked on some great new paint schemes. Here's a couple of pics below from the short lived "Red Phase"

Only two pics? Like I said..It was short lived.


The Next Level

The next phase of UPR paint stemmed from the emergence of some really spectacular paints that were floating around the Auction House, that i found could easily be manipulated into a UPR related paint, whilst retaining the original 'cool' design, such as these absolutely fantastic novelty Adidas sneaker Minis. On top of that it gave me some much need inspiration and direction.


[Prez Edit; as much as BQND is going to credit me, its BQND that deserves the real credit, for producing these Puma cars first. As i've already told BQND, if these hadn't come about i would not have continued my push for better paints]

We did a couple of cars like these ones and actually got them out to a number of UPR members. This gave Kenji the itch to make some really great team paints and take UPR to the next level. So that's what he did.

Something BQND said to me one night; When the love of racing over comes the love of paints, UPR will ride again.. So i put my head down and made this.. Simply a re-design of the ORIGINAL UPi paint, i was determined to come up with a simple, yet effective paint that players would actually be proud to wear on their car. Let me make a point of saying that the resulting paint is far from being a masterpiece or an award winner. It is pretty slick though. The idea behind this initial car was to have ever car identical, except for the identifying driver name and unique number.



These Corvettes are probably our greatest success as a team paint. I LOVE this photo shoot. [Prez Edit; do you remember how difficult it was to get this happening? I truly believe the resulting photos smash any complaint about having to wait, or drive a particular car. Probably the other major contributing factor to this photoshoot working is the choice or car. The all american Corvette, instantly attractive to any american player.. i choose it specifically for this reason.. Whether or not i've ever said that, im not sure, but it worked, as it was by FAR the most sought after UPR car. An extremely limited edition series of 12 in total were produced.

The mildly detailed Lamborghini.

My second attempt at creating a "Limited Edition" paint.. made so strictly because of the decal that says "Limited Edition" :)

The 2007 Model Honda NSX. CrispyChicken23, at first a challenging random, Crispychickin is now a valued member of UPR, who brought his finely A-Class NSX to the table, openly and generously offering the cars tuning and parts list as part of the UPR garage that still remains there today. One of my favorite rides around Mugello.



Here we see a much more recent paint look from BQND on the massively awesome INGS RX7, a real UPR favourite.

The last attempt i made at an UPR paint. Surprisingly, this works ok in two-tone white/black and in all black..

Crispy edition DB9 in UPR paint.


One of the many ideas i stole from BQND ended up on this black and white styled paint scheme, with the first appearance of the new TnT drawn UP logo. LOOKS GREAT.


Sexy re-tooling of the original UPR bitch paint, with the subtle addition of the white top panel.


The very latest multi-sponsor paint of UPR from BQND


AND, the latest UPR paint, by famed Nascar painter Dono23. Look at it. Think about it. Then tell me how awesome it is in NO less than 500 words.

Here are some team member paints. Kenji did the vast majority of the paints you see above and there was many more too. We're lucky to have Dono23 on our team who is hands down the best Nascar painter in Forza. It seems that Dono and myself paint more non UPR paint schemes than anyone else on the team so most of them are from the 2 of us. Dono does a lot of Nascar, I do a lot of paints on what ever product logo's catch my eye.

Here's a favorite of mine from Team UPR drifter XRunning TreeX

Dono 23 painted this car especially for a Soft Drink Wars race that no-one ever turned up for..

This is literally a small glimpse of Dono's body of work. Please check out his page on the Forzamotorsport.net forum to see more. Here are most of my paints below. (BQND)

Joint effort between Dono and BQND. BQND made the Clorox logo and Dono made the car.

The car I made for the greatest underground rock band of all time; The National Enquirers.

[Prez Edit;BQND, for a car with paint this fine, these pics sure do suck]

This is Dono's Harvick Corvette and my Playboy Corvette. One of my FIRST paints on Forza2.

I piss excellence, or at least that's what my Ricky Bobby car would have you believe. Below is a couple of paints I found from TnT. I LOVE that Cobalt.

TnT sets the example that Simple = beautful when you do it right.

Here's a couple of Auction House scores featured here on the site.

Here is one celebrating Kenji's FAVORITE video game. [Fav of all time, baby!]

Looking at that disgustingly sharp katana (pun fully intended) on the side of this american muscle car makes me want to commit Seppuku..




We still don't know who this guy is, do any of you?

It starts with racing, it ends with racing.

Another UPR drifter Slyzoom doing his thing at Sunset P.

One of the first races between TnTZuidema and Myself [Prez Edit; and such a close match too, Lamborghini vs Golf.

Lord Gohda and Kenji chase X Running Tree X


I remember Kenji's comment about this was "It doesnt get any closer than this". This is Dono and myself at Mugello.

I don't know who this is but...OUCH [Prez Edit; its TNT488 -who doesn't even say hi anymore!]

That was for the win. Kenji beat me. This was an AWSOME race.

Thats a fucking traffic jam!

Contact. Tango Down.


Old jap vs new jap.


"Kiss my ass"



It's a sure thing that Crispy will hit that corner too far to the inside as he is doing here in his red MK2. He's got it working for him here as he leads the pack at Tsukuba.

From the Enzo/MC12 battle. The series races ended in a points tie with the Enzo winning do to more victories. [Prez Edit; you call that a battle?]

Again..ouch [Prez Edit; with only two Urban Players on the track, this wreck at 1st corner Suzuka, might as well just be considered part of track as it happens constantly]


This is called GOING FOR IT.

I hope you enjoyed the look back and I hope Kenji doesnt get pissed that this post is so big. Above is the FIRST pic ever posted on this site, before UPR even existed. Look how far we've come!!! See you on the track. -BQND & Kenji