you can take the night thunder or another similar car, then before the curve (for example a curve to the right) you must press the right turn button and the L tast.

for a curve to the left you must press left turn button and the R tast... so you can make all the curve because you drift and is easier to controll the car, in f-zero mv also must use this technique.

this is a f-zero mv video, in it you can watch this technique (the buttons are pink when the player press them)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1LJVbu2su4

it takes a while to get results with the drifting strategy so don't be discouraged if you don't get improvements at first.

you could also use Twin Noritta in the meantime if your skill isn't that high yet. that ship is easy to use and produces good times.

The best method of turning is drifting. You need to be holding the opposite shoulder button to the direction you turn. So if it's a left turn, you should be holding R. Use this with blast turning and corners shouldn't be much of a problem.

Drifting everywhere is what gets the best times, but if you're just starting out I'd stick to only using it on corners. Twin Noritta or Deep Claw are good beginner ships.

So I've been playing GP Legend, and afterwards, Climax for the past week.  There wasn't a response here for quite awhile so I just kept trying again after failing.

I didn't try the drifting technique you guys mention, but I somehow managed to unlock everything in both games, and in Climax, I tried my hand at Time Attack.  I checked the course times on the site and I'm in the top 20 for most of them, though I've only submitted one (which I've cut several seconds from).  I'm lucky that the previous cartridge owner was pretty good at the game and has some tough times for me to beat.

That leads me to another question: are there any more "ladder stats" ship avatars available (my favorite machine is not there), and how to I get my country flag to show in the time attack pages?

As far as I know, the only avatars available are the ones in the avatar topic. Hula was adding any which got requested at the time, but he hasn't been active here for a long time. Might be worth sending him a private message if you have any requests.

The country flag appears when you add a location to your MFO profile.

Ah, I have to add U.S.A. without the periods.

And hey, my stats are in the 800s, whoo!  Not sure what that means, but I'm sure it's not flattering.

the competition in the GPL and Climax ladders is the weakest of all F-Zero games. there's massive gaps between people even at the top ranks. my times are also top 20 and i never learned to drift properly with the hard ships (i stuck with Twin Noritta all the way)

you'll need the advanced drifting techniques to get to the top 10 and higher though.

Yeah, I don't really plan on trying to compete with the top 10; if I can't get 1st on any of them (and I won't), it's sorta pointless, and I'm also not interested in using the WR machines if they're not among my favorites.  

Plus, there's no way of really verifying if someone is playing on an actual GBA cartridge and not using an emulator, possibly slowing it down to 50% speed, which would facilitate getting times nearly impossible in normal gameplay.

Also, especially with F-Zero GX, I find Time Attack meaningless with the retarded snaking exploitation, so I'll probably just stick with Climax for now, and maybe go back to playing X a bit in the future.

there's the max speed ladder which uses 100% max speed settings to stop snaking so there's something at least.